Evaluation Challenges for 2012: Notes from the Field

As 2012 begins, evaluation professionals can play a key role in helping organizational leaders recognize and capitalize on economic, technological, and demographic trends that are transforming todays workplace. Several significant trends and implications for evaluation practice are noted below. Which of these trends stand out for you? What practice area would most influence your effectiveness as a strategic business partner in the year ahead?

Monitor and measure your knowledge management processes.

The looming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), has led to an alarming rise of intelligence attrition in U.S. business communities. A 2007 McKinsey survey referred to this group as the best-educated, most highly skilled aging workforce in U.S. history. The loss of business intelligence and corporate knowledge, especially in R&D-focused organizations, could amount to billions of dollars in lost intellectual capital. In the face of these challenges, the question becomes, How can we help leaders create and sustain meaningful knowledge library systems for extracting and archiving key information? How can we help ensure that knowledge sharingwith even informal practicesis a continual, perpetual process and not a one-time activity? How can we best assess the appropriateness of tools like relationship software for tracking knowledge or documenting where key knowledge or competencies reside?

Monitor and measure your data management systems.

As the volume and detail of data in our world explodes, the ability to handle and analyze increasingly large data sets is becoming a competitive necessity for organizational growth and innovation. In fact, some analysts say that so-called big data has now become as important to ultimate business success as labor and capital. How then can we help our organizations effectively retrieve and utilize available data? How can we deliver relevant workforce data to support strategic decision making? What new tools and techniques will allow our companies to affordably and strategically exploit data from allareas of the enterprise so they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on everything from products and services to talent and workflows?

Monitor and measure your engagement processes.

To retain the best and brightest, organizations today must lead with a shared vision, clear direction, and a compelling strategy that provides a line of sight to individuals role and values. How can we help our organizations ensure goals and directions are communicated in ways that improve engagement and productivity?How can we help managers create on-boarding processes that build loyalty and engagement? How can we assess the best use of social media and online tools to foster engagement, promote connections, and invite collaboration?

Monitor and measure your talent management processes.

Workforce talent is a defining resource for successful and sustainable organizations in the 21st century economy. Emerging and future talent pools will have more minorities, more women, and more cultural diversity than those in the past. How can we best use training technologies, online learning, coaching, career development, succession planning, action learning, mentoring, and even reverse mentoringwhere younger employees work with older employees to keep up with technologyto identify and develop talent within the ranks of a multigenerational and diverse talent pool?

Monitor and measure your work structures and processes.

One of the biggest barriers to employee engagement and business performance is the use of internal systems that are too complicated, technical, or isolated, or that lack transparency. How then can we best challenge organizations to replace inadequate hierarchies and work structures with enabling structures and processes that facilitate high performance, collaboration, and productivity?

Monitor and measure your change processes.

Todays business climate is driven by fast, complex, and disruptive changes that redefine risk and opportunity for organizations worldwide. Being a faster, smarter change manager and a savvy change leader are vital competencies for the 21st century leader. How can we help leaders navigate change and prioritize change projects in the midst of conflicting priorities and moving targets? How can we help our organizations develop the resiliency needed to survive and thrive in the face of explosive change patterns?

Monitor and measure your learning investments.

Research shows that CEOs and business leaders care about metrics that show the business impact of learning and development programs. When it comes to developing and analyzing metrics it is often helpful to view them from both the macro and micro perspective. Generally speaking, macro-level metrics are the overall organization or cross-functional metrics used to drive strategy and are typically reflected in the set of measures found in a company scorecard or executive dashboard.Micro-level metrics are those measures that track the success of a particular project, program or initiative. Despite increased pressures to produce these kinds of measures, many professionals continue to struggle with defining the payback and business value of learning expenses. To that end, how can we develop credible measurement processes and practices that link learning and development efforts to results that matter to our organizations? How can we position learning and performance results as a lever for continued investments in a learning culture designed to grow talent and promote engagement?

These are just a few of the major issues shaping the business landscape today. Whatever unique challenges may be facing you and your organizations, the world of workplace learning is essentially about the process of empowerment. As the new year unfolds, consider how you, as a workplace learning professional, can empower yourself to take bigger leaps into the future and empower your leaders to capitalize on the windows of opportunity provided by dynamic change.