How Well Do Post-Training Transfer Interventions Help Trainees in the Workplace?

[We are pleased to welcome Jawad Syed, who collaborated with Agoes Rahyuda and Ebrahim Soltani on their article “The Role of Relapse Prevention and Goal Setting in Training Transfer Enhancement” from Human Resource Development Review.]

This paper is based on PhD research completed by Dr Agoes Rahyuda at Kent Business School, University of Kent. The thesis was supervised by Prof Jawad Syed and Prof Ebrahim Soltani. Dr Rahuda’s thesis focused on investigating the mediating effect of trainee characteristics post-training transfer interventions and transfer of training. In this specific paper, we review the effect of two post-training transfer interventions – relapse prevention and goal setting – on trainees’ ability to apply skills gained in a training context to the workplace. The study identifies a number of key issues that remain unresolved or underexplored, i.e., the inconsistent results on the impact of relapse prevention on transfer of training, the lack of agreement on which goal setting types are more efficient to improve transfer performance, the lack of clarity about the distinction between relapse prevention and goal setting, and the underlying process through which these two post-training transfer interventions influence transfer of training. We offer some recommendations to address these isues and also provide guidance for future research on transfer of training

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Agoes Rahyuda is a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the Udayana University, Indonesia. He received his PhD in management from the University of Kent, UK. His research focuses on recruitment, training and development, and compensation.

Jawad Syed is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Diversity Management at the Business School, University of Huddersfield, UK. His main academic interests include gender, race and diversity in organisations, international HRM and organisational knowledge.

Ebrahim Soltani is Professor of Quality Management at the HBMSU, Dubai, UAE. Prior to his current appointment, he was a Professor of Operations Management at the Kent Business School, University of Kent, UK. He has written widely on quality improvement initiatives and HRM issues that are relevant to quality and productivity.