Before designing a training programme, it helps to have a realistic picture of where your team currently stands. Getting this right avoids a common failure mode: a single group moving too fast for some employees and too slowly for others.
Self-assessment as a starting point
A short self-assessment questionnaire, asking employees to rate their own speaking, listening, reading and writing ability, is a useful and low-effort first step, even though self-assessment tends to be imprecise on its own.
A short conversational assessment
The most reliable method is a brief conversation with a native-speaking tutor, who can quickly gauge functional proficiency across speaking and listening in a way that’s hard to fake or misjudge.
Grouping by level, not just headcount
Once proficiency is understood across the team, groups can be built around similar starting points rather than simply by department or headcount. Where budgets allow, running two groups at different levels usually produces better outcomes than one mixed group.
Reassessing over time
Proficiency should be reassessed periodically through the programme, both to track progress for reporting purposes and to confirm employees remain correctly grouped as some progress faster than others.
See corporate Italian training for how we structure the needs assessment as part of programme setup.