Other Task Measurements

Some measurements are better than others. Our goal with a training needs analysis is to identify which tasks should get the most attention in training. What should we practice more? What only needs a high-level discussion? Our favorite (as mentioned before) is frequency and difficulty. However, are there others to consider?

Yes, there are a few times where working with a client that frequency and difficulty tell most but not the whole story. We need to reach out for another distinguishing characteristic to help separate and prioritize appropriately. Two of our favorites are Relevance and Criticality.

Relevance

Relevance helps us measure how much a particular job is dedicated to a task. Some jobs are the only ones who are trained, capable, and able to perform some tasks. Some tasks can be done by anyone with only a short set of instructions. For example, a Director of Investor Relations is one of the only people who is allowed to communicate with investors for publicly traded companies. This can include investor calls, press statements, and other regulatory filings. These tasks would be highly relevant for the Director of Investor Relations because there is no other person who can perform that work. On the other side, the Director may also do tasks such as draft and format information for the company’s annual report. That work, while supervised by the Director, isn’t likely carried out directly. It’s done through a team of financial analysts, graphic artists, and layout designers. He gives direction, reviews drafts, offers remarks for updates and revisions.

The good part here is that relevance can help us separate out the tasks where we should give more attention in training. They are the tasks where the organization relies on this job to do and do them well. Highly relevant tasks are the ones that cannot or should not be delegated. It’s important those in that job are highly capable of doing those tasks.

Criticality

Criticality looks at how bad it could be if someone makes a mistake or doesn’t do this task well. It makes more sense if you think about criticality in terms of safety. Some tasks have a high possibility of injury or even death if the person isn’t careful and doesn’t follow established safety procedures. This can turn a low frequency low difficulty task into a higher priority because if the person makes a mistake, it could result in their own death or possibly the death of others.

For example, if we think of a restaurant cook. There are a wide variety of tasks including preparation, cooking meats, pastas, and appetizers, responding to orders, communicating with front staff, and coordinating other kitchen staff. One task that comes up periodically is to “Adjust food preparation based on known customer allergies”. Depending on the allergy, this could be very infrequent and it likely isn’t too difficult as it mostly involves leaving out or substituting some ingredients. However, what is the impact if the cook doesn’t take the necessary precautions? It could be disastrous. At the least you’d have a customer with an allergic reaction in the restaurant and complains. At worst, you have a customer go into anaphylactic shock and die before emergency personnel can arrive. It is absolutely imperative the cook follows strict guidelines when preparing food for someone with a known allergy. Even if it’s simple, it requires thought, focus, and correct actions. When training this type of task, it would be critical to practice and test the final product to ensure no contamination occurred. This may elevate our choice of priority in how we train this task.