An overview of the 12 levers of transfer effectiveness and how you can use them to make sure training sticks and skills get applied in the workplace.
With the worrying statistic that less than 20 per cent of training is actually applied back in the workplace, learning transfer needs to be top priority for all L&D teams. So, what are the 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness, and how can they help? I spoke to the brains behind the levers, Dr Ina Weinbaeur-Heidel to get her insights.
“There are three areas which are important to make transfer happen: trainees, training design and the organisation,” Ina explains. Each area contains a number of levers, a total of 12 small steps, to help maximise the effectiveness of any training course.
Here’s an overview, with some guiding questions to help you reflect on your programmes and how you could boost transfer.
The beauty of the system is that none of the steps are difficult. “That’s the magic behind it,” says Ina. “Making it easy for L&D professionals and training facilitators to make transfer work.” It’s about focusing on what Ina describes as “the easy tools”.
Failing to secure support from managers has been one of the main stumbling blocks in getting learning to stick but the solutions can be as simple as asking learners questions like: “The minute you are back in work, what do you plan to do?”
Or addressing the organisation’s input by getting people to answer the questions “Who will help you with that?”
Ina explains that “many of our L&D professionals asked us, ‘How can I bring the supervisors on board? I’ve tried it for years, but it doesn’t work’,” says Ina. “I think the secret is to introduce easy tools.”
At Stellar Labs, we’ve found that managers don’t necessarily know the right questions to ask, or when to ask them. Prompting managers to recognise the critical moments in the learning journey, and suggesting simple questions to ask is highly valuable.
When they’re given these useful prompts at the right time, managers are better able to support their learners to apply what they’ve learned. We see it as providing ‘scaffolding’ for the learning process. Our learning transfer platform provides the nudges and guidance that managers need to support their team’s learning (alongside a host of features that take people form knowing – to doing).
“That will make the difference between a well-designed learning platform and just a content library. They are two completely different things,” says Ina. “Everyone who thinks about working with a learning platform needs to ask: ‘Does it have this idea of transfer in mind? Does it have the levers in place? Does it use all the stuff we know from the behavioural sciences?’
As CEO of Austria’s Institute of Transfer Effectiveness, Ina’s mission is to take scientific findings and apply them in practice. She also brings her experience and enthusiasm to us here at Stellar Labs as a member of our research advisory board.
Ina made it her mission to seek out what she describes as the Holy Grail of transfer research – what it takes to make training really stick. Her aim was to find answers to questions that haunt every L&D team:
The result of her research, was the 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness.
Stay up to date with the latest neuroscience-fuelled L&D insights, and our latest podcasts. Sign up to our Newsletter.
Structure an outcome focused learning journey in minutes. Launch in days.
Social learning Stellar Labs
DATEV, Stellar Labs, Proof of concept, AI, Learning, Neuroscience, Tool adoption, Software
In this episode, our host Stella Collins, co-founder and CLO at Stellar Labs, is joined by Bob Mosher, Chief Evangelist and co-founder at Apply Synergies.