Given that 90% of learned knowledge is forgotten within a week, applying learned skills correctly in the workplace is nothing short of a tricky task. To best apply skills in the workplace, identify those which your organisation needs, why you need them, and then figure out how employees learn best.  
 
Tertiary training or certification teaches potential recruits a host of skills, but these aren’t universally applicable to all organisations. Skills is a broad term with many subsets, some of which can overlap. Every organisation has a number of baseline skills, with specific skills for each department.  
 
Consider how each skill will be applied in the workplace, what issue they address and how they will be learned. If you don’t consider how a skill will be learned (factoring in existing workloads and schedules), you might waste time designing training programs that employees are too busy to devote time to. 
 
Skills can be divided into two distinct groups: 
 

While technical (aka hard) skills are the foundation of an organisation, transferrable (i.e., soft) skills are the heart. One is not more crucial than the other, but rather each makes the other better.  
 
Consider the 70:20:10 model. Learning is 70% experiential, 20% social and 10% comes via formal training. So, if 90% of learning happens on the job, it’s important to use this to apply new skills.  
 
Learning in the flow of work is a newer but increasingly popular L&D phenomenon. The aim is to make learning part of our day-to-day jobs. It essentially seeks to make learning a ubiquitous yet almost invisible part of the workday. Also dubbed experiential learning, it can be driven in 3 distinct ways:  

• Encourage collaboration: With 20% of learning done via social interaction, creating opportunities for peer-led learning is vital. Soft skills are reinforced quicker through peer-to-peer communication. Mentoring, coaching, shadowing, secondments and job rotations are all examples of experiential learning that is reliant on knowledge sharing.
• Refine workplace culture: Experiential learning won’t survive in a hostile environment. Building a growth mindset in your workforce is the clearest path to achieving both organisational and learning goals. Be transparent about the goals of training as this shows employees the value in their efforts.
• Incorporate microlearning: Microlearning is a short (usually no longer than 7 minutes) and focused form of training. It’s fairly active in that it promotes performing an action to reinforce what is being taught. It helps to reduce the disengagement that comes from more traditional learning forms.

For a more in-depth look at applying skills in the workplace, have a read of the full article.