Why a good training
still changes nothing
People leave a workshop having learned something and go back to work the way they worked before. Researchers call the gap a failure of transfer. This wheel lays out ten conditions that decide whether it happens, each with three positions, from conditions that make the new practice stick to conditions that kill it.
Open any ring for what it looks like, the research behind the factor and what to do. Or switch on Rate my programme and place your own training on the wheel.
The three groups of factors (the learner, the training, the workplace) come from Baldwin and Ford, 1988. The ten-factor wheel format was popularised by a graphic from Matt Furness. The wording, scoring and research notes here are ImpactMojo’s own. Full credits ↓
Closer to the centre, more likely to stick
Each of the ten spokes is one condition. Its three rings describe how well the trainee’s situation meets it. The ten fall into three groups: what the learner brings, what the training does, and what the workplace does afterward. Six of the ten sit in the workplace, which is why a well-run workshop can still fail.
Where the wheel is weak
The ten factors are supported by research, and the three-position scale is a practitioner’s device. No study has validated these exact cut-points, and the points in the summary are a prompt for discussion, not a measure. Treat a result as a list of questions to put to your team.
The evidence base is also narrow. Most transfer research comes from corporate, military and US or European public-sector training. How the factors weigh against each other in a government training in an Indian district, or an NGO’s field-staff workshop, is not well studied, and the ranking of importance may differ.
Transfer is also not the same as impact. A trainee can apply a skill faithfully and the programme can still fail because the skill was the wrong one. The Theory of Change Studio is where to test that.
Ten factors, three positions each
Tap a ring. On a keyboard, tab to the wheel and use the arrow keys: left and right move between factors, up and down between rings. Every selection has its own shareable link.
Closer to the centre means more likely to stick. Tap a sector to read it.
Ratings are kept in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Read all ten factors as a list
Whose ideas these are
The framework
Timothy Baldwin and Kevin Ford reviewed the transfer research in 1988 under three headings: the trainee’s characteristics, the design of the training and the work environment. Lisa Burke and Holly Hutchins (2007) and Brian Blume and colleagues (2010) reviewed the evidence on each.
Personnel Psychology, 1988
The wheel format
The idea of ten factors with three positions each, drawn as a wheel with the best position at the centre, was popularised in a graphic by Matt Furness. This page does not copy his graphic or his wording. The descriptions of each position are written here against the research literature.
What ImpactMojo added
The interactive wheel, the wording of each position, the research notes, the “what to do” and “ask in your programme” prompts, and the rating mode.
ImpactMojo, 2026 · content CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · code MIT
Sources
The notes under each factor say what a source’s abstract says it studied and no more. Each source was looked up on 13 November 2026. Volume and page numbers are left off because they were not confirmed. Read the paper before quoting a finding.
Using this in a workshop
Ask the people who ran a training, and some of the people who attended it, to rate it separately. The places where they disagree are usually where the useful conversation is.
To plan the training itself, use the Participatory Methods Studio. For what to measure afterward, use the LogFrame Builder.