For any organisation, large or small, success or failure depends upon the skills of the employees. Employee skills need to be established, developed, nurtured and expanded upon to meet the changing needs of both the organisation and its customers. This principle is one of the foundation stones upon which the entire profession of human resource management (HRM or just HR) is built. All too often, business and organisational funding for the development of employee skills is a poor cousin to capital purchases or purchase and maintenance of machinery or inventory. As a result, HR, training or staff development managers have had to become more selective and targeted in their approach to directing resources for the training of employees.

For organisations to accurately direct resources to achieve their functional outcomes— whether that is to have suitably qualified staff to use new equipment, or supervisors skilled in project management—they must understand exactly what the requirement is in terms of training. To achieve this, we employ a fundamental analysis tool to determine where these training resources are needed. We undertake a form of gap analysis, known as the training needs analysis or TNA.