Improving Training Transfer Tip #1
Over the next few weeks I will dedicate my blog posts to Improving Training Transfer. What I will post is proven techniques for increasing the transfer of training from the learning experience to back on-the-job. Some of these tips take no additional budget; some take capital investments, other take people resources. All the tips do help improve transfer. The good news is that the tips are mutually exclusive, you can implement as many as you want.
What is training transfer? I define training transfer as … participants successfully implementing and integrating skill’s learned in training into their work behavior.
Startling fact: only 10-15% of training skills are successfully transferred to the job. Which means that we run our training factories at an 85-90% defect rate? I’m pretty sure that your companies would go out of business if their products had such a defect rate. The good news is that we can correct this. The tips that I am going to show you have resulted in organizations increasing their transfer rate to 70% or more.
The Training Transfer Continuum. I think of training transfer as a continuum – from designing to pre course, in course and post course activities. To aid our organization in maximizing transfer, then we need to think beyond the training event itself – before during design and after graduation.
So let’s start with the first tip that can be incorporated into instructional design to improve transfer. Please note that is not an all inclusive list and I know you all have some great techniques that have worked for you.
TRAINING TRANSFER TIP #1 – Map Design to Adoption
When designing training look beyond the session and ask yourself: “What do we expect participants to do on-the-job based upon the course design?” I call these the Adoptive Behaviors. Make sure your course objectives and content are supportive of the behavior. You will be surprised how often we teach content that will never be used because the participant has no need or opportunity for that content. Highly transferable training has tightly aligned content to adoptive behavior. In the same light, the activities and techniques you employ to practice new skills needs also to align to adoptive behaviors.In summary, design training so that as much as possible is directly aligned to real on-the-job work performed.
– More to come –
