How Atana Courses Enable Learning Transfer
Atana’s mission is encapsulated in the profound belief that changed people change workplaces. Our purpose is to transcend conventional training paradigms and inspire individuals to take on behaviors that foster a respectful workplace. This mission emphasizes that as individuals undergo meaningful learning experiences, the impact extends beyond personal growth—it permeates the fabric of the organizations they contribute to and workplaces changes for the better.
As clients engage with more Atana products that train on vital behaviors, they are likely to experience the phenomenon of learning transfer.
Learning transfer occurs when knowledge, skills, and behaviors acquired in one context influence an individual’s actions and performance in a different setting.
Impacting Learning Transfer at the Individual Level
Many principles that support a respectful workplace appear throughout multiple Atana courses.
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training course, such as How Was Your Day, can cover independent topics like recognizing and challenging personal bias and embracing the value of diversity and inclusion. Similarly, a sexual harassment prevention training course, such as Once & For All, can address unique topics like recognizing the signs of sexual harassment and being a proactive leader. Yet within these different topics, there is overlapping learning.
Figure 1: Overlapping training topics and targeted behaviors create the opportunity for learning transfer.
As Figure 1 above illustrates, both courses discuss speaking up and seeking support. While the behaviors are addressed in different contexts, sexual harassment prevention and DEI training, the foundational elements are the same.
These shared elements enable individuals to apply their learning from one context (e.g., sexual harassment prevention) to another (e.g., DEI) due to the presence of overlapping principles and behaviors, thus promoting learning transfer at the individual level.
To further illustrate, the video clips below show how the desired behavior of Being an Upstander, Not a Bystander is a common element in all three Atana respectful workplace training courses.
Being an Upstander in the context of....
Harassment
Bullying
Overcoming Bias
Impacting Learning Transfer at the Organizational Level
Learning transfer can also occur at an organizational level. Data collected from learners’ engagement with Atana’s courses provides insights that can support institutional action. As organizations act on insights gained from one Atana course, the impact of those efforts can create a ripple effect in learning that manifests in different settings and scenarios.
For instance, an organization may learn from its How Was Your Day? course data that there is room for improvement in achieving the DEI target behavior of speaking up against harassment. Learning and Development (L&D) leaders can then launch campaigns that reinforce the practice of speaking up and establish communication channels that facilitate employees' sharing of concerns. When they subsequently initiate Once & For All sexual harassment prevention training, the same initiatives that encourage speaking up against harassment carry over to addressing inappropriate sexual incidents in the workplace.
The Benefits of Learning Transfer
There will always be behavioral and conduct issues in the world’s workplaces. But those issues are far less frequent when organizational training leads to the kind of learning transfer that enables and inspires people to build respect and inclusion, and speak up if they experience or witness bias, harassment or disruptive conduct.
The bottom-line benefits of cultivating a truly respectful workplace are documented in our Respectful Workplace eBook. They include:
- Improved employee retention (decreased turnover)
- Higher levels of employee engagement
- Enhanced productivity and performance
- Greater employee job satisfaction and well-being
- More effective collaboration, communication, and knowledge-sharing
Learn more about how Atana courses and Atana Insights transform organizational culture by requesting a demo of our dashboard.
About the Author
Amanda Hagman, Ph.D. |Atana Senior Behavioral & Data Scientist
A recognized leader in program evaluation, learning analytics and the use of predictive insights on an institution-wide scale, Dr. Hagman leads research and innovation for Atana’s behavioral training courses. Her work includes the development of course assessments and content aligned with behavioral outcomes.
