Change management: is training enough to transfer learning to work?
Organisational change often comes with a training plan that tracks enrolment and attendance. The more precise management question is whether employees subsequently have genuine, supported opportunities to apply what they have learned.
What the literature establishes
Timothy T. Baldwin and J. Kevin Ford (1988, Personnel Psychology) distinguish learning during training from its transfer: generalisation to work and maintenance over time. Their review organises the conditions for transfer around trainee characteristics, training design and the work environment. In change management, this distinction rules out treating classroom attendance as evidence of a lasting ability to work differently.
The work environment is part of the design
In a meta-analysis, Brian D. Blume, J. Kevin Ford, Timothy T. Baldwin and Jason L. Huang (2010, Journal of Management) show that transfer is associated with factors including motivation and a supportive work environment. They also identify differences in some relationships according to the type of skill, particularly between open skills, such as leadership, and more closed skills, such as performing a defined task. This suggests that management training carries over into work differently from standardised technical instruction.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that simply asking line managers to support application is enough. These studies do not, however, establish that an instruction to provide support produces transfer on its own. Work must also offer a relevant situation, scope to act and feedback on the attempt: these are conditions to examine, not a universally validated recipe. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What conventional measures leave out
A satisfaction questionnaire provides information about the training experience, not directly about whether a skill is maintained at work. The meta-analysis also highlights that observed relationships depend on how transfer is measured, particularly when predictors and outcomes come from the same source. Finally, this research concerns training transfer: it does not demonstrate that improving transfer is sufficient to make organisational transformation successful.
A practical check in Lugano
Within the « Conduite du changement » programme at SHR — Swiss Human Resources, one possible check in Lugano is to agree, before training, on an observable behaviour and an opportunity to practise it: a delegation discussion in a bank, a prioritisation decision in fashion, handling an exception in trading or clarifying responsibilities in an Italian-speaking family business. During the following month, a log kept in Italian where it is the working language distinguishes planned opportunities, those actually available and those resulting in a documented attempt, without recording sensitive data. The main indicator is the number of actually available opportunities resulting in a documented attempt divided by the total number of actually available opportunities; feedback from the manager then helps assess the quality of application. This monitoring does not prove the effect of training, but distinguishes non-application despite an available opportunity from the absence of an opportunity to apply learning. To go further: explore the Change Leadership training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Change Leadership in Lugano
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