Why HR Leaders Should Invest in Program Evaluation

 As we approach the second half of the year, many HR teams are likely already in the early stages of planning and budgeting for 2024. However, with so much focus on “what’s next,” leaders may be forgetting to take a step back and ensure that the programs they’ve invested in for 2023 are achieving their intended outcomes.

HR professionals are tasked with being highly strategic when it comes to implementing new initiatives for their organization. But even the most well-designed programs and policies are subject to factors that companies can’t control. Employee preferences are constantly evolving, external forces often come into play, and the demographic characteristics of your workforce can drastically shift in a short period of time.

HR leaders know they need to be more agile — new research from isolved reveals that 1 out of 3 say their team could improve on responding quicker to the changing needs of their business and employees. Regularly aligning your initiatives with your company’s priorities can help, as can seeking out employee feedback. But it’s also critical that you evaluate your programs, even though there’s often a reluctance to do this.

It’s not that HR leaders aren’t gathering any data. Isolved’s report shows that 41% will invest in technologies that support employee surveys this year and 40% will invest in HR analytics tools. But while leaders clearly recognize the importance of gathering workforce insights, many aren’t putting the same effort into evaluating their programs. Reasons for this include concerns about finding negative outcomes, confusion about how to collect data, or a lack of resources or support for conducting an evaluation.

Insufficient or poorly-executed program evaluation could be one of the reasons why a growing number of employees are dissatisfied with their company’s programs and offerings. In fact, employees' satisfaction with their benefits fell to 61% in 2023, down from 64% in 2022 and reaching its lowest point in the past decade, according to data from March.

These statistics are concerning, but the good news is that there’s no better time than the present to determine whether your programs are achieving their intended outcomes. The mid-year mark is actually an ideal time for program evaluation — you’ll have several months of data to review, and plenty of time to make adjustments for the remainder of the year and plan for next year.

In today’s article, I’ll describe the benefits of program evaluation and the 6 steps HR leaders can take to effectively evaluate their programs. I’ll also bring this to life with example goals and metrics you might use to evaluate your company’s learning & development program. Let’s take a look.