Understanding Post-Training Factors and Job Performance Relationship: Review of Literature for Transfer of Training Enthusiasts

Soleman Mozammel, “Understanding Post-Training Factors and Job Performance Relationship: Review of Literature for Transfer of Training Enthusiasts”, Annals of Contemporary Developments in Management & HR (ACDMHR), Print ISSN: 26327686, Online ISSN: 2632-7694, pp. 33-38, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1st November 2019, Published by International Association of Educators and Researchers (IAER), DOI: 10.33166/ACDMHR.2019.03.004, Available: http://acdmhr.theiaer.org/archive/v1/v1n3/p4.html. Review Article


Introduction
Tough competitive nature of the global business is motivating enterprises towards more investment in training and employee development. Accordingly, businesses are also working on www.acdmhr.theiaer.org innovative advancements to understand how businesses could work out for the best prospects in terms of organizational performance.
Scholarly work in the business domains have highlighted a robust association between the learning opportunities provided to employees and their performance improvements. The studies have suggested that business that stays have to understand and learn the prospects of training and its strategic implications for businesses productivity and outcomes in the long run (Yamnill & McLean, 2001). Alongside the importance of training, studies have also indicated towards that fact that many companies work on implementing training programs. Still, they forgo one crucial element, which is bringing entities that would ensure that the employees apply the learned knowledge and information from the training at the workplace in order words, training transfer. This is the reason why many companies, despite investing heavily in training, are losing out, which has also been indicated by Sookhai and Budworth (2010). According to them, sixty to ninety percent of the businesses perform poorly because of no post-training implementation strategies.
In the views of , training transfer is essential to guarantee a return on training investments; otherwise, organizations will see hardly a few employees bringing back the knowledge and skills that they learned during the training to the workplace thus incurring massive losses. Therefore, training transfer needs to be taken into consideration to foster employees` job performance.
Post-training actions cause a great degree of employee training transfer (Burke & Baldwin, 1999).
Managerial interventions play an influential role of perception leading to the importance of employee training and its transfer. Therefore, the current study aims to outline the effectiveness of supervisory initiations and support on training transfer as well as job performance.

Job Performance
Employee positive behaviours and outcomes at work are necessary to achieve organizational goals successfully. Various studies have supported that training enhanced productivity that added significant value for superior organizational performance (Dumas & Hanchane, 2010;Turab & Casimir, 2015). According to Nikandrou, Brinia and Bereri (2009), training and learning also aim to boost job effectiveness, higher skill and higher performance.

Transfer of Training
The term may be defined as a magnitude to which parties are able to duplicate and apply their updated learnings, skills, knowledge gained from the training and workshops organized by their organizations (Shahani, Nawaz & Dharejo, 2019;Blume, Ford, Baldwin, & Huang, 2010). When employees, after acquiring training intervention, apply their training contents at the workplace, the transfer of training succeeds (Ahmed, Abdul Majid, Mohd Zin, Phulpoto & Umrani, 2016;Baldwin & Ford, 1988;Wexley & Latham, 1981).
According to , the entire process of training, a trainer's role contributes approximately 48 percent, work climate impacts 49 percent and design and delivery of training and involvement contribute 46 percent. But the study reported to have a significant low of only two percent impact from learner characteristics. At the same time, the study also reported a www.acdmhr.theiaer.org contribution of supervisory support at 25 percent with trainees placing about 23 percent towards training transfer with 32 percent before and 12 percent after training, respectively.

Supervisor Support
Denotes to the extent to which the supervisor of an individual trainee helps employees in setting performance goals, offers platform and opportunities at the workplace to apply recently learned knowledge and skills, and appreciates the efforts through rewards and recognition (Short, 1997).
Notably, the work environment has a major impact on training transfer, according to Rouiller & Goldstein (1993). It is important to note that there may be an excellent training program, designed with precision but fail to mark any major impact due to poor work environment, causing problems for trainees to learn proactively (Grossman & Salas, 2011). In the views of Salas (2009), trainees` behaviour shaping is critical, and supervisors have a major role in this regard. The authors have further explained that supervisors can dominantly do this through rewarding and recognizing trainees. Lim and Johnson (2002) have outlined that the supervisor's recognition to employees helps to boost engagement in training programs and their positive feedback helps them to maximize the transfer of training positively.
According to Garavaglia (1993), an individual provided with high levels of supervisor support resulted in considerable transfer of learning even after one year of training especially, in comparison with the ones who outlined low levels of support from their supervisors. Accordingly, the significance of supervisor support and involvement in training transfer has been described with acute significance in many other studies (Bhatti, Juhari & Umrani, 2018;Saks & Belcourt, 2006). Similarly, Kontoghiorghes (2001) indicated that support from supervisors helps in boosting the application of new skills therefore, supervisors need to encourage their employees in this regard. Research pertaining to the influence of work environment on transfer of training has been greatly discussed and positively outlined in the literature (Lim & Morris, 2006). One of the most crucial aspect in this regard is the support trainees are provided to showcase their learning and apply the newly learned skills and knowledge (Clarke, 2002).

Perceived Utility
Perceived utility is explained as trainee's perception about the training being useful and valuable for the workplace, when applied . Studies have outlined that perceived utility can enhance training transfer . Baldwin and Ford (1988) empirically outlined that trainees` factors, including perceived utility, cognitive ability, a self-efficacy, can boost training transfer. These factors have great value, particularly when there is talk of professional learning transfer.
There has been a growing influence on training across the globe at present as the corporate world has realized its importance as a strategic competitive tool influencing organizational as well as individual performance. Moreover, in order to ensure the training transfer, it is also vital that the employees are committed in this regard for the responsive achievement of organizational goals.
The effectiveness of training transfer in heavily dependent upon the abilities of trainees towards using their newly acquired skills and competencies at the workplace. There is a need to understand that organizations need to outline and ensure that trainees apply the newly learned skills and www.acdmhr.theiaer.org behaviours at the workplace effectively upon their return (Sangakala, Ahmed & Pahi, 2016;Grossman & Salas, 2011). Aspects like transfer of training hence can be influenced through perceived utility . According to Axtell et al., (1997), high levels of training transfer were noticed from trainees who perceived higher training utility. Accordingly, the urgent training needs also influenced perceptions regarding the learning transfer (Khalid, Ahmed, Tundikbayeva & Ahmed, 2019;Lim & Morris, 2006).

Theoretical Framework
In the views of Baldwin and Ford (1988), the transfer process forwarded by Holton, Bates, and Ruona (2000) has remained highly significant in understanding training transfer (Lim & Morris, 2006). Baldwin and Ford (1988) in their work, proclaimed that training transfer could be influenced through a multifield of variables that can exhibit training transfer (Kontoghiorghes, 2004). Baldwin and Ford (1988) outlined that training transfer can occur in components when supervisor support and perceived utility is evident. Though, Notably, studies like Jaidev and Chirayath (2012) have outlined other factors such as trainee characteristics, trainee characteristics, work environment, situational and organizational factors, and training design can make an influence job performance.

Conclusion
The current study has applied the training transfer model forwarded by Baldwin and Ford (1988), which is a well-recognized framework in this aspect. The authors asserted that transfer is a function that attains influence from three broad aspects trainee characteristics, work environment, and training design. The literature on training transfer has sadly provided little value for practitioners as to how they can help foster transfer of training. As per their recommendations, research studies investigating the influence of individual factors such as motivation, personality, and ability upon training transfer is scarce.