The company's size and the sector of industry in which it is active influence the process of expression and definition of the learning demand. In a smaller organization, for example, the activity that takes place prior to training tends to be limited to informal diagnoses and summary decisions by management. The demand tends to be analysed on a rather spontaneous basis, without an organized approach except, for example, where an annual training day is organized, and often this task is then entrusted to an outside consultant. In small businesses, it is not easy to separate or distinguish staff hiring and supervision practices from the execution and management of ALT.
The learning demand in an organization consists of both the requirements or needs of the organization and, on the other hand, the aspirations and constraints of individuals. In short, the learning demand is always a social demand that grows out of a more or less structured mediation between these two components: the production requirement of the organization and the expectations of individuals. External factors also influence the way in which the upstream activities of ALT are organized in companies. These factors, which are certainly always decisive, vary with the economic sector involved and result in different ways of diagnosing and programming ALT activities.
The learning and training demand originates in firms' changing needs and requirements. In the case of retail businesses, for example, the stiff competition experienced by some specialized companies leads to an important change in the role of employees, from that of salesperson to that of adviser, and this allows the organization in question, as a result of improved relations with the customer, to gain a comparative advantage from this change. This upgrading of tasks and increased independence of functions lead these businesses not only to diagnose their needs in new ways but also to plan the education and training to be provided in different ways. Training of a salesperson then becomes strategic; it contributes to an increase in the company's productivity.
The situation is completely different in other less specialized and higher-volume retail businesses. The lowest level of qualification for salespersons, staff turnover, more tenuous communication between salesperson and customer and the volume of customers to be served lead to more limited learning demand and, as a result, tend to limit the necessity for a more sustained diagnosis of needs and for planning of ALT that will be given fairly quickly by peers when a person is hired.
External pressure from regulatory agencies also plays a role in the demand for training of operators. Thus, the quality standards imposed from outside are decisive in defining training needs. In food-processing companies and, even more markedly, in the biopharmaceutical sector, quality requirements, the need for strict observation of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) — a prerequisite for these companies to obtain and maintain their certification and thus their licences to export their products — have profoundly changed the nature of, and are constantly changing the demand for, training of operators and the staff who supervise them.