The Training Transfer Problem No One Wants to Admit

Far too many corporate training programmes are “expensive theatre”, says Uzair Hassan, Three H Solutions, Dubai

OPINION PIECE

Uzair Hassan, CEO, Three H Solutions, Dubai

9/3/20263 min read

Companies spend thousands per head sending employees to workshops, flying in facilitators, printing workbooks, paying hotels for the venue and the catering etc. Then everyone returns to their desks, and within a fortnight the insights have evaporated. The problem isn't the content. It's that implementation was never part of the design.

Three H Solutions Group, a Dubai-based corporate training and HR consultancy, has built its model around a principle the industry routinely ignores: what happens after the classroom matters more than what happens inside it. Where a lot of training providers deliver a programme and move on, Three H Solutions structures engagements as partnerships with customers, ensuring implementation is baked in from the start. The firm's approach treats the post-training phase not as a clients responsibility but as the consultant's job.

The gap between learning and doing is well documented. Research consistently shows that without deliberate reinforcement, participants retain less than 20 per cent of training content within weeks. Yet the standard delivery / consultancy model stops at delivery. A two-day leadership workshop ends on day two. A team-building session wraps up when the ropes course does. The assumption is that motivated adults will simply apply what they've learned. They don't. Because application requires structure, accountability and often a change in organisational systems that no individual participant controls.

Three H Solutions operates in three areas: corporate training, human resource consulting and educational consulting. Across all three, the firm positions itself not as a vendor but as a partner in what it calls "human development". That framing shapes how engagements are scoped. Rather than selling standalone workshops, the company embeds follow-through mechanisms into the initial agreement. The exact form varies, but the principle holds: training without implementation support is incomplete work.

The range and scope of options available is extensive and can be blended into the structure with ease. There are free versions as well as paid versions, so its not about budgets or profits, the follow on can be structured-in even if the budget does not support it. Albeit, maybe not as extensively as it could be done, but surely effectively managed.

This isn't a question of adding a few reminder emails or a 90-day check-in call. It means designing programmes where the post-training phase has as much structure as the training itself. It means identifying the organisational friction points that will prevent new behaviours from taking hold and addressing them as part of the engagement. It means treating the client's internal systems, not just the participants' skills, as the intervention target.

Take team-building, an area where Three H Solutions offers formats ranging from dragon boat racing to water or horse-based exercises. The industry default is to treat these as experiential events: a day out of the office, some adrenaline, possibly a debrief, done. The assumption is that the metaphorical lessons (communication under pressure, trust in unfamiliar contexts) will somehow transfer back to quarterly planning meetings and project handovers. Three H Solutions' not only puts meat on the bone during the sessions, but links the experiential activity to specific workplace dynamics the client has identified in advance.

The firm also runs a 8 or 12-week leadership development journey, a format that acknowledges what most compressed programmes ignore: behavioural change takes time and repetition. Spreading development over two or three months allows for iteration, for applying a concept in the real work environment and then returning to refine it. It creates space for the discomfort that accompanies genuine skill-building, rather than the false confidence that comes from a weekend intensive.

The emphasis on partnership over transaction has commercial implications. It requires longer client relationships and more negotiation up front about what success looks like. It makes the sale harder because the scope is broader and the commitment deeper. But it also differentiates the firm in a market flooded with interchangeable workshops. Clients who have experienced the usual cycle of temporary enthusiasm followed by reversion to baseline are more receptive to a model that acknowledges the implementation gap and proposes to close it.

Uzair Hassan, the firm's CEO, has written extensively on the gap between HR rhetoric and reality, publishing pieces on cognitive dissonance in workplace culture, the "democratisation of knowledge" and what he calls "palpable mediocrity" in organisational life. The writing reflects a scepticism about surface-level interventions, a recognition that most corporate improvement efforts fail not because the ideas are wrong but because the follow-through is absent.

The training industry has a revenue model problem. Selling more days of training is easier than proving that last quarter's training worked. Until clients demand evidence of implementation, not just attendance sheets, most providers will keep delivering the former. Three H Solutions' approach suggests an alternative: treat implementation as the product, not the customer's problem. It's a harder sell, but it's honest work that pays off in the end.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/uzair-hassan-6451024/