by Kate Good

Posted January 9, 2002

Target Training: Making the Most of Your Efforts

As the multifamily industry continues to bring on rapid changes, it seems we are all running to keep up. Everyone is being asked to stretch their workloads to take on more responsibilities and to figure out some way to do everything faster and more efficient. In general, people are more than willing to answer the call: but to do so effectively, they need information on how to keep up and accomplish more.

One of the new responsibilities you may be asked to tackle is training. Perhaps you will simply be asked to coach another person or facilitate a formal training session for your group, or you may find yourself responsible for the entire training project. The first step is to target your training needs.

From time to time, my office receives desperate calls with a weary person at the other end of the phone with one request… “We just need some training!” While I welcome these calls as the key to staying in business, I know that I have my work cut out for me. Training can take on a number of different characteristics from self-study to case study, from in-house to out-source. The training bottom line is that everyone is looking for effective ways to demonstrate value to the organization.

I recently spoke with Sherri, a Property Manager of 960 apartments. She was complaining that May is such a busy time of year and her tem was having trouble keeping up he pace. She felt they needed a little time management training. Sherri contracted an outside firm to teach her 16-team members better time management techniques. While the program was met with great reviews, Sherri had expected to see higher productivity from her team. The result was that things had not changed. What had gone wrong?

This Property Manager made the classic business mistake: Sherri selected and shot an arrow (time management training) before she set up a target. What Sherri needed was to investigate the big picture and gather information concerning the needs of her team. This needs analysis would enable Sherri to identify the situation and identify how to correct it before she spent another $3,000 on training.

A needs analysis tells you where the target is. You may suspect your problem exists within your own area, as Sherri did, but a proper needs analysis might indicate that it extends beyond your group. Sherri might have a case where her team was working inefficiently with each other and might need some team building including members of the Accounting Department and Sr. Management. A needs analysis expands your view to include all possible targets.

Identifying your training needs is just the first step in a larger training process of identifying inefficiencies all the way to the delivery and evaluation of program effectiveness. You don’t have to be a detective to start discovering your training needs. There are many targets you could hit with a solution, but the idea is to identify and then hit the right target. Start by following five steps to understanding your needs.

Step One: Assess your current standings. Create a clear definition of your present situation by asking yourself “Where are we now?” and “What lead me to feel as though we had a training need?”

Step Two: Envision the future. After you have completed your training project, what will the future be like? Ask yourself “Where do we want to be?”

Step Three: Information Gathering. Ask everyone involved for information such as ideas and thoughts for performance improvement. Ask your team “What do we need to know?”

Step Four: Analysis. Gain an understanding of the information you have gathered to identify needs and issues that must be addressed.

Step Five: Decide your next step. This includes looking into all available opportunities for training. This may be an opportunity for coaching by internal team members who exceed expectations on a regular basis or an outside firm might customize a training strategy for success.

Sorting your information is the heart of your needs analysis. By mapping raw data into a manageable form and interpreting it, you begin to develop various recommendations. Many times, you discover that the solution requires more than just training. The changing nature of your organization may be impact operations in a number of ways. The result being lower productivity at the property level. Discuss any non-training issues with the appropriate department as part of your strategic training plan. For instance, Sherri discovered that many of her productivity problems resulted from changes in the requests from the home office trying to accommodate the recent acquisition of 20 sites. Everyone on her team was responding to various reporting needs without an understanding of how to complete and communicate the information needed.

The most important part of the training analysis is to establish a partnership with others focused on performance improvement. With this in mind, those who participate in the needs analysis and the strategic training process will know that this is a good investment of their valuable time.

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