Photo by: Steve Buissinne via Pixabay
You spend months designing and developing a new training course. Then you spend hours upon hours in the classroom conducting the training only to learn some participants return to work and do not apply their new skills. How frustrating! But what is the catalyst? Do you have management support? Have you designed the support tools the management team will need? As trainers, you need to make sure you’re doing your part to ensure support of the transfer of those new skills. Training needs to “stick.”
Here are some tips you can implement to help avoid the frustration of training not being transferred successfully to the job:
Get Management Buy-In and Support Right from the Beginning
- Share the potential ROI (Return on Investment), ROE (Return on Expectation), and/or PIP (Potential for Improving Performance).
- Share the potential outcomes. For example, eliminate performance gap deficiencies.
Promote Transfer of Training During the Training
- Use action plan reviews to reinforce key takeaways.
- Ask questions like, “How will you use this when you return to your job?”
Design and Implement Level 3 Evaluations
- Incorporate tests, work samples, and observations into your evaluation process.
Create Post-Training Activities
- Encourage managers to schedule a post-training briefing to recap what was learned and practiced in the training session.
- Schedule follow-up training if needed.
The support team’s role is vital to new skills transfer. In addition, providing various support tools can help curtail or avoid non-application of new skills learned. With this strategy, successful transfer of skills can occur while trainer frustration is reduced to a minimum.
What do you implement before, during, and after training to ensure skills are transferred and training truly “sticks” back on the job? I’d love to hear from you!