Transfer Oftraining

Introduction

Modern organizations believe that their main asset is their people – and their people are the ones that drive them forward and help them gain a competitive edge against their competition. Based on this belief – companies invest a lot of money in the development of their people’s skills. Companies believe that improved skills will help employees improve their individual performance – thus increasing company’s productivity and shareholders’ value. Therefore, companies spend billions of dollars each year on employee training. It is estimated that annual training costs incurred by many organizations today surpass $200 billion mark. These costs cover all types of training – formal as well as informal, on-the-job training. With this kind of high investments in their employees, it comes as no surprise that companies are curious to know if they realize full return on their investments, what kind of return they really realize, and what are the opportunity costs. After all, in this highly competitive market, companies have to think twice about every dollar they spend based on the return they get. On one hand, training could be of a great value if it helps employees acquire knowledge and skills to improve their individual job performance and sustain company’s competitive edge. On the other hand – it could be a great waste of money, if the knowledge and skills obtained during training are not directly applied to the job performance (training transfer) and/or maintained over time to translate into higher productivity and better organizational performance to align with organization’s main strategies. That is why a successful transfer of training should be of a paramount importance for modern organizations and a growing area of focus – to justify the huge expenditures in employee training.

Transfer of Training Model

The traditional approach to training transfer was outlined by Baldwin and Ford in 1998. They considered the transfer of training to be a horizontal link between training and performance (Baldwin and Ford, 1988). They grouped factors affecting transfer of training into 3 categories: (1) training inputs, such as trainee characteristics, training design, and work environment; (2) training outputs, consisting of learning and retention; and (3) conditions of transfer, which focus on the generalization and maintenance of training. Per Baldwin and Ford, companies need all the elements of training inputs to produce training outcomes. And with right transfer conditions – learning obtained from training will result in knowledge retention and final application to the job.

Let’s focus on (1) training inputs first. As mentioned above, training inputs consist of trainee characteristics, training design, and work environment. Trainee characteristics consist of trainee’s ability and skill level, attitude and personality factors, and motivation level. Training design is described as user friendly organization of training material as well as it job relevance. Work environment is based on such external factors are peer and management support and/or resistance to incorporate learning changes into the jobs.

Above discussed training inputs result into (2) training outcomes – amount of learning resulted from original training program and retention of that training material after training program is completed. Ultimately, the transfer of training occurs via generalization of training material to the job context and maintenance of it over period of time on the job.

Baldwin and Ford further laid out the 3 factors of training transfer in the below model showing the 6 linkages between these 3 factors (see Model below). Through these 6 linkages, Baldwin and Ford showed that both training inputs and outputs have direct and indirect impact on the conditions of transfer. In order for the transfer of training to occur (Linkage 6), one has to first learn and retain the material. To do so, this person needs to possess certain trainee characteristics (Linkage 4) and be surrounded to supportive work environment (Linkage 5). For example, without employee motivation and management’s commitment, an employee will not be able to maintain the knowledge gained in training regardless how well that employee learned the material during the training program. Thus, the above described Linkages have a direct impact to the training transfer. Lastly, the three training inputs - trainee characteristics, training design and work environment - have a direct impact to the training outcome of learning and retention (Linkages 1, 2, an 3), thus having an indirect impact to the transfer of training.

Figure 1: A Model of the Transfer Process