The objective of any workforce development intervention is to improve the performance of the individual, the workflow process, or the organization as a whole. Diversity, the state of being different, has received a lot of attention in workplace related discussions. The purpose of this article is not to extol the virtues associated with developing a diverse workplace. Neither is it to describe the legalities associated with workplace diversity. These topics have been explored and described at great length. The objective here is to describe the actual performance improvement resulting from a carefully designed and conducted analysis prior to the implementation of any performance improvement effort.
In order to arrive at this particular point in time, let’s assume that we have conducted the up-front performance analysis and have determined the there exists a gap between the desired performance of the individual (or more likely a group of individuals) and their actual performance. One intervention that is designed to specifically address the performance of the workforce is training.
Mager and Pipe (1984) describe a process that has been used for decades to determine if a training solution is the correct intervention for a performance problem. An outline of this process is included as Figure 1.