Another factor in the ability category is opportunity to use. This is the extent to which trainees are given opportunities, so tasks, special projects, resources in the workplace to apply their learning. You'd think that this would be obvious that if company is investing in developing the people, then they need make sure they provide the work environment where that learning could be applied. Either through changes in the job, or the way of working, or new behaviors, stretch tasks, or access to new processes or systems, or supported you necessary resources. It continues to surprise us in our work, how often little thought has been given to how learning will be used on the job, after a learning program. People don't apply in practice what they've learnt immediately after a program. Then they continue to work as they always did and fail to change or adopt new behavior or apply new knowledge to their context, so there's little impact on performance. What are some of the reasons why opportunity to use may score low? We often see companies run programs that are future oriented, so the trainee may one day use their skills and knowledge. Currently, though, they do not have those responsibilities as part of their day-to-day job. A weakness in this factor, points to work situations which constrain a learners capacity to convert learning into effective performance. They're unable to change behavior at any value, and may become frustrated, and their motivation will surely wane over time. What are some of the likely causes of these problems? It could be that there's been inadequate transfer support structures and resources. This could be human, financial, or technical. Or there may have been a very ineffective action plan where people were very unclear about what they were supposed to do with their learning on returning to work. It may have been inadequate or poor understanding about how the content of training was going to be applied by those following the learning on their jobs. Or, the training was poorly designed and it fails to build the knowledge and skills needed to make the transfer leap from training to job performance. Some development programs try to include too much content. If there's too much, it cannot vastly affect opportunities to use what's been learnt on the job. There's simply too much for employees to remember, to manage, and apply.