Training Needs Analysis Template

Training needs analysis template

This training needs analysis template helps HR professionals, learning and development teams, managers, and business leaders identify performance gaps and determine whether training is the right solution. It covers key areas such as performance symptoms, possible root causes, evidence gathering, confirmed gaps, follow-up checks, next steps, and business impact.

Use this template to document performance issues, evaluate skills and knowledge gaps, rule out non-training causes, collect supporting evidence, define recommended actions, and measure results. It provides a clear visual workflow for making evidence-based training decisions and aligning employee development initiatives with organizational goals.

Red = ruled out Green = confirmed Blue = testing

Training Needs Analysis

Start at Performance Symptom and work right. Each branch tests one possible cause before any training gets recommended.

Business Impact

What does it cost to leave this unresolved? Use this to justify urgency, not to pad the case — pick what's actually true.

Cost of inaction

Risk or compliance

Customer impact

Quality impact

Productivity impact

Next Steps

Route to whoever actually owns the fix — this is very often not L&D.
Share this with diagram them as a guest editor so they can review the evidence and fill in Approval themselves.

Hand off: process owner

Hand off: training rollout

Hand off: skills matrix

Approval

Date:

Approved by:

Follow-up Check

Set the re-check date now, while the original numbers are fresh. If Status comes back Recurred, reopen Possible Root Causes — don't start a new training request from scratch.

Status

Resolved / Recurred / Inconclusive

Actual result

Expected result if fix worked

Original metric, re-measured

Re-check date

Confirmed Gap

Only fill this in once a root cause is Confirmed. If more than one cause is confirmed, mark each as Primary or Contributing — real cases are rarely one clean cause.

Evidence summary

High urgency

Scope: who / how many

Contributing factor

Gap description

Evidence Gathering

Confidence:

Note how the evidence was gathered and how many people or instances it covers — 'one manager mentioned it' and 'shadowed 6 of 9 reps' shouldn't carry the same weight.

Documentation review

Data pulled

Shadowed observation

Interviews

Possible Root Causes

List every plausible explanation, not just the one that got mentioned loudest. Most performance problems have three to five candidate causes — training is usually the right answer for only one or two.

Low Motivation / No Consequence

Confirm if the person can do it, knows how, but has no reason to — usually a management or incentive fix, not training.

Unrealistic Workload

Confirm if volume or headcount, not skill, is driving the symptom — usually an ops or staffing fix, not L&D's.

Add status

Missing Tools or Access

Confirm if the person has the skill but not the system/permission/resource to use it.

Still testing

Unclear Process

Confirm if the steps themselves are missing, contradictory, or undocumented — not a training issue, route to the process owner.

Ruled out

Skill or Knowledge Gap

Confirm only if evidence shows the person genuinely doesn't know how, not that they know how but aren't doing it.

Evidence

Confirmed

Performance Symptom

This is the level of analysis:

Same symptom, different scale — name which one this is before you branch into causes.

Source

Attach the actual file or link here— the survey export, ticket log, or exit interview notes. The evidence should be one click away, not a separate document someone has to go find.

Compliance deadline

Exit interview

Support tickets

Survey

Manager feedback

Who flagged it

Date noticed

Example: Sales manager

What was observed

Example: slow onboarding