UNIVERSITY AMERICAN COLLEGE SKOPJE

Course: Stuff training and development

Essay title: Transfer of training and evaluation

In this essay i will try to provide my personal critical opinion and working experience on the
issue transfer of training and evaluation.
Transfer of training is effectively and continuing applying the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
that were learned in a learning environment to the job environment.1 When we are speaking about
transfer of training we must define the factors that affect efficiently transfer of knowledge. HR
managers should put attention on these three fields if they want to organize effective training:
1. Training participants attributes (training of training by pre-qualifying nominees during the
process of registration);
2. Working environment (If the company wants to see benefits from training, they must think
clearly what happens before employee goes to training and what happens after he/she back from
training. Are they implementing their knowledge into their performance, if company provide certain
conditions for implementation. All these factors are very important if one company wants to achieve
certain goal.
3. Training program design ( The organization must ensure that the training programs objectives
are directly focused on companies goals).
Starting from the fact that every company organize training in order to get new knowledge and
experience and achieve some goals, ofcorce one part is financial, companies also must work hard on
improving the transfer of training. Firstly, before starting of training, companies must put attention
on their own procedures, update them and use them during training. An other important thing is that
company must decide which level of employees need to be trained.
Many companies also organize training with professional experts and consultants. I must add that
these coaches must be trained haw to teach effectively. Before starting training one organization
must set some measurable organizational and employees goals. Knowing these facts employees will
be more careful during training, because they will know which goals they must achieve. In addition,
i would like to say that one organization will have effective transfer of training if they change
incetives. This means that company must modify incentives to reward goal achievement and
expected behaviors.
Training transfer means that learners are able to transfer their knowledge and skills learned
in a trainings back to their working environment. Companies spend big sum of money every year on
training, but still this money doesn't bring improvement of companies performance. Training
transfer must be supported by all stakeholders. These include managers, peers, customers and the
employer. Stakeholders also assume responsibility for supporting transfer. The goal of training is
1

Perkins, D. N., Salomon, G. (1992). Transfer of Learning.

not simply to gain knowledge and skills, but to transfer learning into performance, which in turn
leads to improvements in companies results.
Organizations use different types of approaches to make evaluation of training. Evaluation is
traditionally represented as the final stage in a systematic approach with the purpose being to
improve interventions (formative evaluation) or make a judgment about worth and effectiveness. 2
They are six general approaches for educational evaluation. It can be identified as follows:
goal-based evaluation, systems evaluation, goal-free evaluation, professional review, quasi-legal
and goal-free evaluation. Training and development activities can be evaluated before, during and
after the activities. Before the implementation phase organizations must ensure that selected training
and development methods really fit to employee's
knowledge and skills. During the
implementation of training organization must ask learners haw they feel about, if they understand
the training and its useful if companies conducts short test in order to evaluate if they understand
the training.
After completion of the training organizations might him or her a test before and after the
training and development, and compare the results. By using this tool organization will ease
understand if the learner get new knowledge after the training. Some companies assign an expert
evaluator from inside or outside the organization to evaluate the learner's knowledge and skills after
training.
To conclude, they are many approaches of evaluation of training and this activities are very
complex and usually not always good structured. Since evaluation activities in training system
involve multiple goals associated with multiple levels, evaluation should be seen as a activity
between trainers, managers, line managers, and other levels of employees.

References:
-Perkins, D. N., Salomon, G. (1992). Transfer of Learning. Contribution to the International Encyclopedia of
Education, Second Edition. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press.
-Leslie Allan, From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance, 2nd edition
-Holton III, E.F., & Baldwin, T.T. (2003). Improving Learning Transfer in Organizations. San Francisco,
CA: Pfeiffer.
-Bramley, P. (1996). Evaluating training effectiveness. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill

2(Gustafson & Branch, 1997).