Evaluation Models and Tools

Addressed to AC 3.2 of 5CO02, this video examines the established frameworks and practical tools used to measure the impact and value of people practice interventions. The two principal evaluation models covered are Kirkpatrick's four-level model and the extension developed by Jack Phillips, which introduces a fifth level focused on return on investment. Alongside these, the video covers logic models as a structurally distinct approach to mapping how an intervention is expected to create value, tracing a pathway from inputs through to organisational impacts.

A significant portion of the video addresses the practical choices involved in evaluation design, including how to determine the scope and criteria for any given evaluation before data collection begins. The video also distinguishes between the types of information and evidence that evaluation draws upon, covering quantitative tools such as absence data, turnover figures, performance metrics and assessment results, alongside qualitative methods including focus groups, interviews, observation and three-hundred-and-sixty-degree feedback. Staff satisfaction surveys appear as a recurring example throughout the discussion of evaluation tools.

The video also engages with the reasons organisations measure people practice — including justifying expenditure, checking whether objectives are being achieved, and enabling informed business decisions — and connects these rationales to the relative difficulty of measuring at different levels of the Kirkpatrick and Phillips frameworks. The distinction between short and long-term impacts, and the challenge of attributing organisational outcomes directly to a specific intervention rather than to other influencing factors, runs through the treatment of both models and shapes the practical guidance on which tools to deploy and when.