As organizations strive to improve employee competency and organizational performance, they encounter a number of internal and external factors that influence training and development.Internal factors

As organizations strive to improve employee competency and organizational performance, they encounter a number of internal and external factors that influence training and development.

Internal factors that influence training include staffing levels, internal candidate pools, organizational culture and design, workflow processes, and employee satisfaction and engagement levels. Each of these factors can have a significant influence on how well employees perform their jobs. Consequently, managers may easily change internal factors because they can create conditions that encourage excellence and support success.

Training is also influenced by the external environment that includes factors such as population and workforce demographics, customer demographics and expectations, partners and suppliers, the political environment, and budget appropriations. While training can be employed to change internal factors, training does not influence external factors, because these factors are outside the organization’s direct control.

One way of assessing internal and external factors is through needs assessment (or analysis). Many organizations have traditionally used the ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate) model of instructional design as part of the training design process.