Training transfer: what is decided after the room

Organisations mainly evaluate participant satisfaction. Transfer research addresses a harder question: what remains of the learning in actual work, several weeks later. The two measures do not overlap.

The founding framework

Timothy Baldwin and Kevin Ford (1988, Personnel Psychology) proposed the reference model: transfer depends on three families of factors — participant characteristics, training design, and the work environment. The third is the one organisations control best and work on least.

What the meta-analysis specifies

Brian Blume, Kevin Ford, Timothy Baldwin and Jason Huang (2010, Journal of Management) showed that supervisor support and transfer climate are associated with maintaining learned behaviours, particularly for so-called open skills whose application is not prescribed. These are associations from largely correlational designs: the direction of the relationship is not unambiguously established.

The misleading measure

George Alliger and Elizabeth Janak (1989, Personnel Psychology) had already shown that the evaluation levels popularised by Kirkpatrick do not form a causal chain: satisfaction does not predict learning, and learning does not mechanically predict behaviour. Steering a programme on end-of-session ratings means measuring one thing and concluding another. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What follows for front-line management

The direct manager is not a communication relay; in this model, they are the variable closest to transfer. That shifts the question: a training course succeeds less through the choice of provider than through what the manager asks for, observes and permits in the following weeks. The reading stays conditional, and does not excuse weak content design.

One practical implication, testable internally

A check that needs no instrumentation: among last year's training courses, how many led to an explicit conversation between participant and manager within thirty days, about one specific practice to change. The figure is usually low. It is the first one we examine with organisations in the Lausanne region, before designing any programme. To go further: explore the Frontline Management training in Lausanne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

In pictures: Frontline Management in Lausanne

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