The Data and Measurement Issue - 3

MESSAGE FROM TiER1
We often hear leaders asking for data to help them determine the return on investment (ROI) or impact of a specific program, practice, or initiative on key behaviors
and metrics. " How can we figure out whether our leadership program is having the intended impact on our culture? " " How do we know if we're 'moving the needle'
on employee experience? " " How is productivity being impacted by our hybrid working model? "
While calculating ROI of financial investments is fairly straightforward, it's much less simple in these other contexts. How exactly do we determine the ROI of learning
when the causal chain between, say, a classroom learning experience and on-the-job performance is long and complicated? How do we quantify a shift in culture?
Is it fewer people quitting over a period of time, higher engagement at work, or something else altogether? It's not that ROI can't be measured. Rather, these examples
demonstrate how any attempt to measure performance within an organization-whether the ROI of an initiative or another aspect of the employee or customer
experience-entails much more than numerical calculations.
Ultimately, this is a people matter, not solely a data issue. Ethical measurement will involve a series of conversations with different stakeholders to determine
what we are measuring (and why); how we will conduct measurement; how we will present and interpret the results; and what we will do once we see the results
(including, perhaps, a trip back to the drawing board to identify a better measure). Unlike Botticelli's Venus, measures never arrive fully formed-a useful
measurement is a process, not a given.
There's still a deeper implication to consider. We know that attempts to measure human performance can affect that performance1
; the same effect bears out with
how the measurement process is facilitated-every step of the process can have surprising or unintended impacts on the people under study and more broadly
across an organization. For example, announcing new key metrics can induce competition between teams and anxiety within individuals. Uncertainty about the intent
of a new measurement, or worse, the discovery of an unannounced measure, can erode trust in an organization. Similarly, the use of poor or inaccurate measures can
promote cynicism. In short, we must intentionally design the process that underpins a measure with care for how that process impacts the people at the center of it.
In this magazine, we gathered insights and stories that will help leaders understand the human dimensions of measurement
and evaluation. Healthy, high-performing organizations need leaders with access to the best data they can get; they also
need to ensure that good data doesn't come at the expense of employee well-being. We hope this magazine
supports you in crafting a people-centered data and measurement approach.
1 Per the Hawthorne effect, which continues to be studied to understand all the ways that research participation affects behavior.
&
Anna Grome
Industrial-Organizational Psychologist,
Data & Measurement Capability Co-Lead
Walter Warwick, PhD
Principal Scientist, Director of
Applied Performance Research,
Data & Measurement Capability Co-Lead
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The Data and Measurement Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Data and Measurement Issue