Measuring your change program is a really important activity to spend some time in. Most businesses, once the change has been complete, don’t necessarily look back and really understand have we achieved all the outcomes we set out to, and what’s our ROI.
So the Kirkpatrick evaluation model is a really effective simple framework for evaluating your change activity in your program overall. It basically follows four levels which go up in terms of complexity but also in terms of the value and impact they’re going to bring.
Level 1: Reaction- really just understanding did participants and the populations that went through this change program did they enjoy the experience, what was it like for them. That’s obviously really important, but we don’t just want to know that. We want to know whether skills and behaviors and adoption of the change were fully achieved and whether ultimately the business results that we were driving for were also achieved.
Level 2: Learning- did new skills and behaviors get achieved as a result of the change program, whatever we set out in that sense? We need to understand whether that learning has really been adopted.
Level 3: Impact- really seeing the evidence of whether behavior and ways of working are really changing on the ground in terms of being applied day to day to people’s working lives. So they may have understood, you know, they may have learned what they needed to do differently and enjoyed it, but actually, they’re not necessarily doing it all the time or when we need to, and we need to see therefore what’s causing this lack of adoption, you know, what do we need to go back and look at.
Level 4: Results- the most critical level where we’re actually trying to understand did this change program positively impact business results in the way that we wanted. So the most complex because it can be really difficult to ascertain with real certainty whether the activity of the change program was the thing that delivered new business results if you have new business results. So, you know, it can be quite difficult to do that at an exact level and to rule out anything else, so market changes, client changes, economic environment, etc., but it’s still really important to try to pinpoint areas where you can draw that direct relationship between change activity and the business results.
In terms of evaluation methods: consider focus groups, interviews, surveys, 360 feedback, looking at assessments and getting people to take assessments, customer feedback etc. And obviously, ultimately looking at performance and business data and the KPIs that will really demonstrate the change.
For further detail sign-up to the Change Proud programme now.