Understanding your training audience may be the best thing you can do as an instructional designer. Yet, many of us have never been taught how to conduct a training needs analysis.

On this episode of Learning for Good, I am talking about what you should be learning about your audience. What do you actually need to know? Tune in to find out.

▶️ If You've Never Conducted a Training Needs Analysis, Listen to This

▶️ Key Points:

02:11 Understanding your training audience to intentionally design for behavior change

04:35 Five things to learn about your training audience

Designing training without truly knowing your audience is like prescribing a medication without understanding the symptoms and diagnosing the condition.

In this episode of Learning for Good, host Heather Burright unpacks five essential things instructional designers and nonprofit leaders must understand about their learners in order to drive meaningful change.

Combined with episode 128 - Three Ways to Identify Training Needs - this is your blueprint for a training needs analysis.

It’s the process we use with each of our clients.

And today, we are sharing it with you.

Why Conduct a Training Needs Analysis

Nonprofit talent development host explains behavior change is complex because it's driven by knowledge, motivation, skills, environment, and habits. A training needs analysis can help you uncover those things.

When staff training doesn’t stick, it’s often not because the content was wrong, but because the strategy didn’t account for the real needs and contexts of the learners.

Awareness, motivation, environment, and support systems all influence whether people follow through—even when the change seems simple.

It’s important to identify what our training audience needs so we can determine if training is the right solution.

Five Things to Learn about Your Training Audience

On the episode 128 of Learning for Good, Heather shared three ways to learn about your training audience - SME interviews, audience input, and document review.

Now, let’s shift our focus to WHAT we need to learn.

To create a training experience that changes behavior and delivers results, Heather recommends exploring five key areas:

Knowledge
What does your audience already know? Are they even aware there’s a problem? Without this clarity, you risk either overwhelming or under-informing them.
Motivation
Why should they care? What would make them act now, not later? If urgency is missing, your training won’t create change.
Barriers to Change
What could get in the way of adoption? Lack of time, fear, or past experiences could all become roadblocks.
Skill Gaps
Is there a true capability issue, or is it something else? Not all problems are solved with more information—sometimes, practice and coaching are key.
Environmental Context
What does their day-to-day look like? If your solution doesn’t fit into their workflow or isn’t relevant, it won’t create change.

Re-Thinking Training as the Solution

Not every problem should be solved with training. Sometimes a simple prompt is all it takes. When you understand the nuances of your audience, you can choose interventions that are both effective and efficient. You can create interventions that actually create change.

This perspective is especially valuable for nonprofits looking to scale behavior change without draining their resources. Whether you’re onboarding new staff or rolling out a new initiative, designing with behavior in mind saves time, money, and energy, and it increases your odds of long-term success.

To learn more about identifying training audience needs, tune into episode 129 of the Learning for Good podcast.

Additional Resources Just for You

Other Helpful Podcast Episodes:

Three Ways to Identify Training Audience Needs

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