Having an opportunity to personalize the training and reflect on how the new information and skills could help an individual is key to transfer of learning and yet this process does not happen in groups.

The real objective of training is to change what people do, not just impact on what they know.

We’ve done amazing things with people who have got to the end of the programme and still thought the training was useless – we’ve turned them around and got them to transfer the learning. Of course it helps if the participants are enthusiastic but, certainly in my experience, it is not the predictor of successful learning transfer that Broad and Ne

Reflection is therefore crucial for behavioural change but it must happen during the training and in a structured regular way after the training.

The problem, as we all know, is the gap between what we know and what we do with what we know.

In their book First Break all the Rules authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman detailed the result of two huge research studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization over a 25-year period.

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It is also very important to get instructional design right because it will affect the outcome of the training. If we wanted to bake a beautiful birthday cake we wouldn’t start with rotten eggs, out-of-date flour and a bashed-up baking tin. The same is true of instructional design, so getting the basic principles right is essential.

To maximize learning transfer at this stage evaluation needs to be scheduled for two to three months after the programme so that the impact of the training can be accurately measured in terms of what benefits have been realized as a result of the training.