Elwood F. "Ed" Holton III, is CEO of Learning Transfer Solutions Global LLC and Jones S.

Davis Distinguished Professor of Human Resource, Leadership and Organization Development at Louisiana State University, USA. Dr. Holton has led efforts to create the Learning Transfer System Inventory and the Training Transfer Solution system over the last 15 years. With over 200 articles and 17 books, he is widely considered to be an international expert on human resource development and particularly learning transfer. Contact him at edholton@ltsglobal.com

Dr. Ed Holton is one of the premier experts in learning transfer. Great to work with and extremely professional. November 29, 2010 Robin Kistler, Director, LSU Executive Education, LSU Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute

Ed Holton is one of, if not the, foremost experts in the area of transfer of training and perhaps HRD in general. He has rather ingeniously used the fruits of his career-long research and experience and shaped it into the tools that companies can and should benefit from. Having personally worked with Ed on research projects in this area I can definitively say that his solutions are meticulously developed and designed and boast rigorous theoretical framework (not something you encounter frequently in HRD consulting). At the same time Eds tools and methods are designed for the realworld, demonstrating his exceptional ability to connect research and practice. Last but not least, he is a pleasure to work with, approachable, and down-to-earth and I have always walked away from a conversation with him feeling like Ive learned something new. November 21, 2010 Bogdan Yamkovenko, PhD Organizational Development and Research Coordinator, The Shaw Group

I regard Ed Holton as among the leading experts in the world on the subject of transfer of learning. Although he has written widely and is highly-regarded in the academic community, his unique gift is the ability to convert ideas to practice and make a real difference in the effectiveness of learning initiatives in organizations. November 19, 2010 Tim Baldwin, Eveleigh Professor of Business Leadership, Kelley School of Business

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I am fed up with accepting this in our profession. It is way past time that we got better. No other profession could get away with telling their CEO they are wasting 70-85% of the money they spend...why should we.

The problem is transfer of training-- only 15-30% of training transfers into actual use on the job to improve performance. Here's how I see it. Last year organizations spent $134 BILLION dollars on training in the U.S (according to ASTD). That means that somewhere around $100

In today's lean-budget world, the bottom line is that training will not be supported if it doesn't get results. So if you want your customers to keep "buying" then you have to figure out how to make the learning transfer into tangible results.

billion of it was wasted!!! And that is only the direct cost of training--not the salaries of the people who sat in the classroom. That alone is a huge number that ought to get us alarmed. But wait--it gets worse. Research also tells us that an 8:1 return on investment is pretty typical for good training. That means that the $100 billion we wasted would have returned about $800 billion in performance improvement if we had done the right things to make training transfer happen. It doesn't matter whether you are an in-house training department or an external solution provider, we all serve customers who make a decision whether to "buy" our training. For in-house training departments, these

Only 15-30% of training transfers into actual use on the job to improve performance.
Throw in some money for all the wasted wages and salaries of the trainees and we have a TRILLION DOLLAR TRAINING PROBLEM. That's right.....each YEAR we waste as much money as the U.S. government is spending to bail out the banks, AIG and the automakers.....EACH YEAR I said. Imagine what the cost is worldwide.....the cost must be staggering.

customers are inside our organizations and they "pay" with their employees' time. course they pay our bill. For external providers, of

So the key question is "What will keep your customer "buying" your training?" There is only one answer--the performance change that results from the training.

It amazes me how often trainers forget this one simple fact. In today's lean-budget world, the bottom line is that training will not be supported if it doesn't get results. So if you want your customers to keep "buying" then you have to figure out how to make the learning transfer into tangible results.

I think too often we fall in love with our content, our games and exercises, our teaching methods and all the other elements of training DELIVERY and forget about RESULTS. Smarter students are great, but only if they use their new knowledge to improve their performance.

I think too often we fall in love with our content, our games and exercises, our teaching methods and all the other elements of training DELIVERY and forget about RESULTS. Smarter students are great, but only if they use their new knowledge to improve their performance.

I see a huge change in the world happening. More and more customers are asking what I think are the right questions--How will I know your training achieved results? How will you measure the results? How will I know if my money (or time) was well spent given the investment made (ROI)?

Are you ready to answer those questions? If not, make a resolution NOW to get ready.

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many other players in the transfer process, but at the end of day only one part of the organization is accountable....and I think it has to be training. We are the custodians of the intellectual capital of the

organization so we need to make transfer happen, regardless of who else is also involved. The time for the excuses that we don't CONTROL the As I teach and talk about the transfer problem I find a lot whole process is past....we have to make transfer happen.

Learning has the power to transform organizations and trainers are the professionals charged with the responsibility to make it happen.
of resistance from trainers. Many will say "Its not my job...I only control what goes on in the training room."

No Country Is Immune From This Huge Problem. Yesterday we had a meeting with our distributors from 8 different countries in North America and Europe. It was a great meeting as we talked about our clients and the transfer issues they are facing.

While I understand their perspective, and agree that its a shared responsibility, at the end of the day somebody in the organization has to be accountable for making it happen. If not us, then who? I think one of the keys to solving the transfer problem is getting clear on who is accountable for it. Right now it often falls through the cracks because managers think its training's responsibility and training thinks its not all their responsibility. I think what we are talking about here is leadership....is training going to be the leader in making transfer happen? Most leaders are accountable for things they don't fully control, but they can influence. If we don't step up in organizations and take

What really struck me was that the issues are the same, whether the client is in Austria, Romania, Poland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Canada or the USA. For all of them, learning transfer is a HUGE problem that clients are desperate to do something about.

Our research over the last ten years certainly says the same thing. After administering our Learning Transfer System Inventory (LTSI) to over 6,000 people in 20 countries, the results are remarkably similar. We never expected to find this as we thought cultural differences would play a bigger role.

Our conclusion is that 1) the learning transfer problem is a universal one, leaving no country untouched; and 2) that we have to find solutions that work globally. As for part 2, we're working on it!

responsibility for LEADING the transfer solutions then I think we will never solve the problem. Yes, there are

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much smaller percentage returns, they can totally overlook the learning transfer problem in their

organizations. Let me illustrate with a little math. Suppose we run a training program for 20 people that costs the

organization $20,000--roughly $1,000 per person in direct costs and lost productivity. What Your CEO/CFO Doesn't Know CAN Hurt Them Now, suppose only

10% of the people transfer their learning--that's only 2 people. In order to earn a 20% return on investment-which a CFO/CEO would typically be quite happy with--

My first job after I received my MBA in Finance was as a financial analyst with DuPont. Most of my job was

all they have to do is make the company $2,000 each as a result of their new skills! And if 30% of the learners transfer their learning (6 people), they only have to make $666 each! I apologize for all the math but this illustrates why the learning transfer problem flies under the radar in many companies. Because the truth is, the POTENTIAL return from that $20,000 investment was $160,000 if done correctly!

analyzing possible capital investments and acquisitions to determine if the company would earn a financial return high enough to justify the investment. So I learned a lot about how CFO's and CEO's evaluate financial returns from investments.

The range of returns on investment they see are quite a bit lower than the returns from learning investments. Consider a few examples: The historical return in the U.S. stock market is

around 10%. Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. company, has a

If CEOs decide to champion learning transfer change, they will need HR as a committed partner so they tend to tread lightly.
But, CFO's/CEO's don't live in a world of 800% returns, or even 100% returns. Because they view the world

return on assets of 9.15% and return on equity of 22.5% ExxonMobil, the second U.S. largest company,

has a return on assets of 8.49% and return on equity of 19.9% Royal Dutch Shell, the largest company outside

through a 10 - 20% lens, they are easily seduced into thinking their training is really working when its not.. They totally miss how how big the learning transfer problem is and how much money they are losing from poor transfer. Its time we educated our CFO/CEO's on what they are

the U.S., has a 5 year average return on assets of 9.3% and return on equity of 20.7% As you can see, CFO's and CEO's live in a world of small investment returns compared to what we can achieve through learning! But because they are used to

missing.

Learning remains one of the most powerful

investments an organization can make with HUGE

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potential returns--but only if strong learning transfer happens.

be proud of it. But I also know that we need to do some things differently.

There

is

cure

and

it

is

called

transfer

of

learning/training. We know how to stop the epidemic but training organizations have to WANT to be cured. There are even "vaccines" available to prevent this virus from Your Organization May Have The Virus And Not Realize It I was talking with a training colleague of mine recently who was starting up a new company. He said "We are not going to call it a training company." When I inquired why he responded, "Because training has such a bad reputation and we no longer want to be associated with that business (even though he would continue to do similar work.)." He continued, "Training often doesn't get results so customers are reluctant to buy more training-so we have to call ourselves something different." I have been in the learning/training business for almost 30 years and his comments really hurt--but I had to acknowledge that he was right. The track record for spreading. Have you had your shots yet?

getting performance change from training IS poor. So I can't really blame him for trying a different marketing strategy. I fear that this lack of performance results has become like a virus in our profession and it has reached epidemic proportions. This virus lurks inside our training

organizations, infecting every program while we busily go about the business of offering training/learning events. And just like a virus in our body, the training system grows weaker and weaker over time.

The frustrating part for me is that I know it doesn't have to be this way. I love training and learning and we should

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