1. There are four steps to assessing the training needs of an organization: looking at the business, looking at the staff, identifying training needs and drawing up a training/development plan, and choosing the training vehicle ("Assess Your Training Needs"). Looking at the business provides a picture of how well the organization is doing in terms of achieving its long-term business goals, producing quality products, and working efficiently, as well as how happy clients and staff are with the current state of affairs ("Assess Your Training Needs"). The "look" at business should also include some analysis to determine the metric goals that the business should achieve, such as target production rate ("Assess Your Training Needs"). Determining what needs to be accomplished or improved enables HR to target the training. A look at the staff helps determine their training and development needs ("Assess Your Training Needs"). With the needs identified, a training and development plan can be drawn up to specify the types of courses needed and the number and levels of people needing the training ("Assess Your Training Needs"). Finally, choose the training vehicle that best meets the company's needs, whether it be in-house training, on-site contracted training, seminars, schools, or some combination of these.
             2. Employees' readiness for training can be assessed by their achievement of any prerequisite training or education, attitude, and the organization's general attitude toward training, as well as the particular training in question. If employees need to complete other training prior to the current training course, this must be done before they are introduced to the new material. The lack of prerequisites is a serious problem, since even though the quality of the training may be good, the employee without the prerequisites will have no frame of reference ...