Mon 23 Sep 2024
By Andrew Jacobs
The people function in an organisation – L&D, HR, OD, etc - have long struggled to demonstrate their effectiveness. Without demonstrating benefit to an organisation, the people function, and all its component parts are nothing more than a cost centre. The world has changed, and work has changed. Traditional methods of measurement, such as post-training surveys and quizzes, often fall short of providing meaningful insights into the true effectiveness of people, learning and culture programmes. These methods typically capture immediate reactions or short-term memory retention, leading to a skewed understanding of a programme’s success.
In an era where both work and learning have drastically evolved, it is imperative that the strategies we use to evaluate the effectiveness of our people and learning activities also meet the needs of modern organisations.
For example, we have historically been reliant on simple metrics like quiz scores and “happy sheets,” which only provide superficial data. These can lead to inflated success rates, since they measure attendee satisfaction or short-term recall, rather than the actual application of knowledge or long-term impact on job performance.
Within online work environments, we have seen participants gaming assessment activity with a focus on achieving high scores through completion and quizzing, rather than focusing on genuine engagement. This has undermined assessments and failed to produce true reflections of interventions’ effectiveness.
As the workplace has shifted towards more dynamic and integrated learning environments - where learning activity is embedded within daily tasks - there is a growing need for evaluation strategies which go beyond traditional metrics.
The focus for HR and people professionals must now be on outcomes and impact rather than just participation and completion rates. This shift requires us to reframe our approach to evaluation, moving away from participant metrics towards practical, actionable data that truly reflects the people function’s contribution to organisational performance.
There are a number of stages involved in making this happen:
1. Agree the principles of evaluation across the organisation
These principles have a number of functions. As well as explaining the ‘ground rules’ for measuring the people function’s activities, it publicises and creates partnerships across the organisation with key and influential stakeholders.
2. Agree an evaluation strategy
An effective evaluation strategy will begin with a clear understanding of what the organisation needs to know to enhance performance. This involves asking the critical questions to understand the organisation’s broader goals and objectives. Instead of starting with predefined people metrics or a wish list of ideal outcomes, the focus should be on identifying the key business performance indicators (KPIs) that are most relevant to success. By doing so, people professionals can ensure that their evaluation strategies are grounded in reality and tailored to the needs of the team, department, function and organisation.
Performance data is key
The most important element in rebuilding your evaluation and measurement activity is shifting your focus away from simple input and output metrics to performance data.
That means shifting from input and output data to outcome and impact measures:
- Input data will show how people enter and access the HR, people and learning activities
- Output data is centred on the exit activity of a user and what they do within the HR and people processes
- Outcome data is a way to identify what happens next, usually in the workplace, after the individual has completed the learning and HR elements. Outcome data is performance data.
- Impact data is where we can see what effects are created in the place where the person works.
Let’s take a look at absence management for example. Every organisation will have some form of absence management training for supervisors and managers. Irrespective of the sector and industry there will be some common questions which the people functions might ask to get a sense of what the metrics might look like?
Input and Output
- How many times does an individual complete sickness training?
- Which elements are completed most?
- Are specific elements, e.g. how to conduct return to work interviews, used more than others?
- Where do people go after they've done the module?
- Are they part of any groups sharing their experiences?
Outcome and Impact
- What is the baseline sickness across the organisation?
- What is the target?
- How are short-term and long-term absences managed?
- How many managers conduct return-to-work interviews and how effective are they?
- Are certain groups of employees 'sicker' than others?
- What is the value of sickness in teams across the organisation?
- How does absence impact on customer service at an organisational level?
- How is absence defined within the culture of the team, department or organisation?
Finding answers to just some of these questions will change the nature of your evaluation reporting. Being able to frame the content, activity, outputs, and effects in organisational terms and providing senior leaders with real-world data is a shift away from people being happy and compliant when completing mandated people activities.
As the workplace continues to evolve, so must the strategies we use to evaluate the effectiveness of people and learning initiatives. By moving beyond traditional metrics and adopting a more context-aware approach we can provide more meaningful insights into the impact of our programmes. This not only helps to demonstrate the value of HR and people to the organisation but also ensures that our initiatives are contributing to the overall success of the business.
If you are interested in measuring L&D impact, Dods Training offers a workshop as well as tailored consultancy services. For more information get in touch.
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