The terms EVALUATE and REVIEW are often used interchangeably in everyday usage but have distinct meanings in the workforce development cycle. For this stage, we define ‘evaluate’ as making judgements about the impact of workforce development action. This stage in the cycle relates to all the themes in the Workforce Strategy journey and helps the organisation look forward to further planning.

EVALUATE in the Workforce Development cycle
At the Evaluate stage, you and individual staff consider the results of the Review, Action and Design stages. You make judgements about the difference that the workforce development action has made to the work of your organisation and of individual staff and to the experience of external customers and others. The term ‘impact’ is often used to describe that difference. You may find that the difference is felt in terms of short-term impact or long-term impact. People in your organisation may identify the personal impact of this difference as relatively positive or negative. The evaluation process is a crucial part of the self-assessment process for quality assurance or external inspection because it helps you decide what happens next in your workforce development cycle. It means looking forward, having spent some time looking back.

Starting to evaluate your plans
Key steps in the evaluation of your workforce development are:

• judging impact
• looking forward

Quick tip
The Excellence Gateway has a number of resources on evaluation and impact.