When people try something new at work after a training course, it will rarely go perfectly the first time.
In other words, learning transfer involves risk.
That risk may be small, but it matters. If the learner or their manager thinks the downside is greater than the likely benefit, the new behaviour will not be attempted. Your carefully designed transfer activity will be ignored.
Some risks are less obvious than mistakes.
What happens to normal operations while someone is practising? Who covers their workload? What happens if the new approach conflicts with local custom, targets or the manager’s preferred way of doing things?
These are not necessarily signs of resistance to learning. They may be perfectly rational responses to unmanaged risk.
When designing transfer activities, ask:
What could go wrong when people try this?
Who carries the consequences if it does?
What would make it safe enough to attempt?
The answer might involve supervision, a limited trial, extra time, permission to make mistakes, a fallback process or a clear boundary around where the new behaviour can be used.
Learning transfer is not just about encouraging people to act.
It is also about creating conditions in which acting feels like a sensible risk to take.
