Reporting research: the training and development needs of staff.

Abstract

The development of staff is of critical importance to the success of any business and arguably even more so where the staff are required to engage with the general public in focused and positive experiential encounters. Over the last thirty years or so, numerous studies have focused upon the training needs of staff engaged in interpretation both in terms of their personal and professional development as well as their broader on-site roles. These developmental needs have often been assessed through some form of training needs analysis and a recent article offers an interesting insight into this activity in relation to the needs of staff working within the National Park Service (NPS) in the United States. The article written by Powell, Depper and Wright (2017) in focusing upon the developmental needs of these staff also assessed the actual importance of each of the skills identified thus creating an interesting measure of discrepancy between the skills needed and each skill’s importance to the staff member’s actual role. It is suggested that the results of this study which are briefly outlined here could be used to guide and inform the broader assessment of staff needs in other organisations as well as potentially the assessment of the ‘efficacy of any training’ offered (Yamada & Skibins (2019:86).