What is a training needs analysis (TNA)?

A training needs analysis (TNA) is a structured review that identifies the gap between the skills and knowledge people have and the ones their roles require. It also checks whether training is the right way to close that gap before a team builds any course.

Reviewed by Clark Quinn, Chief Learning Strategist Updated October 28, 2026

Example

A regional sales director asks L&D for negotiation training because deal margins are slipping. Before building anything, the L&D team runs a training needs analysis. They interview six sales managers, review a sample of discounted and lost deals in the CRM, and survey the reps about where negotiations go wrong.

The findings are mixed. Newer reps do lack negotiation skills, and a short course would help them. Most of the margin loss, though, comes from an approval process that lets any rep give a discount without sign-off. The TNA recommends targeted training for reps in their first year and a change to the discount approval rules for everyone else. A company-wide negotiation course would have cost more and missed the main cause.

How it works

A TNA answers three questions: what performance the business needs, what performance exists now, and why the gap exists. Only gaps caused by missing skills or knowledge are training needs. Gaps caused by unclear processes, poor tools, lack of time or the wrong incentives need a different fix, and a TNA should say so. In the ADDIE model, the TNA is the main output of the Analysis phase.

The three levels of analysis

• Organizational analysis: looks at business goals, strategy and upcoming change, such as new products, systems or regulations, to find where skills will matter most.
• Task analysis: breaks a role into its tasks and lists the knowledge and skills each task requires. It is also called job or operational analysis.
• Individual analysis: compares the current capability of each person or group with what the role requires.

Data sources

A reliable TNA draws on more than one source:

• Interviews and focus groups with managers, high performers and subject matter experts.
• Surveys and self-assessments.
• Observation of people doing the work.
• Performance data, such as quality and error reports, customer complaints, incident logs and sales figures.
• Existing records, such as competency frameworks, performance reviews, assessment results and LMS data.

Training need or something else

The hardest part of a TNA is separating skill gaps from everything else. A useful test is to ask whether the person could do the task correctly if their job depended on it. If they could, the problem is probably not knowledge. Common non-training causes include:

• Unclear or conflicting processes.
• Tools or systems that make the right action slow or awkward.
• Missing information at the moment of the task.
• Incentives or targets that reward a different behavior.

What a TNA produces

A TNA report usually lists the gaps found, who has each gap, the likely cause, the recommended solution (training or something else), the priority, and the measures that will show whether the gap has closed. The training gaps feed straight into the learning objectives for the courses that follow.

How to run a training needs analysis

1. Start from a business problem or goal, not from a course request.
2. Define the target performance in observable terms.
3. Collect data on current performance from at least two different sources.
4. Find the root cause of each gap.
5. Separate training needs from problems that training cannot fix.
6. Prioritize by business impact and by how many people are affected.
7. Agree on how you will measure the result, for example with the Kirkpatrick model.

Common mistakes

• Relying only on self-assessment surveys, which show what people would like to learn more than what they need.
• Treating every performance gap as a training need.
• Running the analysis once and never updating it as roles and systems change.
• Writing a long report that nobody turns into decisions.

Why it matters for L&D teams

• Budget goes where it helps. Training spend targets the gaps that affect business results.
• Fewer unnecessary courses. Problems that training cannot fix get routed to the right owner instead of becoming another module.
• Better design input. Each confirmed gap becomes an objective and a measure, which makes the course easier to design and evaluate.
• Credibility with stakeholders. A recommendation backed by data makes it easier to redirect or decline a request.