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Find the real skills gaps before you plan training
Get a short needs survey, a manager interview guide and a simple way to rank what your people most need to learn.
When to use it
Before you plan a new programme or yearly training calendar
Step by step
Note what you already know
Jot down the team or role, the business goals for the year and any complaints or mistakes you keep hearing about. A few bullet points is enough.
Ask for a survey and interview guide
Open ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and paste this prompt with your notes.
Prompt to copyI'm a workplace trainer planning training for [team or role, number of people]. Business goals this year: [goals]. Problems I keep hearing about: [problems]. Please create: 1) a staff survey of no more than 12 questions mixing rating scales and two open questions, covering confidence in key tasks, what slows them down and how they prefer to learn; 2) a 6-question interview guide for their managers; 3) a 5-question guide for a short focus group. Keep the wording neutral so people answer honestly. Finish with a simple scoring method I can use to rank skills gaps by how important and how widespread they are.Build the survey in Google Forms
Copy the questions into a new Google Form and link it to a Google Sheet so the answers land in one place. Tell people it's anonymous if it is.
Rank the gaps
When responses are in, paste the anonymised answers and your manager notes back into the same chat and ask it to apply the scoring method and list the top five gaps with the evidence for each.
What you get
Top gaps: 1) Handling difficult customer calls - 68% low confidence, raised by 4 of 5 managers. 2) Using the new booking system - frequent errors noted. 3) Giving feedback to peers. Preferred format: short, hands-on sessions under 90 minutes.
Tips
- Remove names and anything that identifies a person before pasting answers into an AI assistant, and check your workplace AI policy.
- Ask managers for one recent real example of each problem; it makes the training far more relevant.