Closing the transfer gap means designing for workplace application from the outset, not hoping learning will stick afterwards. Melanie Martinelli and Ger Driesen explain how the 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness can help L&D teams build stronger transfer conditions, establish shared standards and connect learning more clearly to organisational performance.
Your learning program is well designed. The facilitators are strong. Participation is high and the feedback scores look reassuring. Then people return to work. Three months later, managers struggle to name what has changed. Participants remember useful ideas, but old routines have reclaimed the working day. The L&D team can report activity yet cannot confidently point to sustained performance improvement.
The system around that experience still leaves workplace application largely to chance
This is not a story about poor learning design. It is the quiet frustration inside many capable L&D teams. They have improved the learning experience, while the system around that experience still leaves workplace application largely to chance.
The space between what people learn and what they consistently do differently at work is the transfer gap. It is where learning investments lose value, even when the training itself is excellent. Closing that gap is the next maturity level of learning design.
From making training better to making training work
Learning design has advanced enormously. Clear objectives, relevant content, active practice, strong facilitation, thoughtful digital experiences and evidence-informed methods all matter. Better learning deserves serious design. But good learning does not guarantee use. A participant can understand a new approach, practice it successfully and genuinely intend to apply it, yet return to a workplace where priorities compete, managers remain uninvolved, systems reward the old behavior, and no one asks what changed. The cause is not simply inside the course. It sits in the system around it.
Much of the field works on making training better. Transfer by Design focuses on making training work.
The distinction is significant as much of the L&D field works on making training better. Transfer by Design focuses on making training work: ensuring that learning reaches the workplace and contributes to performance. Much of the field works on making training better. Transfer by Design focuses on making training work.
This does not replace learning design, it completes it. Mature learning design treats transfer as a designed outcome, not a hopeful after-effect. It begins before the first module is built, shapes what happens during the learning experience and continues until the new behavior has a realistic chance of becoming normal work.
Transfer starts before the course
Transfer is still too often treated as the final step: add a job aid, schedule a reminder, ask managers to follow up and hope people use what they learned. By then, some of the most important transfer decisions have already been made.
Before design begins, mature L&D teams clarify the performance problem:
- What should people do differently?
- What evidence would show that they are doing it?
- Is a learning intervention actually needed?
- Which conditions at work will support or obstruct the desired behavior?
Before participants arrive, expectations are shaped:
- Do they understand why the program matters?
- Does their manager know what application will require?
- Are there real opportunities to use the new capability?
- Will the organisation make room for practice, feedback and adjustment?
These are not administrative questions; they are design questions. Transfer by Design expands the brief. Instead of creating only the learning event, the team designs the conditions that allow learning to become performance.
What maturity looks like in practice
Consider a leadership program intended to improve the quality of performance conversations. An event-focused design may define learning objectives, teach a conversation model, use role-play and ask participants to complete an action plan. All of that can be well designed.
A transfer-focused design starts earlier. The sponsor defines what a better performance conversation should change: clearer expectations, faster handling of underperformance or stronger employee ownership. Managers of participants know why the program matters and discuss a real conversation each participant needs to hold. The learning experience uses the organisation’s actual situations, language and constraints. Participants practice the behavior, receive feedback and leave with a specific application commitment.
After the session, the design continues. Participants use the approach in a real conversation within a defined period. Their manager or peer reviews what happened. Short follow-up activities address obstacles that surfaced in practice. The L&D team looks for evidence of changed behaviour, not only completed attendance.
The course itself may look similar in both versions. The difference is what has been designed around it. That is the maturity shift. Transfer is not a collection of extras added to the finished program. It changes the brief, the stakeholders involved, the practice used, the commitments made and the evidence collected. It connects the learning experience to the work it is supposed to improve.
The 12 Levers: An evidence-based gateway
The 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness® distill more than a century of transfer research into a practical framework for L&D. Developed by Dr. Ina Weinbauer-Heidel and advanced through the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness, they show what determines whether learning is used at work and where L&D teams can intervene. Consider it as ‘the Golden Standard’ for Transfer.
The framework focuses on three areas that determine transfer success:
- The participants and their readiness to apply
- The design of the learning intervention
- The organisation and work environment around it
Within those areas sit 12 influenceable factors, the levers, that help L&D teams diagnose why transfer may succeed or fail. They include design factors such as clear expectations, relevant content, active practice and transfer planning, but also conditions outside the course: manager support, opportunities to apply, social support, accountability and an environment aligned with the expected behavior.
The power of the 12 Levers is not that every program needs more activity around all 12. Nor is there one lever that always matters most. The critical leverage point depends on the program, the people and the context.
That makes the framework a gateway to greater design maturity. It replaces generic good intentions with a structured diagnosis:
- Where is this intervention strong?
- Where is transfer vulnerable?
- Which few levers deserve deliberate attention now?
This is a more useful conversation than asking for another list of engagement techniques. It directs scarce time and budget toward the conditions most likely to affect workplace use.
A standard, not another layer
Senior L&D leaders are rightly skeptical of new frameworks that sit on top of existing processes and add complexity without changing outcomes. Transfer by Design should not become another stage in a model or another box in a project plan. The greater opportunity is to embed a shared transfer standard into the work the team already does. Senior L&D leaders should set that standard for their teams.
A transfer standard defines what good transfer looks like and how it is built into briefs, stakeholder conversations, designs, delivery plans and evaluation. It gives the L&D team a common language for challenging requests, making trade-offs and measuring what matters.
This changes the question from:
“Did we remember to add transfer?”to
“Does this design meet our standard for transfer?”That shift is subtle but significant. A few committed professionals can improve individual programs. A shared standard changes how the whole L&D function operates. It also improves the conversation with the business. When stakeholders ask for training, L&D can move beyond taking an order without becoming obstructive. The team can ask what performance should change, which barriers exist, what managers will do and how application will be recognised. The discussion becomes more rigorous because the questions are grounded in a standard rather than personal preference.
Transfer becomes a shared responsibility
The transfer gap cannot be closed by the learning designer alone. Participants matter, but transfer is not simply a test of their motivation. Managers matter, but “manager support” cannot remain a vague request at the end of a program. Sponsors, subject-matter experts, peers, systems, workload, incentives and measurement all shape what happens after learning. Mature design makes these responsibilities visible.
- The sponsor helps define the performance outcome and protects its priority
- The manager prepares the participant, creates opportunities to apply and gives specific feedback
- The participant sets application goals, practices deliberately and reflects on results
- L&D designs the intervention and the surrounding transfer conditions, monitors the critical levers and keeps workplace performance in view
- The organisation aligns processes, tools and consequences with the behavior it says it wants
This is systemic work. That is precisely why it belongs in the design conversation from the beginning.
The measurement maturity test
The metrics an organisation uses reveal the maturity of its learning design. Attendance, completion, satisfaction and knowledge scores provide useful information. They tell us whether people took part, how they experienced the intervention and what they appeared to learn. They do not tell us whether the learning changed work.
Transfer by Design links evaluation to observable performance from the start. It asks what people should do differently, where that behavior will be seen, who can observe it and which business indicator it should influence. This does not mean every program needs a complex ROI study. It means every significant program should have a defensible line of sight from learning to application.
A mature L&D team can explain:
- The behavior the intervention is intended to change
- The transfer conditions built into the design
- The evidence that will show whether application occurred
- The performance measure that matters to stakeholders
Without that line of sight, L&D risks measuring the ease of delivery rather than the value of the investment.
Five questions for Monday morning
Transfer maturity does not begin with rebuilding every program. It begins by changing the questions asked at the start. For your next important learning intervention, ask:
- What should people do differently at work?
Name observable behavior, not only what they should know. - What could prevent them from doing it?
Look beyond the participant. Examine priorities, manager behavior, systems, workload, incentives and cultural norms. - Which of the 12 Levers are most critical here?
Diagnose rather than applying the same transfer tactics to every program. - Who must act before, during and after the learning?
Make responsibilities explicit. “The manager should support it” is not a plan. - How will we know the learning reached the workplace?
Choose evidence of application and performance before choosing the reporting dashboard.
These questions are simple enough to use immediately and demanding enough to change the design.
The next level is a choice
L&D teams do not need criticism for failing to control systems they were never asked or equipped to design. Many already know that their best work does not always translate into performance. They are not the cause of the transfer gap, but they are the professionals best placed to help close it.
The next maturity level is to make that capability systematic. The 12 Levers provide the evidence-based map. A transfer standard turns that map into a consistent way of working. Together, they allow L&D teams to design, deliver and measure learning with workplace application built in from the start. Learning remains essential and so does excellent learning design.
But the purpose of workplace learning is not fulfilled when participants complete the course, enjoy the experience or pass the assessment. It is fulfilled when people use what they learned and performance improves. That outcome is too important to leave to chance.
It is time to make transfer part of the design.
Want to check how you are doing now? Use the free Transfer Maturity Quick Scan.
Melanie Martinelli is CEO of The Institute for Transfer Effectiveness (ITE)
Ger Driesen is Transfer Ambassador at The Institute for Transfer Effectiveness (ITE)
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