Seven Insights for Unlocking The Power of Learning Transfer In Workforce Development
As work rapidly changes, transferring learning and applying existing skills in new roles and contexts is essential.
In today’s rapidly changing workplace, the ability to transfer what we have learned or to apply existing knowledge and skills in new roles or contexts has become increasingly critical. Workers today are likely to hold multiple roles throughout their careers, often encountering unfamiliar tasks and role disruptions that require them to be adaptable.
Yet traditional training models still focus on discrete, job-specific skills and neglect the value of knowledge assets from previously held roles and experiences. By doing this, employers and training programs miss the opportunity to cultivate and enhance everyone’s ability, sensitivity, and inclination to transfer existing and newly acquired skills beyond their original context. Learning transfer is an expected part of modern work, but it is not often explicitly taught or supported.
By creating programs and environments that support working learners in transferring their existing and prior knowledge, skills, and abilities into their program and beyond, workforce development practitioners can help workers successfully leverage their existing expertise in present and future roles.
Recent research by the Next Level Lab, along with the perspectives of our Learning Transfer Advisory Board, has provided valuable insights into how learning transfer occurs in practice, who the key players are in making it successful, and what strategies can enhance it. This transfer research is the culmination of several years of design-based research conducted by Next Level Lab Scholar Dr. Tessa Forshaw, along with the support of several colleagues, including Mari Longmire and Dr. Jake Hale. While peer-reviewed publications are in process, the current labor market—marked by generative AI-driven job redesign and augmentation—warrants the early dissemination of insights to the Workforce Development Sector.
This interim paper offers seven core insights on how to strengthen learning transfer among working learners.
Seven core insights on how to strengthen learning transfer among working learners
Frame Learning Transfer as a Distributed Responsibility
Shape an Organizational Culture that Fosters Transfer
Engage Managers and Mentors as Transfer Catalysts
Empower Learners as Active Agents in the Transfer Process
Cultivate a Learner’s Transfer Mindset
Design Learning Experiences that Mirror Real-World Contexts
Provide Ongoing Support and Opportunities for Practice During Transitions
Let's dive a little deeper into each of these insights:
1. Frame Learning Transfer as a Distributed Responsibility
Treat transfer as a multi-level phenomenon that includes individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors. Then, design programs that enable learners across all three factors, rather than proceeding with a more traditional “train and pray” approach.
2. Shape an Organizational Culture that Fosters Transfer
Collaborate with employer partners to establish a transfer-friendly culture by normalizing knowledge exchange, setting clear expectations for applying skills in new ways, and embedding incentives and stories that tie transfer to performance.
3. Engage Managers and Mentors as Transfer Catalysts
Equip employer partners or work-based learning managers and mentors to coach, cue links to prior experience, and create real opportunities to apply skills, as relational support accelerates transfer.
4. Empower Learners as Active Agents in the Transfer Process
Position learners as active agents by mapping and valuing their existing knowledge, including experiences shaped by culture, background, or non-work contexts, and supporting deliberate choices about what to carry forward or leave behind.
5. Cultivate a Learner’s Transfer Mindset
Set the expectation that learners will use what they know to boost follow-through and confidence. You can do this via scenario envisioning, diverse examples, alumni stories, and gap-closing tools. Practicing and modeling transfer using these strategies will help learners establish the confidence that they can do it, making it more likely that they will apply what they know in future situations.
6. Design Learning Experiences that Mirror Real-World Contexts
Create dynamic, social learning experiences that mirror and broaden real-world contexts. Make sure to explicitly name and provide examples of how skills transfer across varied environments, leaving participants with an expansive set of ideas for how the learning can be applied to varied real-world contexts.
7. Provide Ongoing Support and Opportunities for Practice During Transitions
Extend support into role transitions with early coaching, feedback, and practice opportunities, which increase transfer behaviors and improve performance.
Today’s roles change fast, and new tasks arrive often. Transfer needs to be a core design principle in programming.
Workforce development programs can help learners notice what they already know, use it in new tasks, and build the sensitivity and inclination to do so. To embed transfer as a norm, employer partners and future managers set clear expectations, model knowledge sharing, cue links to prior experience, create real chances to apply skills on the job, and give timely feedback during transitions. Only then will transfer become an explicit element of how we work, with people carrying learning from school, work, and life into novel roles, keeping pace with a labor market shaped by constant change and AI.
Further Information
For more information about these insights, please read our Seven Insights for Unlocking The Power of Learning Transfer In Workforce Development interim paper. This interim paper not only shares research findings but also integrates perspectives from the Next Level Lab’s Learning Transfer Advisory Council, a group of workforce development leaders who help translate emerging evidence into actionable guidance for frontline programs and initiatives.
We would like to thank the time and valuable input from the Next Level Lab Learning Transfer Advisory Council:
● Dr. Cheryl Camacho, Chief Learning and Program Officer, i.c.stars
● Jacqueline Chernoble, Vice President of Adult Education and Workforce Development, Catholic Charities Boston
● Jenni Jones, Academic Programs and Workforce Development Program Manager, Databricks
● Jon Rogers, Director of Strategic Workforce Planning & Staff Development, Indiana Department of Child Services
● Melissa Smith, Vice President of Public Policy, Talent and Workforce Development, Strada Education Foundation
Want to learn more about our transfer work and resources?
Blogs, articles, and white papers:
● “Your Network is Your Net Worth”: Revealing the Social Aspects of Transfer of Learning at Work
● How Next Level Learning Enables A More Powerful Vision for Transfer
● Emerging Findings on Learning Transfer Between Novel Roles for Working Learners and Learning Workers
Resources:
● Transferring Existing Skills and Knowledge into New Roles at Work
● Facilitating Existing Skills and Knowledge Transfer into New Roles at Work
● Guide to Building a Learning Transfer Coaching Agent in ChatGPT’s Custom GPT tool