What are the enablers and barriers to learning transfer into the workplace? Organisations in South Africa invest heavily in employee education. Through legislated skills development frameworks, companies sponsor employees to complete formal qualifications, often through higher education institutions. In return, organisations expect improved capability, performance, and competitive advantage.
Yet, despite these investments, learning does not consistently translate into changed behaviour, improved practice, or organisational value. This gap between learning and learning transfer formed the focus of a recent qualitative study conducted among company-sponsored graduates.
The DaVinci Institute’s alumna, Meggie Siddiah W Muthee study has explored a critical question: What enables or prevents employees from transferring what they learn into their workplaces after completing a sponsored qualification?
Learning transfer is not automatic
A central finding of the study is that learning transfer is not guaranteed. While learning almost always occurs, its transfer into the workplace is often:
- Unintentional
- Inconsistent
- Informal
- Unmeasured
- Dependent on individual initiative
As a result, learning transfer is largely serendipitous rather than strategically designed or supported by organisations.
This means organisations are often not fully realising the return on their investment in employee education, even when qualifications are completed.
Enablers and barriers exist on three levels
The study identified that learning transfer is shaped by the interaction of three systems:
- The individual (the graduate)
- The organisation (the workplace)
- The qualification provider (the education institution)
Each system can either enable or inhibit transfer.
Key Enablers Include:
- Supportive line managers and peers
- Organisational cultures that value learning and experimentation
- Roles that allow space to apply new knowledge
- Relevant, practical, and applied curricula
- Opportunities to reflect, share, and experiment with learning
- Recognition and feedback when learning is applied
Key Barriers Include:
- Heavy workloads and lack of time
- Lack of organisational ownership for learning transfer
- No shared understanding of what “learning transfer” means
- Learning is seen as separate from “real work.”
- Rigid roles with no room for innovation or experimentation
- Poor alignment between what is taught and workplace realities
Interestingly, many factors were found to be dual in nature, capable of acting as either enablers or barriers depending on how they are enacted. For example, organisational culture, leadership, and performance management can either stimulate learning transfer or suppress it.
Organisations play the strongest influencing role
Although the decision to transfer learning is ultimately individual, the study found that organisations exert the strongest influence over whether transfer occurs.
Employees are more willing and able to transfer learning when:
- Learning is explicitly valued by the organisation
- Managers show interest in what employees are learning
- Space is created to apply, test, and refine new ideas
- Learning is connected to organisational goals and challenges
- Transfer is expected, discussed, and supported
When organisations fail to create these conditions, even highly motivated graduates struggle to apply what they have learned.
Graduates use their own strategies to transfer learning
In the absence of formal organisational processes, graduates often rely on personal strategies, such as:
- Actively seeking managerial buy-in
- Informally involving colleagues
- Translating theory into small practical experiments
- Being self-directed and reflective
- Sharing insights through conversations rather than formal channels
While these strategies sometimes succeed, they place the burden of learning transfer almost entirely on the individual, making transfer fragile, uneven, and dependent on personal resilience.
Learning has value even when it is not transferred
The study also highlights that learning creates value beyond immediate organisational application. Graduates reported:
- Increased confidence and professional identity
- Improved problem-solving ability
- Greater strategic and systems thinking
- Enhanced personal growth and career mobility
However, when this learning is not absorbed into the organisation, its full collective value is lost and may even benefit competitors when employees move on.
From Serendipity to Strategy
The study concludes that learning transfer should not be left to chance. Instead, it should be:
- Designed intentionally
- Supported structurally
- Aligned strategically
- Owned collectively
Recommendations
It recommends that organisations, qualification providers, and learners work together as a learning transfer system rather than as separate actors.
In practical terms, this means:
- Organisations embedding learning into the purpose of work
- Managers are being developed as learning facilitators, not just performance supervisors
- Qualifications are being designed with application and workplace relevance in mind
- Graduates are being supported as active agents of change, not passive recipients of knowledge
Conclusion
This research reframes learning transfer not as an individual responsibility alone, but as a systemic organisational capability. If organisations want education investments to deliver real value, they must move beyond compliance and completion and begin designing environments where learning can live, grow, and be used. Learning changes people. Only learning transfer changes organisations.
