The Right Survey Questions Can Make or Break Your Training Program

When organizations realize employees are struggling with a process, product, system, or specific responsibility, one of the first solutions that often comes to mind is training. Someone identifies a problem, a manager asks for a course, and the learning team is expected to start building. But before we open Storyline, Rise, Canva, or whatever tool we're using to create the learning experience, there is a much more important step that needs to happen first: we need to understand what people actually need to learn.

This is where a training needs assessment becomes so important. A well-designed training needs assessment can help an organization understand where the actual gaps are, what employees are struggling with, what they already know, and what is preventing them from performing successfully. More importantly, it can help determine whether training is even the right solution. Not every performance problem is a learning problem, and creating a course for something that training cannot fix is a waste of time and resources. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also emphasizes determining whether a problem is actually related to knowledge or skills before moving forward with training. CDC training needs assessment guidance

From an instructional design perspective, this is one of the areas where I think we can provide the most value to an organization. Our job isn't simply to take a request for training and turn it into a course. Our job is to understand the problem behind the request, determine what learners need to be able to do, and then design an experience that actually supports that outcome. A good survey can be one of the first tools we use to gather that information.

Start With the Problem, Not the Training

One of the biggest mistakes businesses can make when creating a training survey is asking employees what training they want before understanding what problem the organization is trying to solve. If you ask someone, "What training do you need?" you're probably going to get a long list of answers. People may request additional product training, communication training, software training, leadership training, or more resources. That information can be helpful, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what is actually causing the performance issue.

Instead, start by asking questions that help uncover the business problem. What is currently preventing employees from performing their jobs effectively? Which tasks are creating the most difficulty? Where are employees making mistakes? What processes are taking longer than they should? What customer issues are occurring repeatedly? What would you like employees to be able to do differently after the learning experience?

Those questions change the conversation. Instead of simply collecting training requests, you're beginning to understand the performance gap. That distinction matters because the solution may not be another course. It could be better documentation, a process change, improved technology, a job aid, manager coaching, additional resources, or a combination of several solutions.

Find Out What Employees Actually Know

Once you understand the problem, the next step is determining what your learners already know and where the actual knowledge or skill gaps exist. This is where your survey questions need to become more specific.

Rather than asking employees whether they feel confident in their jobs overall, ask them about specific responsibilities. For example, you might ask how confident they are in completing the customer onboarding process independently, using a particular system, explaining a product feature to a customer, handling a specific type of customer interaction, or following a particular company process.

This gives you much more useful information because you're connecting confidence to an actual behavior or responsibility. You can then follow up by asking which part of the process is most difficult, which steps require assistance, or which tasks employees don't feel comfortable completing independently. When you begin seeing the same challenges repeated across responses, you have much stronger information to work with when developing your learning objectives and curriculum.

Ask Where People Get Stuck

I also think some of the most valuable information comes from asking employees where they get stuck. Employees are often able to tell you exactly where a process breaks down, but organizations don't always ask the question. Ask what part of a task is the most frustrating. Ask what information they have to look up repeatedly. Ask what questions they find themselves asking coworkers or managers. Ask what part of a process is unclear. Ask what resources they currently use when they need help and what they wish those resources provided.

These questions can uncover problems that wouldn't necessarily show up in a traditional knowledge assessment. An employee may understand exactly what they are supposed to do but have difficulty finding the information they need to complete the task. Another employee may understand the process but struggle with the technology used to complete it. Someone else may have received training but never had an opportunity to practice the skill.

Those are very different problems, and they require very different solutions.

Don't Forget to Ask About the Learner Experience

Once you understand the performance gap, you can begin looking at how people currently experience learning and support within the organization. This is where questions about delivery methods, accessibility, time, and learning resources become useful.

Ask employees how they currently prefer to access information when they need help. Do they search a knowledge base? Watch a short video? Ask their manager? Talk to a coworker? Look through documentation? Take a formal course? You can also ask how much time they realistically have available for training and whether they typically have the opportunity to complete learning away from their normal responsibilities.

This information can help determine whether a traditional course is actually the best answer. If employees need information while they're performing a task, a searchable resource or performance support tool may be much more effective than asking them to remember information from a course they completed three months earlier.

That is one of the reasons I don't believe instructional design should be limited to course development. Sometimes the best learning experience isn't a course at all.

Managers Need to Be Part of the Conversation

I would also recommend collecting information from managers rather than relying exclusively on employee surveys. Managers often see performance issues from a completely different perspective because they are observing employees in their day-to-day work.

Ask managers which behaviors are falling short of expectations, which tasks require the most coaching, what mistakes they see repeatedly, and which employees or teams are performing particularly well. Ask them what high performers are doing differently and what they believe is preventing other employees from reaching that level.

One of the most important questions you can ask a manager is what they expect to see change after training. If a manager says they want better customer service, what does "better customer service" actually look like? If they want employees to become more proficient with a system, which behaviors should change? If they want new managers to become better leaders, what specific leadership behaviors should they demonstrate?

The more specific we can get, the easier it becomes to design meaningful learning objectives and measure whether the program actually worked.

Your Subject Matter Experts Have Valuable Information Too

Subject matter experts are another important source of information, but I think it's important to approach SME conversations strategically. SMEs know their subject extremely well, which is exactly why we need them. At the same time, that expertise can sometimes make it difficult to determine what a new learner actually needs to know versus what would simply be nice to know.

Instead of asking an SME to tell you everything that should go into the course, ask them which tasks are most important, which mistakes have the greatest impact, what information is frequently misunderstood, and what decisions learners need to be able to make independently.

You can also ask which skills require actual practice and which information can simply be referenced when needed. That question alone can help prevent courses from becoming overloaded with information that doesn't need to be memorized.

The goal isn't to put everything we know into a course. The goal is to give learners what they need to perform successfully.

Ask Questions That Lead to Better Learning Design

This is where I think survey design becomes particularly important. The questions we ask should ultimately help us make decisions about the learning experience.

For example, instead of simply asking employees which format they prefer, ask what type of support would help them perform a particular task more effectively. If they say they need examples, you might incorporate scenarios into the course. If they say they need opportunities to practice, you might build simulations or hands-on activities. If they need quick answers while working, you may want to create performance support instead of adding more content to an eLearning course.

This approach gives you information you can actually use. You're not collecting survey responses simply because you can. You're collecting information that informs your instructional design strategy.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask Open-Ended Questions

I like using a combination of rating-scale questions and open-ended questions when developing a training needs assessment. Rating scales make it easier to identify patterns across a larger group, while open-ended questions give employees an opportunity to tell you something you may not have thought to ask.

Some of the most valuable responses can come from questions such as, "What is one thing you wish you had known when you started this role?" or "What is the most frustrating part of this process?" You can also ask what employees would change about the current training or resources, what question they wish the organization answered more clearly, or whether there is anything else they think the learning team should understand before designing the training.

I wouldn't make every question open-ended because that can quickly turn a survey into homework. The goal is to make it easy for people to provide useful information while still giving them opportunities to explain what they're experiencing.

The Most Important Question May Be About Success

One of the questions I think organizations should ask much more often is simply: What does success look like?

Before building a course, we should know what we expect learners to do differently after completing it. What behavior should change? What should employees be able to do independently? What should managers see differently? What business metric should improve? What should success look like 30, 60, or 90 days after the training?

Those answers can influence everything from learning objectives to course structure to assessments and evaluation. They also help move the conversation away from completion rates and toward actual performance.

Completing a course doesn't necessarily mean someone learned something. Passing a quiz doesn't necessarily mean someone can apply the skill in their job. And having a high course completion rate doesn't automatically mean the organization solved the original business problem.

The real question is whether the learning experience helped people perform differently.

Don't Create a Survey Just to Collect Data

There is also a temptation to make training surveys much longer than they need to be. More questions don't automatically mean better information. In fact, a long survey can lead to survey fatigue, rushed responses, and lower completion rates.

Before adding a question, I like to ask myself what I am actually going to do with the answer. Will it change the learning objectives? Will it affect the course design? Will it help determine the delivery method? Will it identify a performance barrier? Will it help us measure success? If the answer is no, the question probably doesn't need to be there.

A good training needs assessment survey should be intentional. Every question should have a reason for being included.

Look at the Data Beyond the Survey

While surveys can provide an incredible amount of information, I wouldn't recommend using survey results as your only source of information when developing a training program. Surveys tell you what people are saying, but other data can help you understand what is actually happening.

Look at performance metrics, customer feedback, support tickets, quality scores, productivity data, assessment results, course completion data, and other information available to your organization. Talk with managers and subject matter experts. When possible, observe employees performing the task.

When you combine those sources of information, you start getting a much clearer picture of the actual performance gap. That's when instructional design becomes much more strategic because you're no longer designing based on assumptions or whoever happened to request training first.

The Right Questions Lead to Better Training

At the end of the day, a training needs assessment isn't about creating the longest survey or collecting the most responses. It's about asking the right questions before investing time and money into a learning solution

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The right questions can tell you what employees already know, where they're struggling, what resources they're missing, what managers are seeing, what the business needs to improve, and what success should actually look like. They can also tell you when training isn't the answer—and I think that's just as valuable.

For businesses, this approach can mean fewer unnecessary courses, more relevant learning experiences, better use of employee time, and a stronger connection between learning and business performance. For instructional designers and L&D professionals, it gives us the information we need to move beyond simply creating content and start solving the actual problem.

That is ultimately what good learning experience design should do.

We shouldn't start with, "What course should we build?"

We should start with, "What problem are we trying to solve, who is experiencing it, and what do they need to be able to do differently?"

Once you have those answers, the course—or whatever learning solution makes the most sense—becomes much easier to design.

The better the questions, the better the information. The better the information, the better the learning solution. And when the learning solution is connected to the actual needs of the business, that's when training can create measurable value.

If your organization needs help identifying learning gaps, developing a training needs assessment, designing employee training, or turning learner and customer feedback into a more effective learning strategy, that's where LearningIQ Studio can help. The goal isn't simply to create another course. It's to create the right learning experience for the problem you're actually trying to solve.