1. Introduction

Any form of evaluation must take account of the success of the whole process from Workforce Planning right through to Career Development.  Evaluating the success of individual stages of the way you lead, manage and develop your people provides a basis to review the effectiveness and value of your practices.

This section covers a variety of measures.

An Annual Staff Survey is a useful way to gauge employee attitudes and satisfaction within the business on a wide variety of topics including:

  • Understanding the business.
  • Understanding their role.
  • Working relationships at line management, team or departmental level.
  • Training and development.
  • Health and wellbeing.

You can find more useful information on employee engagement by visiting CIPD https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement (Registration required)

If your business has a large number of employees you may wish to outsource survey design and analysis.  Alternatively you can design and distribute small-scale surveys using online templates that are widely available.

Similarly, regular staff appraisals or performance reviews will give you an indication of the success of your people strategies.

2. Workforce Planning

The success of your workforce planning can best be measured through comparing your company’s current and previous year’s data, analysing trends, changes and potential causes.  You could look at:

  • Staff turnover rates.
  • Sickness absence levels.
  • Quality defects due to human error.
  • New / repeat business data.
  • Accidents at work and near misses.
  • Financial data (profitability, turnover, etc).
  • Customer feedback on staff performance (positive and complaints).
  • Numbers of staff attending training.

3. Recruitment

Your success at recruiting staff can be evaluated by a combination of data analysis, questionnaires, focus groups or interviews.  You could look at:

  • Applicant numbers.
  • Diversity of applicants (age, gender, disability, location, nationality, etc).
  • Number of employment offers accepted / rejected.
  • Feedback from newly appointed staff.
  • Percentage of posts filled internally versus externally.
  • Success of advertising sources, and associated costs.
  • Speed of appointment of successful candidate from initial decision to recruit.

4. Induction

Some of the information already outlined such as quality defects, accidents, staff turnover rates particularly in the first 12 months, are useful indicators of the success of your induction process.

Another way to get valuable feedback on how you can improve induction is through the distribution of a questionnaire to recently appointed staff.

See our example template Induction Programme Questionnaire here

5. Skills Development

Some aspects of evaluating after training and development takes place have already been covered in the Skills Development section.

Gathering feedback on specific training programmes provides an indication of the value to the staff member attending and the effects can be seen in the shorter term.  The intended benefit to the business may be seen in the longer term.

See our example template Training Programme Questionnaire here

Measuring the success of your training and development approach overall and not only particular events helps to determine any changes to future plans.

Questions to consider include:

  • How will learning be put into practice by staff?
  • Have the results expected been achieved? If not, why not?
  • Have the new or up-dated skills benefitted the team / department / other areas?
  • Have there been any tangible business benefits?

6. Leadership, Management and Career Development

Earlier in this section it was shown how an Annual Staff Survey would provide useful information.  Your survey should include questions about leadership and management and examples include:

  • Do you get regular feedback on your performance and how often?
  • Do you have an opportunity to improve your skills and knowledge at work?
  • Do you feel supported by your manager at work?

Other data related to the recruitment and retention of managers can provide an indicator of the success of your career and management development strategies.  If managers attend external development activities, then the suggestions on pre-course and post-course briefings covered in the Skills Development section can apply.

A word of caution:  Management and career development are long term strategies. Their ultimate success may not be visible for a number of years.

Skills Information Hub