Fort Hill Federal: Learning Transfer, Accountability and Results

Learning leaders across a broad range of public and private sector organizations estimate that less than 20% of training participants practice what they’ve learned long enough to change their behavior and deliver measurable results. Imagine, in these budget-conscious times, the outcry from Congress if one of your agency’s key programs was shown to have a success rate of barely twenty percent? Or, from a personal perspective, what if Walgreen’s filled just 1 in 5 of your prescriptions correctly, or UPS only delivered your packages on time one day a week?

In dollar terms, the waste is staggering. If a typical week of classroom learning costs $1,500 per participant, and management employees attend one week of training each year, then the “learning scrap” (training dollars + salary) from a medium-sized federal agency with 1000 managers exceeds $2.2 million dollars per year – not including the incremental value the learning itself was intended to create.

There are, however, organizations that buck the trend, that regularly translate their investment in human capital into real results for their internal and external stakeholders. Though their specific practices are varied, their overall approach is consistent – they leverage all of the variables in the departmental environment to create a culture of learning accountability. The key elements include:

- Treating learning as a process, not an event

- Proactively engaging participants and their managers in the process

- Systematically driving transfer and application during the post-class follow-through period through a combination of participant accountability and performance support from the organization.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll begin digging deeper into each of these key elements – sharing success stories and best practices from our research, as well as discussing the challenges involved in implementation. My goal with these notes is to begin a dialogue that helps you bring enhanced accountability to learning, and improved performance to your organization.

Let the conversation begin!

Steve Benjamin

Director, Federal Systems

Benjamin@forthillcompany.com

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