Self Development Toolkit

HRD's Most Costly and Enduring Problem
		Our first-line managers know the business, but in fact most of them need better people skills. There are times when you can sense the friction and the tension. Morale is low in some areas, and we’ve lost some of our best folks. We’ve never actually achieved the positive, high-energy culture we’ve been looking for, and it has affected our bottom line.
A few years ago we brought in a top-flight leadership effectiveness program. The trainers were fantastic and our managers raved about it. We were satisfied that it was money well spent. Afterward we noticed that a few managers showed some improvement, but the others weren’t using the new skills. They were basically the same people doing the same things.
A year later I look around and I can’t say there’s any noticeable improvement. It’s hard to believe that such a high-quality program has had so little impact. When I think about what it cost us, I’m very disappointed.
The preceding is a fair summary of the frustration we’ve heard from numerous executives and HR professionals over the years. It’s a persistent theme, and what they’re saying is that employees desperately need better leadership from their managers and that traditional training and development programs haven’t delivered the results they hoped for.
The research indicates that this shortfall has existed for decades and that it isn’t limited to leadership development. It has become known as the “transfer of training problem.” Mosel (1957) reports “mounting evidence that shows that very often the training makes little or no difference in job behavior,” concluding that skill mastery requires not just training, but a workplace environment that encourages using the skills: “rewards and punishments, incentives and deterrents in the job situation.”
Baldwin and Ford (1982) claim that the failure of training programs to change behavior is widespread: “There is a growing recognition of a ‘transfer problem’ in organizational training today. It is estimated that while American industries annually spend up to $100 billion on training and development, not more than 10% of these expenditures actually result in transfer to the job.” Broad and Newstrom (2001) cite less dramatic but no less shocking numbers: “Considering all types of training and low levels of transfer found by HRD researchers, a generous assumption is that perhaps 50% of all training content is still being applied a year after training delivery. Considering our rough estimate of $50 billion spent on formal training per year, that means a loss of $25 billion a year to organizations for training not fully used on the job.”
Brinkerhoff and Apking (2001) conclude: "Almost all organizational training is a marginal intervention and has only slight effects on performance improvement.” Further: "If we define 'training impact' as simply the transfer of knowledge and skills to on-the-job performance, research indicates that impact of training is realized only for about 15 percent of all training participants." They aren't saying that training never transfers to on-the-job performance. There will always be self-starters and lifelong learners who believe in what they've learned and persist in spite of barriers to change. But these exceptions can’t deliver the return on investment executives are looking for.
Mostly the experts are saying that the problem typically isn't the training itself, but what happens afterward. Newstrom’s (1983) survey of trainers to identify and rank order the most serious barriers to transfer finds that the most significant shortfall was “lack of reinforcement on the job.” Saari, Johnson, McLaughlin and Zimmerle (1988) claim that any form of follow-up is rare. Zenger, Folkman and Sherwin (2005) concur: “Talk to any group of layman or professionals about what is broken in the current learning and development process, and most will tell you it’s the lack of serious post-training follow-through.”
When executives invest in training and development, they do so expecting that the programs will achieve lasting improvements in performance. So why have they failed to invest in the necessary follow-up reinforcement effort?
To be fair, this research has been reported mostly in human resource publications, which rarely capture the attention of executives. And while it makes sense that follow-up reinforcement is crucial to changing behavior, none of the researchers offers a scientific explanation of why. To modify the way they approach performance improvement, executives will need a compelling reason.
In the past, HR/learning professionals have not been able to provide those reasons. They are just as perplexed and frustrated as anyone that their best efforts haven’t delivered a satisfactory return on investment.
However, a straightforward scientific explanation for why most classroom learning fails to transfer to permanent improvements in workplace performance does exist. It is found not in the journals of HRD, but in the recent discoveries of neuroscience.
		For more information, please contact ALD, Inc. at 208-762-1322 or email us at info@ald-inc.com