Leveraging Management Development through the Management of Transfer

Abstract

The critical need to actively manage the transfer of training process is apparent from the scope of industrial training and the relapse rate of the trainee. Transfer management consists of a variety of actions before, during and after training by managers of trainees, management development personnel and management trainees to increase the probability of success. Knowledge of the typical barriers to transfer is useful as they can be removed, diminished, converted to positive forces or countered by balancing forces. The final product of a literature review is a set of 95 distinguishable transfer strategies. These form action propositions for transfer of training. An open‐ended survey of 84 human resource development professionals was conducted in which they were asked to report the most important impediments to training transfer. From this list, a set of nine frequently mentioned factors was derived and presented to a group of 36 trainers who ranked the three most powerful forces against transfer as: lack of on‐the‐job reinforcement, interference from the immediate environment and a non‐supportive organisational climate. The importance of transfer and impediments to it are discussed.