Identifying Barriers to the optimal implementation of educational needs assessment in National Gas Company of Iran and providing solutions for its improvement

Considering the increasing importance and role of educational needs assessment as the first step in the process of optimal training of employees and lack of attention to the comprehensive identification of Barriers to this value-creating process, in the present study, an attempt was made to use a qualitative approach, while deeply analyzing this phenomenon, to identify the Barriers of the educational needs assessment process in The National Gas Company of Iran is identified and solutions for its improvement are suggested. For this purpose, the method of focus groups was used. The field of research was National Gas Company of Iran and the participants were selected fropm among the employees of the training and equipping unit of human resources using the Purposive sampling method. Data collection was done using the focal interview technique and the data saturation level was reached in the fourth focal interview (including 20 people). Data analysis using the theme analysis method resulted in the identification of 207 conceptual propositions, 19 basic themes and 4 main themes. The main themes include individual Barriers, organizational Barriers, managerial Barriers and environmental Barriers. According to the findings of the research, it is necessary to pay attention to the identified Barriers in order to optimally implement the educational needs assessment process in the National Gas Company of Iran; Therefore, at the end, solutions were presented in order to reduce the impact of obstacles on the optimal implementation of the educational needs assessment process and its improvement.