Making Transfer Work with 70:20:10

The 70:20:10 model is an interesting one. Many learning professionals have been focusing on 70:20:10 for a while. It seems a lot of organisations are actively using that model within their learning principles and processes.

What I have observed, is that often more learning and development resources end up going into the 70 and 20, with the 10 percent of formal learning often being left as is. ‘We’ve been doing the 10 percent forever. We know what we’re doing in the 10 percent”. So the 10% remains as is.

The 10 percent needs to be supported with transfer of learning so that it is relevant to the business.

70 is learning that happens on a day-to-day basis, when we’re either sat at our desks or out there doing our role. I really feel that we need to stretch and integrate the 10% of formal learning into this day-to-day. Learning transfer is one way to do that. L&D professionals must not get so distracted by the 70:20, that they fail to leverage the investment in the 10%.

Once you start thinking how to make behavioural change happen on day-to-day basis through transfer, you can really start to challenge thinking around that model. Take a holistic view and build on the 10 through the 20 and 70 to get the end result. I went into these ideas in much more detail with the great Robin Petterd on the “Learning While Working” podcast recently. You can listen to the full podcast HERE.

And there’s more!! It’s been a podcast centric month – I also had a great conversation with the team at Good Practice on their wonderful podcast on all things learning transfer and our 2017 learning transfer research findings. You can listen to that podcast episode HERE.

Emma Weber is a recognized authority on the transfer of learning. As CEO of Lever–Transfer of Learning, she has helped companies such as Telstra, Oracle and BMW deliver and measure tangible business results from learning. She has also been a guest speaker at learning effectiveness conferences worldwide and authored the hugely successful book Turning Learning into Action. Much more detail around the issues and solutions examined in this article are available in the book – please feel free to download a free chapter. Emma and her team also developed Coach M, a coaching chatbot that delivers fully scaleable learning transfer. She is also a co-author of the books Making Change Work, and Designing Virtual Learning for Application and Impact. Her work and approach is also featured in Data and Analytics for Instructional Designers by Megan Torrance (Author), Foundations of People Metrics and Analytics – by Renjini Joseph and an ATD 10-minute case study series – Chatbot Coaching for Learning Transfer.