How to Get Managers to Actually Release People for Training(By Vineet Raj)
Why managers say no
From a manager’s position, releasing someone for training is a visible, immediate cost with an uncertain, delayed benefit. Most managers are measured on delivery, not on attendance, and they rarely had a say in choosing the training. “I can’t spare anyone” is a rational response to that system, not resistance to learning.
Yet the research consistently points to the manager as the biggest lever on whether training works at all. Reviews and meta-analyses of training transfer find that supervisor support and the wider work environment shape whether new skills are actually used on the job (Baldwin & Ford, 1988; Blume et al., 2010), and a manager’s attitude affects how ready people are to learn before the program even starts (Colquitt et al., 2000).
Most training doesn’t stick without them
The stakes become clearer when you look at what happens to training over time. In a survey of training professionals across 150 organizations, Saks and Belcourt (2006) found that respondents estimated 62% of employees applied what they had learned immediately after training — falling to 44% after six months and 34% after one year. Those figures are estimates rather than direct measures, but they reflect a pattern that most L&D practitioners recognize: without reinforcement, the majority of training value fades within a year.
The manager is the person best placed to slow that decline. Brinkerhoff and Montesino (1995) tested this in a corporate setting, comparing trainees who received management support interventions — conversations with their managers before and after training — with those who did not. Trainees who had that manager involvement reported higher use of the trained skills on the job.
Salas, Tannenbaum, Kraiger, and Smith-Jentsch (2012), in a widely cited review of what matters in training practice, make the same point systematically: effective training is not a single event but a process with critical activities before, during, and after the program — and many of the before-and-after activities sit with the participant’s manager.
The implication is direct. Getting managers to release people isn’t just an attendance problem. A manager who is persuaded to release someone but stays disengaged has removed the obstacle without adding the support. The goal is not just their permission; it’s their participation.
What actually works
Make the manager the first participant. Before the program, run a short briefing — thirty minutes is often enough — for the managers of nominated participants. Cover what the program addresses, what their team members will practice, and what the manager will be asked to do afterward. Managers who understand what the training is for are more likely to protect the time, and far more likely to reinforce it
Start with their problem, not your program. Most L&D teams don’t see a team’s day-to-day challenges closely enough to diagnose them for the manager, and managers know it. So don’t pitch the program; ask the manager first. One question before nominations works well: “What is the one people challenge in your team that, if it improved, would make your next quarter easier?” Then show where the program addresses it and be honest where it doesn’t. Training built around a problem the manager has named is far easier to release people than training built around L&D’s calendar.
Design for less time away. A two-day offsite is a hard ask in any delivery-driven team. Shorter, spaced sessions — a few focused hours at a time, with application tasks in between — are easier to release people for and, given what the learning research shows about spaced practice and retention, often more effective. Formats that fit around the work tend to get more consistent attendance than formats that require the work to stop. But spaced journeys bring their own problem: attendance drops after the first session, as work pressure returns and the novelty wears off. Treat every session after the first as one you have to win again. Lock all dates into calendars at the start, give participants a reason to come back (a task to bring, a peer they report to, a problem from their own work that the next session tackles), and track drop-off session by session so you can see exactly where the journey loses people.
Build in a pre-training conversation. Following Brinkerhoff and Montesino (1995), give managers a simple structure for a fifteen-minute conversation with each participant before the program: Why are you attending? What do you want to be able to do differently? Where will you try it first? That one conversation changes the participant’s motivation and the manager’s sense of ownership.Build in a pre-training conversation. Following Brinkerhoff and Montesino (1995), give managers a simple structure for a fifteen-minute conversation with each participant before the program: Why are you attending? What do you want to be able to do differently? Where will you try it first? That one conversation changes the participant’s motivation and the manager’s sense of ownership.
Give the manager a defined role afterward. Agree on one or two check-ins — for example, two and six weeks after the program — where the manager asks what the participant has applied and where they are stuck. This is the reinforcement that the Saks and Belcourt (2006) decline curve argues is missing in most organizations.Give the manager a defined role afterward. Agree on one or two check-ins — for example, two and six weeks after the program — where the manager asks what the participant has applied and where they are stuck. This is the reinforcement that the Saks and Belcourt (2006) decline curve argues is missing in most organizations.
Make it count for the manager. Most organizations don’t reward managers for developing their people, so most managers don’t prioritize it. Everything above works better with incentives behind it, and fragile goodwill without them. Work with HR leadership to make people development part of how managers are assessed: a goal on building team capability, a line in the appraisal on reinforcing the programs their people attend, or recognition for the managers whose teams apply the most after training. When it shows up in their own review, releasing people stops being a favor to L&D and becomes part of the job.
Plan with the business calendar, not against it. Scheduling programs during quarter-end, appraisal season, or a major release guarantee dropout. Building the learning calendar with business heads, around their peak periods, removes the most predictable reason managers say no
Make release visible. Track nominations against attendance by team and share it with leadership — not to shame individual managers, but to make the pattern visible. When senior leaders see that a team consistently nominates people who never attend, the conversation about priorities happens where it should: between the manager and their own leader.
New ways to keep managers in the learning journey What this means for how L&D should approach the problem
Give managers a part in the journey, not just a seat at the launch. Invite each participant’s manager into one session to share how they handle the skill being practiced, or a time they got it wrong. A five-minute slot turns the manager from an audience into a contributor, and managers rarely pull people out of a session they are part of.
Run a short manager huddle alongside each session. Before every participant session, hold a 30-minute huddle for the managers: what their people will practice this time, and one question to ask in their next one-on-one. Managers then move through the journey with their teams, instead of hearing about it at the end.
Send a two-line nudge after every session. What the team worked on today, and one thing to look for this week. It takes the manager thirty seconds to read and keeps the journey on their radar between sessions, which is exactly when people fall off.
Agree a three-way contract on day one. A single page signed by the participant, their manager and L&D: dates protected, two check-ins, and one real work problem the participant will apply the learning to. A commitment made in writing at the start is harder to quietly drop in week six.
Close the journey in front of the manager. End with a short showcase where each participant presents one change they have made to their manager and skip-level leader. The manager sees a result they can take credit for, and the participant has a reason to finish.
Let managers compare notes with each other. Share, within a function, which managers held their check-ins and how their teams are applying what they learned. Managers tend to respond more to how they look next to their peers than to reminders from L&D
The takeaway
When managers don’t release people for training, the instinct is to treat it as a compliance problem. The research suggests treating it as a design problem. Managers are rational: they protect delivery because that’s what they are measured on, and they rarely see a return from training they had no part in shaping. Yet the same research shows that manager support before and after a program is one of the most important factors in whether training changes behavior at all. The organizations that solve the attendance problem tend to do it by giving managers a real role — a briefing before, a conversation at the start, a check-in afterward — and by designing programs that fit around the work rather than against it. Get the manager involved, and the release usually follows.
References
Baldwin, T. T., & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 63–105.
Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065–1105.
Brinkerhoff, R. O., & Montesino, M. U. (1995). Partnerships for training transfer: Lessons from a corporate study. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 6(3), 263–274.
Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Noe, R. A. (2000). Toward an integrative theory of training motivation: A meta-analytic path analysis of 20 years of research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(5), 678–707.
Saks, A. M., & Belcourt, M. (2006). An investigation of training activities and transfer of training in organizations. Human Resource Management, 45(4), 629–648.
Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kraiger, K., & Smith-Jentsch, K. A. (2012). The science of training and development in organizations: What matters in practice. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(2), 74–101.