BUSI 750 Week 3 Individual Application, Reflection, and Synthesis Paper Example

Why the Supervisors Went Back to the Old Way: Applying Transfer of Training Research at a Heating Equipment Plant

Introduction

Eighteen months ago, the heating equipment plant where I work as training manager launched a first-line supervisor program. Twenty-six supervisors from three shifts attended eight half-day sessions on running shift meetings, coaching on safety behavior and handling performance conversations. Evaluations averaged 4.7 on a 5-point scale, and every participant passed the end-of-course knowledge check. Six months later, an observation audit found that only five supervisors were running shift meetings in the structured format the program taught, and recordable safety incidents were unchanged. The program had produced learning without transfer. This paper applies transfer of training research to explain why, reflects on my own part in the outcome and synthesizes the research with the course's Christian view of work into a plan for the second cohort.

Application: Diagnosing a Transfer Failure

Baldwin and Ford (1988) proposed the model that still organizes transfer research. They sorted the inputs to transfer into three groups, what the trainee brings, how the course is built and what the job setting allows, and they defined transfer as both the generalization of trained skills to the job and their maintenance over time. For a practitioner, the value of the model is that a diagnosis cannot stop at the classroom door. Our program could fail at any of the three points.

Trainee characteristics do not appear to be the main problem. The supervisors volunteered, scored well on the knowledge check and described the content as practical in their evaluations. Pooling 89 empirical studies, Blume et al. (2010) confirmed that cognitive ability, conscientiousness and motivation are positively related to transfer, and nothing suggests our group was weak on those characteristics. Training design was adequate though not ideal. The sessions included role plays of coaching conversations, which Grossman and Salas (2011) list among the design features with the strongest record, behavioral modeling, but they included little practice with the actual shift meeting boards and safety data the supervisors use.

The work environment is where the evidence points. Blume et al. (2010) found a supportive work environment to be positively related to transfer, and they reported that most predictors, including work environment, had stronger relationships with transfer when training targeted open skills such as leadership rather than closed skills such as software. Supervision is an open skill: every shift meeting and coaching conversation is different. That makes the plant environment unusually important for this program. Our audit interviews revealed three environmental obstacles. First, the plant managers to whom the supervisors report had not attended or seen the content, and two of the three continued to run their own meetings in the old format, which the supervisors then copied. Second, production targets left no time for the fifteen-minute structured meeting the program taught. Third, no one followed up after the final session. The facilitator's contract ended with the eighth session, the training budget had no line for coaching, and the supervisors' own performance reviews did not mention meetings or safety coaching at all. A supervisor who tried the new format and met resistance from a crew had no one to ask for help and no reason to persist.

Grossman and Salas (2011) identify transfer climate, supervisor and peer support, the opportunity to perform and follow-up as the work environment factors with the most consistent relationship to transfer. Our program missed all four. Burke and Hutchins (2007), reviewing the transfer literature, reached the same practical conclusion: what happens before and after a course can matter as much as what happens during it. In the terms Mello (2015) uses for strategic HR, the program was designed as an isolated activity rather than as part of an integrated system with the plant's goals, measures and management practices.

Reflection: My Part in the Outcome

Reflection requires me to admit that the failure was partly my design. I built the program the way I was trained to build programs: identify the content, hire a strong facilitator, measure satisfaction and learning and report the results. That approach treated training as an event. When the evaluation scores came in, I reported them to the plant director as evidence of success, and no one asked what had changed on the floor. Kirkpatrick's levels were familiar to me, but I stopped at the second level because the third and fourth were harder to measure and because high reaction scores were pleasant to report.

I also assumed that the plant managers would support the supervisors because they had approved the program. Approval is not support. I never asked the managers what they wanted their supervisors to do differently, never showed them the meeting format and never asked them to observe or coach. Looking back, I treated them as sponsors rather than partners, which is exactly the administrative posture this course contrasts with strategic HRD.

The week's readings sharpen the reflection. Keller and Alsdorf (2012) describe work as service, the use of one's abilities for the good of others, and they argue that the quality of work matters because people depend on it. My work as a training manager is meant to serve the supervisors and, through them, the employees on the floor whose safety depends on good supervision. A program that leaves supervisors unable to use what they learned does not serve them well, however strong the evaluation scores. Hardy (1990) adds the Reformers' conviction that ordinary work is a calling. If supervising a shift is a calling, then equipping supervisors is not a box to check but a responsibility to people whose work matters.

Synthesis: A Plan for the Second Cohort

Bringing the application and reflection together yields a plan for the next cohort of 24 supervisors in which the work environment is designed as carefully as the sessions. Salas et al. (2012) organize the science of training around what happens before, during and after training, and the plan follows that sequence.

Before training, each plant manager will attend a two-hour preview of the content, agree on the shift meeting format and sign a short commitment to observe each supervisor's meeting twice in the first month. Managers will also identify one current safety or quality problem on each supervisor's line for the supervisor to work on in the program. These steps address the support and opportunity factors that Grossman and Salas (2011) emphasize, and they give the managers ownership.

During training, practice will move closer to the job. Supervisors will rehearse shift meetings using their own line's boards and last week's actual safety data, and role plays will use situations that occurred in the plant. Because supervision is an open skill, sessions will also include varied scenarios so supervisors learn to adapt the format rather than recite it. Production schedules will set aside a fixed quarter hour when each shift begins, which removes the time obstacle. The plant director has agreed to this change for the pilot lines because the meeting is where safety concerns are raised before work begins, so the time is an investment in the plant's own goals rather than a cost borne by production.

After training, follow-up becomes part of the program rather than an afterthought. Supervisors will meet in peer groups of four every two weeks for three months to share what worked, and the plant managers' observations will be recorded on a simple checklist. Evaluation will extend to behavior and results: the observation audit will be repeated at three and six months, and recordable incidents on participating lines will be compared with the previous year. If structured meetings rise and incidents fall, the program will have earned its place in the plant's strategy; if not, the data will show where to adjust. The supervisors' annual reviews will also include a short section on meetings and coaching, so the skills the program teaches become part of what the plant expects of a supervisor rather than an optional extra.

The synthesis is also theological. Keller and Alsdorf (2012) argue that the gospel gives workers a reason to work with excellence for others rather than for status. Applied to HRD, that suggests measuring a program by whether it changes the daily experience of the people it is meant to serve. In this plan, the measure of success is whether supervisors run better meetings and whether workers on the floor go home safer.

Conclusion

The supervisor program failed to transfer not because the supervisors lacked ability or the sessions lacked quality, but because the program ignored the environment in which the skills had to be used. Transfer research, from Baldwin and Ford's model to Blume and colleagues' meta-analysis, predicted that result, and my own design choices made it more likely. The second cohort will test whether involving managers, practicing with real materials and following up for three months can turn learning into practice. If it does, the plant will have moved one program from an administrative event toward strategic development, and I will have learned to measure my own work by what it changes for others.

References

Baldwin, T. T., & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 63-105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1988.tb00632.x

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309352880

Burke, L. A., & Hutchins, H. M. (2007). Training transfer: An integrative literature review. Human Resource Development Review, 6(3), 263-296. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484307303035

Grossman, R., & Salas, E. (2011). The transfer of training: What really matters. International Journal of Training and Development, 15(2), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2011.00373.x

Hardy, L. (1990). The fabric of this world: Inquiries into calling, career choice, and the design of human work. Eerdmans.

Keller, T., & Alsdorf, K. L. (2012). Every good endeavor: Connecting your work to God's work. Dutton.

Mello, J. A. (2015). Strategic human resource management (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kraiger, K., & Smith-Jentsch, K. A. (2012). The science of training and development in organizations: What matters in practice. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(2), 74-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612436661