You are the manager of Training and Development at a large furniture manufacturing plant that employs 500 non-unionized employees. Job titles span many departments such as specialized production workers, maintenance, caretakers, design teams, and administrators.

The company does not currently undergo a formal training needs analysis process on Health & Safety in the Workplace. Managers of each department decide what skills may be lacking amongst their workers and submit their training needs to the HR Training and Development department during a designated two-week period each year during budget planning season. Normally requests have been reasonable and there has been enough room in the budget to honour most requests. However due to major cutbacks, your training budget has been significantly decreased for the upcoming year. As well, you tend to receive requests from the same departments each year and not hear from other large areas of the company. Therefore you are thinking of being more strategic and instituting a formal training needs analysis process.

Respond to questions 1, 2 and 3 below. Be sure to provide rationale (quotes/references) for your answers based on the module learning.

1. What are the benefits to conducting a formal training needs analysis in the context of this case study and how may it help address the issues described above?
2. What steps would you take to carry out a training needs analysis at this company? Please apply the Needs Analysis Process model found in your readings to the case study and explain what information you may gain at each step. Make sure to personalize each step to the context of the above case study.
3. What barriers might your foresee while attempting to conduct a formal Health & Safety training needs analysis at this company and how may you go about mitigating these barriers?