Questions to Ask Employees About Training
Questions for managers and learning leads running a training needs assessment or reviewing a programme that has already happened, covering skill gaps, what people had to work out alone, what blocked them from applying a course, and where the budget should go next.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What parts of your job did you have to work out on your own?
People answer this far more honestly than a direct question about training needs, which tends to produce a course catalogue answer. The gaps in your onboarding show up here first, usually in the same two or three places for everyone.
- 2
If someone new started Monday, what would you tell them that no document covers?
This surfaces the knowledge living in people's heads rather than in your systems. Whatever gets named repeatedly is either missing documentation or a training module you already need and have not built.
- 3
When you get stuck, who do you ask?
The answers map the informal support network, and one or two names will come up constantly. Those people are carrying an unpaid teaching load, which is worth recognising formally before they burn out or leave and take the knowledge with them.
- 4
What do you spend time on that you suspect has a faster method?
Tool and system gaps hide here, because people rarely report inefficiency they have already accepted. A short answer with a specific task attached is usually a half day of training that pays back within a month.
- 5
Think about the last course you did: what did you do differently afterwards?
Behaviour change is the only outcome worth measuring, and satisfaction scores do not predict it. If nobody on the team can name one concrete change, you have been buying content delivery rather than training.
- 6
What stopped you using what you learned?
The obstacle is almost never the course. It is a manager who prefers the old method, a system that will not allow it, a process that forbids it, or simply no slack in the week. Fixing that is usually cheaper than buying better training.
- 7
Would you recommend that training to a colleague, and which colleague?
The second half does the work. A course that is right for a new hire and wasted on a five year veteran is not a bad course, it is a targeting problem, and this question tells you where it actually lands.
- 8
What training have you done that you will never use?
Compliance modules and generic courses accumulate quietly, and nobody is incentivised to report the waste. Naming them frees budget and time, and it also tells you which programmes were bought for the organisation rather than the person.
- 9
How do you prefer to learn something new at work?
Self reported learning preferences are imperfect predictors of results, but they are a good predictor of what people will actually complete. Someone who will not finish a video course may sit with a colleague for two hours quite happily.
- 10
How much time a month can you realistically protect for this?
Ask for a number rather than a commitment to prioritising development. The gap between the number people give and the training you have planned is the single most common reason programmes go unfinished.
- 11
What happens when a training day is on your calendar?
Follow up on the previous question with the mechanics: coverage, client calls, a queue that builds up, guilt about a colleague absorbing the work. Whatever gets named is the thing you have to fix before any course will stick.
- 12
What are you being asked to do that you do not feel qualified for?
This needs enough safety to answer, and silence in response is a finding about the culture rather than about competence. Ask it one to one, never in a group, and never immediately before a performance review.
- 13
Which skills will this team need in two years that we do not have now?
People closest to the work see the change coming before the org chart does. Look for overlap between answers, since two or three people naming the same gap independently is a stronger signal than any external forecast.
- 14
What do you want to be able to do that this job has not given you a route to?
This is a retention question wearing a training question's clothes. The answer tells you whether someone is planning to grow inside the organisation or is quietly preparing to do it somewhere else.
- 15
Would you rather get better at this job, or be ready for a different one?
Both are legitimate, and confusing them wastes money. Development plans fail most often when a manager funds depth for someone who wanted breadth, and then reads the disengagement as ingratitude.
- 16
Who here is good at something the rest of us should learn?
This finds your internal teaching capacity for free, and the names are usually people who would never nominate themselves. It also gives you something specific and creditable to say about a colleague in the next review cycle.
- 17
If you had to teach one session, what would it be?
Teaching is a fast way to consolidate skill and a fair way to recognise it. The answer also reveals what someone believes they are good at, which occasionally differs from what their manager believes.
- 18
What would a genuinely useful training day look like to you?
Let people design it rather than rate what you have already chosen. Note the format details in the answers: length, group size, whether the trainer is internal, whether there is practice time. Those details are where the budget goes wrong.
- 19
How would we know a training programme had worked?
This hands the evaluation criteria to the people it affects, and their measures are usually more concrete than the ones in the proposal: fewer escalations, faster handovers, one less person to ask. Adopt them.
- 20
If we could only fund one thing this year, what should it be?
The constraint produces a ranking that open ended requests never do. Broad agreement across the team means the gap is real and shared. Wide scatter means the need is individual, and coaching will beat a group course.
Running a training needs conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Setting it up
Setting it up
Separate it from performance review
Anything asked in a review cycle gets answered strategically, because admitting a skill gap next to a rating decision is a bad trade for the employee. Hold these conversations at a different time of year and say so explicitly.
Ask individually before asking the group
In a room, the first two answers set the frame and everyone else calibrates to them. Short one to one conversations first, then a group session to prioritise what you already collected, gets you both range and buy in.
Ask managers the same questions separately
Managers and their reports frequently name different gaps for the same role. That divergence is itself the finding, and it usually points at expectations that were never made explicit rather than at a training need.
Say what will happen with the answers
People give thin answers when they suspect nothing follows. State the budget, the timeline, and the fact that some requests will be declined. Honesty about limits produces better information than an open ended promise.
Turning answers into a plan
Turning answers into a plan
- Sort requests into skills the job requires now, skills the job will require soon, and skills the person wants for their own path. Fund the first, plan the second, be honest about the third.
- Look for gaps named by three or more people. Those are process or documentation problems disguised as training requests, and a course will not fix them.
- Before buying anything external, check whether someone internal already does it well and would teach it.
- Attach every item to a change you would expect to see afterwards, and write that down before the training happens rather than after.
- Book the follow up conversation at the same time you book the course. Six weeks later is when you learn whether anything held.
Signs the training budget is being wasted
Signs the training budget is being wasted
- Attendance is high and nobody can name a change in how the work gets done.
- The same course is bought every year because it is on the calendar, not because anyone asked for it.
- People complete modules at speed in the last week of a compliance deadline.
- Managers approve training and then schedule over it.
- New hires report learning the job from one colleague who was never asked to be a trainer.
- Feedback forms ask whether the session was enjoyable and never ask what the person will do differently.