Your employees aren't learning much in those training sessions you're paying for.

That's not an opinion—it's cognitive science. When people sit passively absorbing information without applying it, most of that knowledge evaporates within days. The 70-20-10 framework didn't create this reality—it simply describes what cognitive science has confirmed: humans develop skills primarily through repeated practice, not passive listening.

The 70-20-10 framework says that 70% of learning happens through on-the-job experiences, 20% through informal coaching, and 10% through formal classroom training.

The 70-20-10 model has some critics. The numbers are too neat, they say. The research wasn't rigorous enough. It's oversimplified.

The 70-20-10 model isn't meant to be a scientific law—it's a practical framework that captures something most organizations still struggle to act on: people learn by doing, not by sitting in classrooms. The exact percentages might be debatable, but the principle behind them is solid.

Here's why the 70-20-10 framework still matters, and why dismissing it is costing your organization real money.

What 70-20-10 Really Means (and Doesn't Mean)

Back in the 1980s, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership found a pattern in how executives developed their skills, and the pattern became known as the 70-20-10 rule.

Yes, the numbers are suspiciously neat-and-tidy. I grant that to the critics. But, again, they miss the point:

The numbers are meant to be directional, not decimal-point precise.

Focusing too much on the exactness of the percentages misses the larger truth they represent: most long-term learning happens outside formal training settings.

The underlying principle of the 70-20-10 framework aligns with 130+ years of cognitive research.

 100 years earlier, in 1885. 70-80% of new information fades within 24 hours without reinforcement. After a month, it's nearly all gone. This "forgetting curve" explains why one-time training sessions yield such poor memory retention. Today, 

 that developing behavioral habits takes about 10 weeks of consistent practice. For work-related skills, these repetitions are most effective when they occur in the actual context where the skill will be used.

Development is about behavior change. If training is forgotten and doesn't lead to behavior change, it's falling short. The Forgetting Curve tells us why employees forget.

So, how do we fight this natural forgetting? Application, repetition, and context—all elements of on-the-job learning. The 70-20-10 model is simply describing where behavior change happens.

You'd never know most learning happens on the job if you looked at a typical L&D budget. Most resources go to classroom sessions and e-learning modules, training that takes employees out of their work. If the 70-20-10 model is even close to accurate, the budgets are backwards.

The 70-20-10 model reminds us that learning happens best when people tackle real challenges in the workplace, receive feedback, make mistakes, and try again. Learning happens through the daily experience of work itself.

If organizations want to drive real behavior change, they can't just rely on pulling employees out of their work to sit through training sessions. The solution lies in flipping this approach: deliver learning where work actually happens.

The most effective approach to on-the-job training involves three key elements:

Brief, practical activities that employees complete during their regular work. Think of coaching-style assignments that take less than a minute to understand but create practice opportunities throughout the day.

Concrete, measurable challenges like "Decline one meeting this week where your presence isn't required" or "Reduce a recurring meeting you own to 25 minutes and conclude on time." Very simple examples. But when an entire department practices better meeting habits, the results can be measured.

Behavior-focused measurement that tracks actual impact rather than simply completion rates—measure time saved, track self-assessments, and gather manager observations about behavior change in their direct reports. Activities should target behaviors that are specific, measurable, and meaningful to the business.

The goal is measuring how learning activities translate into actual workplace behaviors and performance improvements. This practical measurement approach provides talent leaders with concrete evidence of learning effectiveness, demonstrating the business impact of their L&D initiatives.

The 70-20-10 model serves as the practical, easy-to-remember version of what cognitive research has been telling us all along. It provides a clear framework that helps organizations focus their efforts where learning most naturally happens: on the job.

The numbers might be approximate, but the principle of 70-20-10 is sound: if you want real behavior change, you need to move learning out of the classroom and into the workplace.

For talent leaders looking to drive meaningful performance improvements, the imperative is clear: it's time to realign your L&D investments with how people actually learn. The organizations that bridge this gap first will gain a significant competitive advantage through faster skill development, higher engagement, and measurable business impact.

Most employee learning doesn’t happen in training sessions—it happens on the job through real-world practice and feedback. The 70-20-10 framework captures this truth: people learn best by doing, not by passively consuming information. To drive behavior change and business impact, organizations must shift training into the flow of work.

The Truth About Learning: Why 70-20-10 Actually Matters

Why 70-20-10 Actually Matters

A leading financial services organization came to us with a problem their expensive leadership training hadn't solved: talented employees kept leaving, citing "limited development opportunities" in exit interviews. The painful irony? Their managers had just completed training on career development conversations.

They needed managers to actually change their behavior, not just understand the concepts. We partnered to create a solution that would transform career conversations from annual checkboxes into regular habits—without pulling anyone away from their daily work.

Exit interview data painted a clear picture. Employees weren't leaving for better pay or perks. They were leaving because managers weren't having meaningful career conversations, despite knowing they should.

Employees frequently cited limited career development opportunities as their reason for leaving. This was particularly concerning given the company's business model, where long-term employee retention directly impacts customer relationships and operational continuity.

Managers simply weren't consistently having effective career conversations.

The business impact was significant. With turnover costs ranging from 

, each departure represented substantial lost investment. More importantly, they were losing high performers who simply wanted to grow.

Traditional training approaches had failed because they addressed knowledge, not behavior. The company needed managers to develop new habits in their actual work environment.

We partnered to design a 72-day program targeting specific behavior changes. No generic content or one-size-fits-all approaches—every activity was crafted to address their unique challenge.

Working closely with their talent team, we rapidly developed activities that managers could practice during regular interactions:

"Ask one direct report this week: What work energizes you most, and how can we build on that?"

"After discussing career goals, send a follow-up email summarizing what you heard"

"Connect one team member with someone who could support their development"

Each activity took less than a minute to understand but created real practice opportunities. Our AI-powered platform delivered personalized sequences to each manager based on their role, team size, and current skill level.

The 72-day timeline wasn't arbitrary—it aligned with research showing 

. By embedding practice into daily work, managers developed skills without disrupting operations.

Together, we established clear success metrics from the start. Setting clear metrics to measure is a crucial first step, since it helps 

. This wasn't about training satisfaction scores—it was about observable behavior change.

Baseline behaviors through initial assessments

Manager and employee perspectives on change

54.5% of managers showed measurable improvement

 in career conversation behaviors. They weren't just learning about development—they were actively practicing it.

 in managers viewing career conversations as valuable work rather than administrative tasks.

 in managers connecting employees with actual development opportunities.

 in career conversations positively impacting employee development.

Managers reported breakthrough moments from these conversations. As one shared, they discovered a high performer who'd been considering leaving due to lack of growth opportunities. Through career conversations, they identified the employee's interest in management and created a development path. Another found their star FSR wanted to become "FSR of the year" and built a specific plan to help achieve that goal.

The behavior change created immediate business value. Employees who experienced regular career conversations reported higher engagement and clearer growth paths. Over time, as managers practice these new behaviors the value is measurable improved retention rates.

Career development transformed from an HR initiative to "how we work." Managers made it part of their regular rhythm, not something squeezed in during annual reviews.

The partnership demonstrated that sustainable behavior change happens through consistent practice in real work contexts, not traditional training events.

Three elements made this partnership successful:

Targeted on-the-job activities addressing their specific challenges, not generic leadership content

Seamless workflow integration allowing managers to practice without leaving their desks

Continuous measurement proving behavior change and business impact

This financial services company proved that when you focus on changing specific behaviors through on-the-job practice, managers don't just learn—they transform how they lead.

The question for other organizations facing retention challenges: What manager behaviors need to change, and how will you help them practice differently?

Ready to transform manager behaviors in your organization? 

to discuss how Flint's activity-based learning platform can address your specific business challenges.

Learn how a 72-day behavior change program transformed manager-employee career conversations, reducing turnover and improving retention at a major financial firm.

Case Study: How a Financial Services Company Transformed Manager Behavior in 72 Days

Transformed Manager Behavior in 72 Days

When Talent leaders invest in training they expect skilled employees and measurable ROI. Instead, they get employees who forget most of the content in just 24 hours, despite 

This isn't a content quality issue, and it’s not a motivation problem. It happens because most training ignores how human memory works.

Human brains simply forget most new information they receive—and quickly. It’s called the Forgetting Curve. The steepest decline happens after just 24 hours, the day after the training session they sat through.

Most training design ignores this basic cognitive science. It's time to stop throwing so much of the budget at training that doesn’t lead to lasting behavior change. Instead, start investing in methods designed for the way human brains learn.

 quantified just how quickly people forget. People retain only 56% of new information after one hour, 36% after nine hours, and a mere 21% after 31 days without reinforcement.

research still confirms the Forgetting Curve

. Memory needs time and repetition to stick. The biological processes that create lasting knowledge simply can't happen during one-and-done training events.

Traditional training approaches often end without means to reinforce the learning, falling victim to the Forgetting Curve. It's like planting seeds and never watering them.

The financial impact extends beyond wasted training budgets. The lack of employee development shows up throughout the business. Gallup estimates that low engagement cost $438 billion in 2024, with much of that due to managers who were not being developed properly (

It doesn't matter if you're training compliance officers or factory supervisors, sales teams or software engineers—without repetition and practice, most training content is forgotten in 

The general lack of training measurement makes this even worse. 

 of companies track the business impact of training. Without tracking what happens after training ends, organizations continue investing in approaches that don't work. This creates a vicious cycle: wasted budgets lead to skepticism about training investments, which leads to reduced support for learning initiatives, which perpetuates unchanged behaviors and persistent skill gaps.

The solution lies in what Ebbinghaus called the "spacing effect"—distributed practice over time produces dramatically better retention than concentrated sessions.

Activity-based, on-the-job learning, where practicing new skills is spaced out and continuous over time, creates a spacing effect. It's an opportunity to drive real behavior change.

When employees practice new skills in their actual work environment, the brain forms richer associations and deeper memory traces. The spacing between practice sessions allows for the biological processes that create lasting behavioral change.

, which recognizes that 70% of workplace learning happens through on-the-job experience rather than formal training sessions.

 have shown significant memory improvements when using spaced versus massed practice. Short, frequent interactions with new concepts, applied immediately in real work situations, create the repetition and context that memory requires.

The brain doesn't distinguish between "training time" and "work time"—it simply responds to consistent, meaningful practice.

Building Memory-Friendly Learning Systems

Organizations that work with memory science rather than against it can transform their entire approach to skill development.

Instead of pulling employees out of work for training events, they embed learning activities directly into daily workflows where practice happens naturally.

Here's what happens when you move learning into the flow of work:

Simple activities reinforce learning in the flow of work, actually changing behavior. Activities can be short—less than a minute to understand—but then applied same day, providing the practice that builds habits. Rather than comprehensive training sessions followed by months of nothing, fight the Forgetting Curve with bite-sized, on-the-job activities.

Talent leaders get new measurement tools to prove the value of training. Focus these activities on a measurable outcome that matters to the business: safety audit success rates, improved mortgage renewal rates or meetings booked, etc. The learning that matters is the kind that shows up in changed work habits and measurable business outcomes.

A new opportunity to personalize training opens by tailoring activities for each learner. Using new software tools and generative AI, it’s possible to scale training personalization in brand new ways, driving increased engagement, and improving each employee’s skill to make a measurable impact on the business.

Organizations that leverage memory science can achieve a training advantage. Better for employees and the business. Win-win.

When learning integrates seamlessly into work, skill-building becomes continuous rather than episodic. Employees develop habits through authentic practice rather than artificial scenarios.

Knowledge sticks when it's immediately relevant and repeatedly reinforced.

The Forgetting Curve isn't your enemy—at least it doesn’t need to be. Leverage this cognitive reality to redesign training to be more effective in real life, not just to check the right boxes. Stop fighting human memory and start designing learning experiences that work exactly the way the brain learns best. Get more out of your training budget.

Most corporate training is quickly forgotten because it doesn’t align with how people actually retain information. To drive real behavior change, learning must be continuous, personalized, and embedded into daily work. Aligning training with how memory works leads to better outcomes for employees and the business.


The Forgetting Curve Is Eating Your Training Budget: Why Most Corporate Learning Vanishes in 24 Hours

Why Most Corporate Learning Vanishes in 24 Hours

Accessibility isn't an afterthought, it's in the design.

Accessible training documentation has become an industry standard. This means ensuring that a Microsoft Word document or PDF meets 

 in terms of its readability: visible contrast, organization, and order.

Now, if only there were a way to take any published document and push a button to make it accessible! Unfortunately, despite some really great tools that can take you most of the way, there is no magic button.

That's why at Flint, we build accessibility into our planning and processes for all the training materials we create for our clients and their learners. This is much more than making sure our eLearning modules and supporting documents can be read by assistive software tools like ZoomText or JAWS reader. Sometimes, it means looking at training materials in a different way from what you might expect.

Take infographics, for example. Infographics take detailed or complex information and metrics and summarize the key data points in small chunks laid out in conjunction with eye-catching supporting graphics. As they are easy to read at a glance, they're a great way to communicate information quickly, and are also extremely popular.

With that rise in popularity comes the need to make infographics accessible. Infographics are a special kind of document in that they are created with visual learners in mind. This means that the process to make them accessible requires planning from the top, in the design phase.

Here are some tips and considerations for designing and creating accessible infographics.

Don't create your infographic and then try to make it accessible later. This will likely lead to redesign and redevelopment. Design the infographic with accessibility in mind from the beginning.

2. Text-Based Communication of Key Information

Communicate key information in text form rather than in graphic form. Though this might sound counterintuitive to the goal of an infographic, it's essential to ensure that all learners receive the same important information. The graphics support the text, not the other way around. A pie chart is a good example: while it's visually useful to see the different sizes of the pie slices, the percentages are the key information. The pie chart visually supports the data.

In the design, ensure colour contrast, font sizes, text and graphic layouts, and object layering will meet accessibility guidelines. If your infographic is created using a tool such as Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, try to avoid a lot of layering of text over graphics. When text intermingles with graphics --- especially coloured graphics --- there is a risk of issues arising due to lack of contrast.

Infographics are unique because the content rarely conforms to the typical linear left-to-right, top-to-bottom format. Take a wheel- or cycle-style infographic. An assistive tool might not know in what order to read the text captions. Ideally, try to design for left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading. However, if that's not possible, use a tool such as Adobe Acrobat to manually set the reading order of text that doesn't appear in a linear order.

Publish infographics as PDFs and use an application such as Adobe Acrobat to apply accessibility formatting. Here, you can apply alt text (image descriptions) to images if necessary, keeping descriptions concise. You can also ensure the reading order of headings and body text is properly applied.

Once you've formatted the infographic for accessibility, test your document using assistive devices such as ZoomText and JAWS. Even though you've anticipated the learner experience and designed the infographic to be accessible, testing ensures that the bugs are worked out before the document is finally published and delivered to the learners.

Just like any project we undertake at Flint, planning and design before developing and publishing infographic documents is the smoothest way to meet accessibility standards, ensuring a positive learning experience for all users. 

 if you need assistance in creating accessible graphics for your next learning project. We look forward to discussing it with you!

Infographics are a great way to communicate information quickly, but they need to be accessible. Here are some tips and considerations for designing accessible infographics.

6 Tips for Creating Accessible Infographics

Accessible Infographics

It’s no stretch to say that it’s harder to keep people’s attention nowadays. With the current and upcoming generations of employees having YouTube and TikTok at their fingertips, learners have rapidly decreasing attention spans – some 

Now, more than ever, it’s important that L&D strategies grab learners’ attention and give them actionable help, rather than having them read lots of content and try to figure out how to apply it. Give learners what they need in a way that they want to receive it and can actually implement it.

So, with that in mind, here are four essential tactics to elevate your L&D for current and future learners’ needs:

Asking for learner feedback on their course experience is a vital part of the L&D process. Creating action points based on learner feedback is even more valuable.

Each learner has different circumstances and situations they come across each day. It may be advantageous to understand any pain points that they have during training and share some suggestions for improving the experience.

Especially in a post-pandemic era, people need people. Hybrid workers need to be able to work easily with each other, bounce off ideas and feel heard—no matter where they are working from.

Training can be a great way to encourage collaboration and keep the conversation flowing between teams. Social learning is a helpful and modern strategy that you should implement in your L&D plans, and really leans into the 20% of the 70/20/10 model.

3. Keep the connections alive through mentorship programs

It’s easy to feel disconnected from co-workers or managers in a fully or semi-remote workplace. By being creative, L&D experts use training and collaborative development to keep the connection between leaders and teams alive.

 is an important component of any workplace, and when partnered with courses, it can be a great tool to advance an employee in their job and career. It also helps break down silos and ensure structured time between senior and junior associates. Mentorship programs are particularly 

, who are the majority of the workforce today.

Investing in your leaders to help foster a culture of growth and development goes a long way. In remote settings, it’s much harder to foster employee engagement, so giving your organizational leaders specific, actionable tasks to help build their teams can go a long way.

All learning solutions – whether hybrid, in-person, or remote – should focus on helping learners implement training concepts into their everyday work. By extending learning beyond the classroom and giving employees actionable, tangible tasks to complete that reinforce formal learning, you can ensure sustained implementation of training concepts.

The best way to do this is through on-the-job activities—tangible and bite-sized tasks employees can do in their day-to-day to improve skills and capabilities while they carry out their roles.

Pushing the boundaries of learning beyond the classroom and integrating it into an employee’s workday is the best way to ensure long-term behavior change and help prove L&D’s impact to real business metrics.

Want to learn more about how Fortune 5000 companies are implementing these kinds of approaches? 

 to discuss innovative and effective learning strategies for your organization.

Boost L&D strategies with learner feedback, collaborative learning, mentorship, and practical tasks. Equip today's fast-paced learners for success!

Four Essential Tactics to Elevate Your L&D

Elevate Your L&D

We’re not quite in a recession, but it sure feels like it. Over the past year, company budgets have been cut in many industries, and the sad truth is that L&D is often one of the first to go.

Budget cutting is like pruning a tree: it has to be done so your organization can thrive in the long run. But it’s not always easy, and where and how much to cut can become a complicated calculation, especially when you’re introducing a new initiative.

Learning and Development departments around the world are making plans to keep their budgets from being over-pruned, and these plans need to be presented to the executives holding the shears. Below are a few tips that can help you convince your executives that your branch bears fruit:

1. Link Learning & Development to Wider Company Goals

Demonstrating how your learning programs directly connect to the company’s overall goals is one of the most important steps in getting executive buy-in. You will need to know your company’s strategy and in exactly which direction your company is heading.

By showing how your learning programs will contribute to these goals and support the company strategy, you prove you understand the role of your department as part of the bigger picture.

 When presenting your learning plan, make sure the link is super clear: don’t skip steps because the merits of the tool you want to use seem obvious to you. But you need to be conscious. Although you shouldn’t omit the obvious, it’s also not a good idea to spend too much time talking about the technical merits of an authoring tool, for example. Your executives are busy, so stick to the most important points.

Risk aversion can be one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome for new initiatives. This is especially true if your company is going through budget cuts. Nonetheless, there are a couple of things you can do to show your executives that you understand risk and are asking for a calculated risk rather than a reckless one.

Strong external references, past performance metrics, and a clear backup strategy are the best ways to prove your understanding. Having this data will let you put together a clear risk-management strategy that includes the thinking behind every decision you make, clear signals that identify poor performance quickly, and clear exit points if your backup plan doesn’t seem to be working.

While learner engagement, progress, and enjoyment are all critical factors, they are difficult to measure and connect to a clear return on investment (ROI). However, there are several things that can be immediately linked to metrics, such as employee productivity, job performance, and efficacy. Training is linked to real organizational needs, so developing SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, Time Based) for your initiative can help you demonstrate how training will support your company’s overall strategy.

A key component to uncovering the true outcome of a learning program is A/B testing. Without testing your programs, it’s nearly impossible to isolate training from other variables and show real-world impacts.

However, even though other industries like marketing have taken this important step, most of the L&D industry hasn’t made A/B testing a common practice. In the current climate of budget cuts, it’s necessary to innovate the way L&D is approached, providing an opportunity to explore how A/B testing can take training to the next level and save your budget from the executive pruners.

If you are looking for ways to prove the value of your learning programs, contact us to learn more about how top Fortune 5000 Companies are leveraging new and innovative ways to prove training ROI.

Convincing executives to invest in L&D during budget cuts: align learning goals, manage risk, and showcase measurable impact.

Three Tools to Get Executive Buy-In for Learning and Development

Learning and Development

Millennials currently represent about 50% of the global workforce, and in the next five years they will come to dominate 75% of it. This generational shift means we need to come up with innovative ways to train our workforce to upskill and reskill those set to take over.

So, what exactly are millennials looking for? Their needs differ vastly from those of Baby Boomers and Gen X. What will keep them motivated to continue to build on their skillset?

Creating exciting, dynamic learning plans for millennial learners requires careful thought and consideration. Captivating learning involves more than animations, infographics, and flashy effects.

Millennials grew up with digital technology, they’ve seen it all, and it’s increasingly hard to give them something fresh and attention-grabbing. Here are three training techniques to keep them engaged:

Why does gamification work? It’s simple. Each time the learner reaches a new achievement level, they feel a rush of excitement and pleasure — think points, levels, badges, and leaderboards.

Thanks to gamification, the learner’s brain gets the message that the learning they just did is worth pursuing for more than just the sake of completing an eLearning course.

What’s happening in the brain and body is the release of various feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Think of it like a runner’s high. The gamification of eLearning creates positive associations with learning and compliance training, as learners are rewarded along the way.

Let’s face it. Gone are the days of long classroom training or eLearning modules. The current generation is used to bite-sized content that they can walk through at their own pace, in the corners of their time.

Microlearning reduces seat time while decreasing time to on-the-job application. When bite-sized learning content is easily accessible and digestible, learners can take it on in their own time, at their own pace.

In this approach, each piece of content generally addresses only 1-2 learning objectives, as opposed to the 5 or 6 typical of a standard hour-long module. Typically, microlearning vignettes don’t exceed 10-minute lessons — and even that is sometimes pushing it.

According to the findings of a survey on Learning and Development professionals, 94% of those surveyed said that they prefer microlearning to traditional eLearning courses because their learners prefer it.

Taking a microlearning approach can also help reduce overall seat time, keeping learners on the job and in the flow of their work much better than traditional learning modalities – saving the business money.

By breaking learning up into smaller pieces, there’s also more room for targeted application that helps differentiate and highlight key concepts better than leaving learners with a wall of text.

As a generation, millennials are already inundated with various digital media competing for their attention, and many have had too much of it. ELearning often doesn’t hit home the way it used to, even if interactive or gamified elements are used to their full effect.

People learn by doing, and millennials are no different. It’s a principle that we’ve held dear in the L&D industry for a long time, but in many cases, it can be hard to implement.

By taking an activity-based approach, you can help your people engage with others and learn where we know they do so the best — on the job.

According to the 70/20/10 model of learning, 70% of learning happens in job-related experiences. It only makes sense to invest most of our efforts to maximize learning in the flow of work.

On-the-job activity-based learning also opens a whole new world where proving the ROI of your efforts is within reach. By tacking activities onto existing learning programs and running A/B tests, you can prove with high confidence where the true impacts and value lie.

It is also simple to implement as this approach can be seamlessly overlaid on top of formal training to help reinforce key skills and practices in the flow of learners’ work.

This way, learning is not left behind in the classroom, and learners have actionable takeaways that help them implement the valuable theory you have already given them.

Interested in how companies like Purolator, Cummins, Sandals, and Softchoice are implementing these types of approaches and proving ROI?

Engaging millennial learners: Gamification, microlearning, and activity-based approaches create captivating training experiences.