Why Learning Transfer Will Make You Question Everything

Emma Weber

When you experience effective learning transfer for the first time you really will begin to question everything…

“Why have I never thought to do this before?”… “How have I been missing this from past initiatives?”… “When can I do this again”!

And the list goes on. A client of ours has experienced a four-fold uplift in budget because their organisation finally started to see the results that effective learning transfer can produce.

So I’ll admit it! I have a serious obsession with Learning Transfer. And it really does make me question everything.

The Learning & Development industry is getting pretty good at delivering effective learning initiatives.

However, how often do these interventions actually translate into behavioural change in the workplace?

Too many organisations are stuck in a single mode of L&D delivery when a bi-modal approach is required. In fact, good instructional design and a proven learning transfer methodology are crucial in seeing the benefit that training has promised for so long but continually failed to deliver. Only when the two components start to work together will businesses finally experience the positive outcomes they were seeking that prompted the training in the first place.

Where to start

Begin by crunching the numbers – ask yourself:

• How many people need to change post the learning initiative? (100 or 10,000)
• What time per person needs to be invested in learning transfer (not additional content!) POST the content?
• What metrics do we need to track the outcomes?
• Who in the organisation has the time and the resources to deliver your transfer strategy?

Your solution will depend on the maturity of the Learning & Development at your organisation – take the maturity model survey here and find out how your organisation stacks up.

What’s needed within a robust Learning Transfer process:

Ensure that as a core element you include self-reflection. While this sounds soft and fluffy, done well it’s far from it. Ensure the reflection has three key elements:

• Specific – to the individual, not as a group, it’s about them being honest with themselves and their context.
• Structured – focusing on the actions they have committed to implementing post learning. Self-rating on a scale of 1-10 is an easy way to capture information as a start point and to help structure the reflection.
• Accountable – supporting the individuals to hold themselves accountable to themselves prioritising their learning and implementation of changes for long term gains and business outcomes.

The most important of those three is accountability. In today’s complex adaptive systems that many organisations are, where people are moving away from the old command and control style of leadership, accountability has become a bit of a dirty word. I feel there is need for a fresh look at how we view accountability. Let’s focus on holding the individuals accountable to themselves. This will create the most profound, powerful and sustainable change. It is essential and fundamental to the Learning Transfer process.

Once you’ve seen the results come in – who knows you might develop a wee obsession too!