How to assess change

The final and most important stage of the change planning process is determining what measures you will use to monitor and evaluate the results of the project (ie, were the objectives met?). For example, if the goal was to increase productivity, your measurements might include collecting numbers related to performance, variance levels, and errors to see if they have increased or decreased favorably.

The time frame over which action will be taken should also be determined early on, especially when dealing with a turnaround situation where instant results are required. It is essential that you take action before the start of a change or improvement project so that there is enough data to compare post-project results.

How you measure goals will depend on the change project, examples of which are shown below:

Organizational Performance – Finance

Organizations often start with change programs to improve the organization’s financial performance in order to increase shareholder value. Here, financial measures are used:

• Rotation
• Revenue
• cost
• Return on investment (ROI)
• lost
• share price

Organizational performance – HR

The performance of the organization depends largely on the level of commitment of its staff and is influenced by it. Measuring the effectiveness of the HR function can often reveal issues that directly impact the bottom line. Here, employee engagement and satisfaction measures are used:

• staff turnover rate and associated hiring costs
• absenteeism
• average service time
• number of disciplinary cases and complaints
• employee survey results

Analysis of the information obtained from the measures would not only reveal the current level of commitment, but also help establish goals, objectives and budgets for succession planning, training and development initiatives and hiring.

productivity

It should be common practice for organizations to regularly review their efficiency systems around product creation and change or modify them accordingly. Productivity measures focus on:

• the time, costs, and resources required to design, develop, create, and deliver a product or service.
• the quantity of products, or the number of customers served, etc.
• the amount of variation in the quality of products or services, i.e. the number of errors or defects

These types of measures are easily quantifiable and can be obtained from production, financial and sales reports. They will be statistical in nature and many organizations will have automated systems, particularly on production lines and in call centers, to record the data.

It is imperative to know whether or not a change initiative has had the desired effect. Therefore, it is very important that you determine from the beginning of the project what results are expected, how you will measure them and when.

Depending on the initiative, your measures will focus on the performance of functions, processes or people. There are numerous ways to measure performance results using facts, figures, or subjective information. Whichever method you use, it is of course important to measure performance levels before any project and then compare them again. Remember that some initiatives will be monitored over a period of time, while others will be designed to create immediate improvements.