What Makes Training Really Work

12 Levers Of Transfer Effectiveness

Ina Weinbauer-Heidel, Masha Ibeschitz-Manderbach

• Publisher: tredition
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783748208297
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Carriera

Most seminars are useless – it's an open secret in HR circles. Less than 20 percent of what trainees supposedly learn is actually put into practice. Small wonder that training programs regularly fall victim to budget cuts. Summing up 100 years of transfer research, this book demonstrates that transfer success is manageable. The 12 levers of transfer effectiveness® represent the gist of scientific research for HR practitioners. Once familiar with them, you will know what determines transfer success and how to manage it. This book presents a conclusive framework based on a solid scientific foundation, along with more than 50 tools and interventions that HR developers, training providers and trainers can use to maximize the effectiveness of any training course or program. "A must-read for anyone who wants to make sure training investments will pay off." Robert O. Brinkerhoff "This book gives you the findings from a meticulous review of the transfer-of-training literature and turns these findings into practical steps, supported by wise advice on the truths and traps of transfer. After reading this book, you WILL want to make changes to your training courses, and the explanations from the research will give you the credibility you need to enlist others for help along the way." Paul Matthews

LEVERS FOR THE ORGANIZATION

The workplace can untrain people far more efficiently
than even the best training department can train people

(Brinkerhoff & Gill, 1994)

Lever 8
Opportunities for Application

Lever 9
Personal Transfer Capacity

Lever 10
Support from Supervisors

Lever 11
Support from Peers

Lever 12
Transfer Expectations in the Organization

In this section, you will learn

• Why immediate applications are crucial and how you can provide occasions for immediate application even in programs for high-potentials,

• How to best deal with transfer excuse number one: “We didn’t have the time”

• How you win over supervisors as transfer supporters,

• What Alcoholics Anonymous can teach us about transfer promotion,

• Whether your organization (unintentionally) signals that your transfer is completely irrelevant, and

• What you can do to set the levers of the organization to “transfer effective.”

LEVER 8 – OPPORTUNITIES FOR APPLICATION

TWO PRACTICAL EXAMPLES

Six months ago, Manuel and Katharina attended a training entitled “Persuasive Presentations.” Read what they have to say.

Manuel, 29, bank clerk

The “Persuasive Presentations” training has made an incredible difference for me. During the training, I had lots of ideas for surprising intros, for devising a dramaturgy with turning points, highlights, and just the right touch of emotion. The theory and the group’s real-life experiences really fueled my creative powers. And the exercises and video analyses helped me to stop shifting my weight from one leg to the other during presentations, so I now make a much more confident impression. I really am comfortable with my presentations now and enjoy sharing my expertise with clients.

Katharina, 28, bank clerk

The “Persuasive Presentations” training was really great. I can still remember that it is very important to convey not only convincing facts but also emotions. I had great ideas for surprising introductions, and I also practiced developing a presentation dramaturgy using a concrete example. We gave several presentations at the training and received feedback. In the end, I really managed to speak more slowly, which made me appear more confident and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any more presentations since the training. That’s still Manuel’s job, and I’m a bit jealous of that – but, oh well. I know we’ve practiced really great stuff, but of course I’ve forgotten a lot. If I had to give a presentation now, I’d probably wind up talking too fast, like before. But if I ever get to be responsible for presentations at the bank, I’d definitely attend such a training again.

What do you think of the responses? Is there anything you find absurd?

Both Manuel and Katharina have succeeded in learning new things at the presentation training. Both acquired new skills but, six months later, only one of them still has a mastery of those skills. In Manuel’s daily work, there is a regular need and plenty of opportunities for him to apply what he has learned. For Katharina, there are no such opportunities; so, after not having practiced her new skills for six months, she feels she’s forgotten a lot.

If we want transfer success – if we want trainees to apply their newly learned skills at work – they need to have opportunities for application. Trivial as this may sound, several studies have shown a lack of application opportunities to be the number-one transfer barrier.¹ Trainees report things like, “The training was awesome, but I wasn’t able to put things into practice because I’m not the person in charge of those things / because we don’t have the equipment / the money / the technology required / because I’d need tools that aren’t available at our company / because I can’t get sufficient information of the type I need / because the situations where I actually need to use what I’ve learned at the training are an exception rather than the rule.” In short, a variety of obstacles prevents people from applying what they have learned and practiced and, what’s more, leads to demotivation among previously highly committed trainees.

So, to make transfer possible it is essential to provide the necessary resources (such as the budget, material, technology, tools, information, responsibility, application settings, and so on). Executives play a key role here. Granted, creating application opportunities is not easy, sometimes even impossible. But if that is the case, it calls for critical scrutiny. Does the given training really make sense for these people at this particular time? The question is necessary not only for the sake of transfer effectiveness, but also and in particular because trainees deserve to have their learning commitment rewarded with success experiences gained in practical application.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR APPLICATION – EVERYDAY WORK IS FULL OF POSSIBILITIES

	Opportunities for application in a nutshell
Trainees say	“It’s possible for me to apply what I’ve learned to situations in my day-to-day work.”
Definition	Opportunities for application is the extent to which the necessary situations and resources for application are available in the workplace.
Guiding question	How can you ensure that participants have the opportunity, permission, or assignment and the necessary resources to apply what they have learned?

Thank goodness, no transfer

No possibility to apply new skills – no transfer. Sounds logical, almost trivial, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s not that simple in practice, as it’s seldom a matter of opportunities being either “available” or “not available.” One example is junior leadership programs, where application opportunities are likely to exist but are not available immediately. Or think of pilots training for emergency situations – those are application scenarios we all hope will never materialize. Or consider a comprehensive training for new employees. Often, they will be introduced to lots of business processes they will never need in their daily work, or at least not in depth – which means that application opportunities exist, but not at the level of complexity people have learned and practiced in training. As these examples show, the possibilities for applying training content in practice have different dimensions: (1) time (ranging from immediately to much later), (2) frequency (ranging from constantly to very rarely or never), and (3) complexity (from superficial to full applicability of the content).²

The opportunities to apply new skills have three dimensions: time, frequency, and complexity.

The reasoning behind providing training even when the application possibilities are limited is fairly obvious: It is a matter of security, of being “ready” for the (potential) challenges of the future. We create a pool of skills and abilities, which we can access immediately as needed (such as capable young leaders ready to take the helm, or airline pilots who can manage an emergency landing). Transfer success comes with the situation – that’s the idea. But does it really work that way?

A pocket compendium of catchwords for HR developers and trainers

“Your HR development measures are merely reactive. All you do is fill qualification gaps.” That’s a kick in the gut for any HR developer. What everyone wants, of course, is (pro)active, strategic, future-oriented HR development. Not just overcoming past shortcomings but also preparing and equipping the organization to be more competitive in meeting future challenges. So far, so good. On the other hand, we hear and read disdainful comments about how inefficient it is to “stockpile knowledge” and how important to ensure that staff training programs are “demand-oriented” – also referred to as “learning on demand” or “just-in-time learning.” Having people learn exactly what they need right there and then in the workplace – it certainly sounds logical. But somehow, a faint sense of contradiction sets in. OK, off-the-shelf and reactive are no-nos. Instead, development work is supposedly all about being just-in-time, strategic, future-oriented, and on-demand. The truth is, there are too many nice-sounding buzzwords (empty phrases?) out there, each of them making its particular perspective or school of thought seem superior. So, what are we really talking about here? Let’s get more specific and take a closer look at some of the phenomena and facts.

You never forget how to ride a bike

Forgetting is a phenomenon we are all familiar with. Even if we’ve acquired and actually mastered a skill, it’s possible we somehow “lose” it. What exactly happens in our brain when we forget has yet to be fully investigated.³ One attempt at an explanation is that “memory trails” gradually fade and eventually disappear when not in use (the “trace decay” theory) – almost like a hiking trail that becomes overgrown over the years when nobody uses it. Another approach assumes that we forget because new or more recent impressions overlay the old ones (the “interference” theory). However, there are some other empirically well-substantiated facts about forgetting that I don’t want to keep from you. Initially, forgetting happens very fast. Harry Bahrick, a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, looked into the subject: He studied students’ Spanish language skills and constructed a “forgetting curve” that spanned 50 years. As it turned out, those who had attended the course three years before remembered much less (40%) than those who had finished the course just recently. After three years, however, the c...