Change the work environment
If time, tools or unclear procedures are the main barrier, assign an owner to address those first or alongside learning.
Free worksheet for training leads
Does your staff need training, or something else?
Use these questions with a supervisor and a frontline staff member before choosing a course. You can print this page or copy the prompts into your own planning document.
Keep names and private details about people your staff support out of your notes.
1. Describe the work
Who is involved? Name the staff roles, setting, and approximate number of learners. Who decides on training and who will support staff afterward?
What should happen? Describe one observable task staff should be able to carry out, within their roles and the people’s existing support plans. What happens now? Where does that difference show up?
What evidence do you have? Ask staff and supervisors, review existing records without identifying individuals, and distinguish what you observed from what you suspect.
2. Ask what is getting in the way
Check more than knowledge. Do staff have the time, clear instructions, appropriate tools, supervision, and access to the person’s current plan? Would a schedule, policy, staffing, or equipment change help? Identify who can address each barrier.
If staff need new knowledge or practice, training may be part of the answer. If they already know what to do but lack the time or tools, fix that barrier too.
3. Set a useful learning goal
Complete this sentence: “After training, [staff role] can [observable task] in [setting], following the person’s plan and our procedures.” Ask a supervisor and a staff member whether the goal fits their actual work.
Note your staff’s schedule, language, device and accessibility needs. Check any requirements with your state, funder or credentialing body before choosing a course.
4. Decide how you will know
Choose one way to check the task before and after learning, such as a supervisor reviewing a de-identified practice example with the staff member. Agree who will check it and when. Ask staff what helped and what still gets in their way.
A course completion record alone does not show that a skill is being used at work. Follow your organization’s privacy and supervision procedures.
5. Choose the next step
Next: prepare a quote request or plan how staff will use training.
Choosing between courses? Use our staff training comparison guide.
Compare training
Check the course’s audience, examples, access and limits against your goal. Involve the people who will use it.
For staff supporting autistic children, our free team evaluation kit offers questions for discussing fit. The course it describes draws largely from work with young children in classrooms and homes; it does not cover adult services, crisis intervention, restraint or trauma-informed care, and does not meet state-mandated training. Ask us to confirm group trial access.
Want to talk through a staff learning need? Email our team with your setting, staff roles and the task you want to improve. Please leave out names and private health information.
Sources
This worksheet adapts the needs-assessment steps in CDC’s training needs guidance and OPM’s planning and evaluation guidance.