Employers that get the best results from their management training programs are those that motivate employees to transfer their new skills to the workplace as soon as possible, research shows.
Before researching the factors that affect whether or not leaders transfer and maintain management skills following training, University of Adelaide's Sonya Vandergoot was delivering leadership, team-building and conflict resolution training in various government departments with mixed success.
"I was getting some feedback from managers saying things like, 'the training was great and people were enthusiastic, but then six months down the track or a year down the track, nothing had changed'... it didn't seem to have any traction," she told HR Daily.
As a result, she surveyed nearly 150 prior participants of a University of Adelaide management training program, focusing on factors that either supported or hindered "training transfer" such as a leader's commitment to their employer, emotional intelligence and self-efficacy, and the extent to which their organisation's systems and processes, managers and teams supported them.
Her research found a leader's 'motivation to transfer' (their desire to master and use new skills from training in their workplace), emotional intelligence and intrinsic motivation most significantly predicted the successful transfer of what they learned. These factors also had a strong influence on whether they maintained new knowledge and skills.
When considering organisational factors, the keys were providing opportunity for leaders to use their new skills, and their perceived organisational support when attempting to transfer them, the research shows.
Organisational factors that impacted whether leaders maintained these skills included perceptions of whether opportunities existed for them to put their new skills into practice, whether they would be supported to do so, and any barriers that were in place.
Respondents who were able to use their managers as a "sounding board" when applying what they'd learned were particularly positive about their ability to transfer and maintain the skills they'd acquired, especially when their managers had done the same course in the past. These leaders and their managers seemed to have a "shared language" and understanding that further reinforced the teaching in the course. This could provide a case for sticking with the same leadership courses over a number of years, rather than frequently chopping and changing, Vandergoot says.
Overall, taking both statistical and anecdotal data into account, she says the best way HR can encourage leaders to transfer and maintain learning is to motivate them to use their new skills and provide organisational opportunities and support to facilitate this.
Specifically, managers and HR can assess a leader's motivation prior to sending them on a management course and consider ways to further motivate them. HR can also consider ahead of time how to support participants to transfer their skills to the workplace after, or even during, their course.
Incorporating new training into personal goals and performance development reviews, and developing deliberate strategies for transfer, are also worth considering, Vandergoot says.
"Practice is really important and people know that, but they think they can practise later; they need to think about it straight away."
Vandergoot, who presented at the Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference recently, notes a high percentage of respondents displayed "very narrow ideas" about how and when they might apply the skills they had learned in the workplace, even though the course actively encouraged them to spend time identifying and pursuing opportunities to do so.
One participant said he hadn't managed to transfer any skills yet because he'd only just completed the course.
"Really, he's had 12 months to start using those skills, but he assumed he was only going to use them when he'd finished," she says.
Many leaders also said that finding time to reflect, strategise and apply skills once they were back at work was a barrier, so employers should not just encourage reflection, but allot time for it, she says. Formal or informal mentorship could also prove a valuable form of support and opportunity for reinforcement.
Surprisingly, the amount of time that had passed since respondents completed the course had little impact on the degree to which they used the skills they learned in their daily work, Vandergoot notes.
"I just assumed that somebody that had done the training 18 years ago would report less training transfer or maintenance over time than people more recently [but] that doesn't seem to have been important."
Vandergoot suspects this is because most of the participants already held leadership positions, so were able to practise the skills they'd learned on a day-to-day basis, thereby maintaining them. Skills that did not relate so readily to their daily work were more rarely used and therefore more easily forgotten.
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