Speaker 1: You've heard of training and you've heard of learning, but do you know what they mean and what's the difference? Let's find out together. While many professionals may use the terms interchangeably, they are in fact different. Training is knowledge transfer in a classroom setting, although it can be both online and offline. And it usually involves two parties, a trainer, a lecturer or any subject matter experts and a trainee or a group of trainees. Learning, on the other hand, is knowledge transfer in any setting. It is a process of acquiring new knowledge and behaviors as a result of practice, study or experience. Learning can happen in a range of ways and doesn't have to involve other people. We learn when we read books and articles, listen to podcasts, watch someone else do a task, get coached or mentored, prepare and work on a personal development plan, or even when just talking to colleagues or friends. Practically, this means that training is a form of learning, but it's not the only one. So why limit your needs assessment to only training? A training needs analysis can help you establish who needs training and what kind of training they need. However, doing a learning needs analysis helps you understand what are the goals of the organization and what performance improvement is needed to reach those objectives. It will tell you what particular knowledge, skills and behaviors the organization requires and how people learn best. It gives us a big picture overview of the learning, and yes, some of these needs would be met with a training, but majority won't. Let's say there is an organization-wide need for learning how to give effective feedback. If you only focus on training needs, you will discover how many people want to attend, what to include in the session, and maybe even some examples of good and bad practices within the company that should help you design a training session. But if you focus on the learning needs, you may discover that the issue isn't lack of knowledge on how to give feedback, but lack of appropriate culture within the organization. Perhaps managers don't encourage their people to give regular feedback, or it's not seen as a learning opportunity by employees. You see, these discoveries would require very different approaches. For example, instead of trainings, you would consider culture-building initiatives. Learning encompasses so much more. It touches upon the personal, team, and organizational development processes. Training needs analysis is important, but you would get a much better understanding of the organization and its functions if instead you focus on a learning needs analysis. To learn more about learning needs assessment or how to perform it in your organization, head over to the L&D Academy. We offer a lot of free resources to help learning and development practitioners with their day-to-day responsibilities. And if you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe for more content like this.