How Learning Workflows Can Turn Training Into Sustained Workplace Performance With Paul Matthews

Let’s begin with how you got into L&D and how that led you to start People Alchemy.

By accident, like most people. There are not many people who wake up and say, “One day, I’m going to be a learning and development person.” It does not rank alongside doctor, nurse or firefighter as one of the professions people grow up aspiring to.

I ended up training management courses, which is what first got me interested in L&D. My background is in engineering, so even then I was puzzled by the fact that we were putting people in a room for four days on a management course and then doing nothing afterwards.

The failure rate was clearly high, yet nobody seemed prepared to do much about it. It was not my responsibility at the time, so I did not do anything about it either. But the curiosity remained. There was clearly something broken in the gap between learning and behaviour change, and I wanted to understand what could be done about it.

That curiosity has driven much of what I have done since, including creating software, writing books and continuing to explore how workplace learning can lead to sustained performance.

Let’s talk about the Learning Workflow Platform you developed through People Alchemy. What problem is it designed to solve?

It is sometimes described as a blue ocean product because there is nothing else quite like it nearby, which makes it difficult to explain by comparison.

The central question is: how do you turn an organisation’s good intentions towards its people into sustained workplace performance?

Those good intentions usually lead organisations to invest in training and do the things L&D has traditionally done for years. But much of that activity does not create enough impact to justify the time and money being spent, and somehow that has become accepted.

Our platform provides a workflow that takes people through a sequence of purposeful activities over time. Rather than treating learning as a one-off event, it treats development as a process that may involve formal learning, workplace activity, practice, support, feedback, management involvement and evidence of performance.

The workflow coordinates the intervention. It helps make sure that the things needed before, during and after formal learning actually happen.

Of course, no workflow can guarantee workplace performance. What it can do is create and coordinate the conditions that make sustained performance more likely.

Why do you think it is so difficult for organisational learning to lead to genuine behaviour change?

The first issue that comes to mind is a lack of clarity about outcomes. People often do not have well-defined outcomes for a learning initiative. Even when they do, nobody necessarily owns them.

Learning transfer normally involves several stakeholders. If there is nobody acting as the conductor and coordinating that orchestra of stakeholders, the chances of everybody playing in tune are fairly low. Each person may be doing their own part, but nobody is managing the complete process that is supposed to lead to sustained change.

There is also still a huge and unreasonable reliance on content as the vehicle for change. We continue to hear that content is king, almost as though people have it tattooed on their foreheads. That belief stops them from looking properly at where change happens and what makes it possible.

Training may change what someone knows or is able to do, but workplace performance emerges from the interaction between the person and the environment in which they are working. Systems, workload, priorities, management, incentives, resources and local culture can all support or obstruct the desired behaviour.

That is why a performance problem should not automatically be treated as a learning problem. The causes depend heavily on the local conditions, the working environment and the culture of the organisation.

What are your thoughts on the 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness and their role in creating behaviour change?

I think it is a brilliant model, and it is one I actively encourage people to use. There are other models available, but the 12 Levers are as good as any I have seen.

One of their strengths is that the model has enough different components to be useful in practice. Some other models have only four or five elements and are not granular enough. The 12 Levers give people something they can get hold of and use to make decisions about which factors matter most in a particular situation.

I also think the model should be used more widely than it often is. It is not just for trainers, and it is not something to bring out only when designing or delivering a programme.

For example, a training provider should use the levers during the sales process. That helps set realistic expectations about what is being offered. The client needs to understand that they are not simply buying a course and that buying training is not the same as buying change. They are entering a process that requires things to happen before, during and after the formal learning.

You have done a lot of work with the NHS. How is the People Alchemy platform used in healthcare, and are the same principles relevant elsewhere?

In healthcare, the platform is used to support staff development, competence assessment and certification. It is not a wellness product, although better-developed and appropriately assessed staff should contribute to better patient outcomes.

Take a clinical skill such as cannulation. The platform can guide somebody through the necessary prerequisites, which may include other training, knowledge checks or existing certifications. It can then support practice, evidence gathering and direct observation by an appropriately qualified assessor.

The assessor reviews the evidence and makes the professional judgement about whether the person has demonstrated the required competence. Where competence is confirmed, the person may then be authorised to practise in line with the Trust’s governance requirements and reassessed at the appropriate interval.

The platform supports and records that process, but it does not make the competence judgement itself.

The same type of workflow is used in organisations outside healthcare. The platform is largely agnostic about the subject, profession or content. What matters is the workflow of development, activity, evidence, assessment and, where appropriate, certification.

AI is having a significant impact on L&D. What are your thoughts on how it is being used?

AI is a tool. Like any tool, it will be used well by some people and badly by others.

I sometimes compare the current conversation about AI to teenage sex. Everybody says they are doing it, but there is probably less competent activity going on than the conversation suggests. With practice, experience and maturity, people will get better at it.

Some people are using AI exceptionally well. However, a much larger group is still experimenting and trying to understand where it genuinely helps. In the moment, it can appear to be saving a great deal of effort, but then the user encounters errors, hallucinations or work that looks plausible without actually being very good.

I use AI a great deal myself, often several times a day and sometimes for hours at a time. It is an exceptionally useful tool, but I have become more wary of letting it do too much of the thinking. I have had occasions when I returned to something a week later and could not remember the reasoning because I had not done enough of the work myself.

Another risk arises when someone does not yet have enough experience in the subject to sense that an answer is wrong. They may see a confident, plausible response without having the lived or professional experience that says, “Hang on, there is something off here.”

I often have that reaction when working with AI. I may not be able to explain the problem immediately, but eventually I identify a faulty premise near the beginning. Once that premise is corrected, much of the subsequent work has to be reconsidered.

AI can improve efficiency enormously, but it does not remove the need for experience, critical thinking and human judgement.

How should L&D balance quantitative and qualitative evidence when evaluating impact?

Both are useful, and they are useful for different things.

Quantitative evidence can help show the scale, frequency or extent of a change. Qualitative evidence can help explain what happened, why it happened and how people experienced it. The right balance depends on the question being asked and the decision the evidence needs to support.

What makes me wary when people start talking about the ROI of training programmes is what they are trying to prove.

Sometimes it feels as though L&D is gathering evidence primarily to justify its own existence and pay cheque: “This training had a positive ROI, therefore you should continue funding us.” That turns evaluation into a defensive exercise.

A better question is: how well did this programme improve things within the organisation, and how can we use the evidence to make the next iteration better?

The difference is not necessarily in the measure itself. It is in why the data is being collected, how it is interpreted and how it is presented to stakeholders. Evaluation should help the organisation make better decisions and improve performance, rather than simply defend activity that has already taken place.

L&D often talks about wanting a seat at the strategic table. How can the function earn that influence?

I have always been wary of the phrase “a seat at the table”. Too often, L&D has not earned it. If L&D behaves like an order taker, why would the rest of the organisation want it involved in strategy? Someone says, “We need a three-day management course,” and L&D replies, “Yes, of course.” In that situation, the function is acting like a shopkeeper supplying whatever has been requested.

That is closely connected to the internal brand of L&D. In too many organisations, that brand is poor because there is no obvious connection between what L&D delivers and sustained organisational impact.

The function is then seen primarily as a service that manages compliance and mandatory training, with occasional additional courses intended to improve people in some loosely defined way.

It is a jaundiced view, but I have seen it in many organisations. Even where the Head of L&D speaks strategically, there can be a large gap between that language and what the team is actually commissioned and equipped to do day to day.

If learning transfer is not happening and there is no visible business or organisational impact, there is little reason for the rest of the organisation to invite L&D into strategic conversations. Influence has to be earned by helping produce sustained performance, not simply by delivering training events.

You’ve written three books. What inspired you to write them, and how has your thinking developed since?

My third book, Learning Transfer at Work, was published in 2018. Learning transfer was not new as an academic field, because researchers had been studying it for well over a century. However, at that point it still was not widely discussed in mainstream organisational L&D practice.

The book still appears on lists of titles that every L&D professional should read, which is gratifying. It suggests that the central ideas have remained useful.

Naturally, my thinking has continued to develop in the years since. The act of writing helps with that. Writing forces you to organise and test your ideas in a way that thinking alone often does not.

I still write, read, reflect and talk with people. More than anything, it is about paying attention to what is happening in L&D and in the organisations it is intended to serve, then allowing your thinking to evolve as you encounter new evidence and experience.

How do you continue learning and developing your own practice?

I keep an eye on newsletters, blogs and LinkedIn posts. There are certain people whose work I will nearly always read. If I see a familiar author in a publication such as Training Zone or Training Journal I will pay attention because I rate them as a thinker in the field.

A great deal of published material is either self-serving, quite shallow or simply recycling ideas that are already widely available. That was happening long before generative AI appeared.

Talking with practitioners is particularly valuable. I enjoy conversations with people in Chief Learning Officer and senior L&D roles. I want to know what they are doing, what is troubling them and what problems they are trying to solve.

Those conversations provide a view of what is happening in the real world, which is often more valuable than another polished article trying to sell something.

How important are professional qualifications compared with being able to apply what you know?

It depends on why you want the qualification. If it helps you through the initial screening process when applying for a job, it may be essential. Without it, you might never reach the shortlist. Qualifications can smooth the path and open doors.

Whether the qualification is needed to do the work effectively is a different question.

I do not have formal L&D qualifications, and I have never held an internal L&D role. I am an engineer who came into the field from the outside. I have been a senior person in organisations who sent people on training and used L&D resources, rather than somebody who worked within an L&D department.

That outside perspective, combined with research, experience and many conversations with practitioners, has shaped how I look at the field. I am not suggesting that everybody should follow the same route.

Qualifications vary in quality, and their value ultimately depends on what the person learns from them and whether they can apply that learning in practice. Once again, it comes back to learning transfer. You can complete a professional qualification, but if nothing changes in what you decide and do at work, all you have is a piece of paper on the wall.

What would you most like L&D professionals to recognise about their potential impact?

L&D has an extraordinarily powerful lever, and many people in the profession do not realise how large it is.

Improve the performance of one supervisor by five per cent and there can be a ripple effect through that person’s team, their families, other teams and the wider organisation. The impact travels much further than is immediately visible.

L&D has the potential to create those ripples and, in its own way, help make a better world one manager or one team at a time. It is a powerful sector. The giant simply has not fully woken up yet.