Question

1. Make a list of interview questions that you would include as part of a needs assessment for an organization with which you are familiar. This could be your current workplace or another workplace you know of.

Whom would you interview or survey for your needs assessment? Would there be any obstacles to conducting a needs assessment in your organization? How might those be overcome?

Answer 1

Needs assessment is the process of assessing the gaps between the organisation’s vision and its current state. Needs assessment help in prioritising the tasks, making organisational improvements and to allocate proper resources.

All the existing stakeholders can be interviewed for needs assessment.

The employees, stockholders and in some cases, customers can also be contacted to know the gaps in the organisation.

Identification of the gaps is the first stage in needs assessment. The interview questions should be such that all the stakeholders must put forward their opinions about the aspects where the organisation lacks.

The next step in the process is Data gathering and analysis. The interview with the employees should help the needs assessment team to gather all the required information to fill the gaps and analyse the issues that the organisation lacks.

The other most important interview questions are:

• To assess the strengths and weakness of the organisation.
• To asses the opportunities and threats.
• What can you do to fill the gaps in the organisation?
• By assessing the needs, how would you take the organisation to next level?

In most of the organisations there would not be any obstacles in conducting an interview for needs assessment. But, some organisation may restrict to interview the employees for needs assessment. These type of situations can be overcome by motivating the management to encourage brainstorming of the employees and by helping the employees in collecting the primary and secondary data to assess the needs.