Case Study

Needs Assessment at NetApp, USA

Network Appliances (NetApp) creates innovative storage and data management solutions that help customers accelerate business breakthroughs and achieve outstanding cost efficiencies. NetApp is one of the fastest-growing storage and data management providers, with over 8,000 employees in 130 offices around the world. NetApp was rated among the top 15 best workplaces in Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" annual report and has been on the list for six consecutive years. NetApp is known for several of its training and development programs, including its "Training on All Special Things" (TOAST), a new-hire orientation program with top-level NetApp executives and NetApp University. Because of company's growth, NetApp needed to develop recently hired support engineers in order to provide world-class services. Existing training programs were inadequate; NetApp needed training that would cover troubleshooting skills for all aspects of support, including process, systems, operations, and soft skills. These skills were needed to ensure that NetApp's newly hired support engineers would be competent in meeting demands for NetApp's services.

To conduct a needs assessment, NetApp asked its best performers to participate in focus groups. The focus groups were asked to consider what types of support engineers needed to know to perform their jobs. From the focus groups, more than 1,400 tasks were identified. The tasks were ranked according to difficulty, frequency, and importance. Five hundred tasks were identified as being critical for support engineers to perform within their first year on the job. To address these tasks, a new-hire training program was developed. It includes self-paced e-learning, hands-on work in the classroom, and cases based on the company's computerized support system or initiated by customers on the Web.

Answer following questions:

1.Clearly define the issues stated in the above case

2.Analyze training need assessment and development a suitable training program based on need assessment.