How to Facilitate True Learning Transfer

In November 2010, Josh Bersin noted in his “Business of Talent” blog that the chief learning officer has a split personality and is actually three people in one: a chief culture officer, chief performance officer and chief change officer. But this leaves out one central role: the chief application officer.

While CLOs must ensure program offerings align with the business strategy and put an organization on a path toward change, none of this is attainable without a plan to make learning stick and improve performance, productivity and bottom-line results.

While there may not be someone with the title of chief application officer, a March learning transfer study conducted by ESI International, a learning consultant, shows there are best practices that can help ensure learning transfer occurs within the organization.

Learning Failure Points

Learning transfer has been scrutinized by myriad studies over the years, including ongoing research by the American Society for Training and Development. The implicit hope within these discussions is that sending employees to training will transfer into the workplace and result in both quantitative — cost savings — and qualitative — productivity, job satisfaction — outcomes.

While organizations may take the time to prepare employees for a learning engagement, budget for development and even measure learning impact, many continue to struggle to support and achieve true learning transfer.

The Transfer of Learning Survey, which was designed to assess an organization’s success or difficulty in fostering a learning transfer climate, identified this gap.

The survey was completed by more than 3,200 learning and development-related managers and leaders in government and commercial institutions spanning multiple industries around the globe. Findings indicated five areas where chief learning officers miss the mark when it comes to learning transfer (Figure 1):