Critical perspectives on researching transfer of training

It is important that employees are equipped with the necessary skills and competencies to live and work in the 21st century (Blume et al. 2024). This urgency has increased in recent years, due to societal, economical, and organizational changes such as an increased emphasis on acquiring interpersonal and communication skills and technological developments (Blume et al. 2024; Schultheiss and Backes-Gellner 2023). To adapt to such changes, it is important that employees continuously develop themselves (Park 2024), which is often done via employee training (Manuti et al. 2015; Schultheiss and Backes-Gellner 2023). To make sure that such training makes its intended impact on the work context, it is important that its content is applied, which is defined as transfer of training (Grossman and Salas 2011). However, transfer of training is often lower than desirable, which implies that training often do not make its intended impact on work practice (Baldwin et al. 2017). As such, transfer of training is regarded the “Achilles heel of the training process” (Botke et al. 2018, 130).