Evaluate, improve and amplify
Evaluating your initiative helps to ensure it remains relevant over time. It can also help secure funding or buy-in from key audiences. Make sure you plan for how you will let others know about your initiative.
Part of the Creating an industry-led initiative module.
How to make the most of your evaluation
The first step is to consider how to measure impact from creating and delivering your industry-led initiative. Measuring outcomes (e.g. increased retention or fewer workers compensation claims) can take time.
Other indicators may be more useful in the short term. Examples include:
- number of outputs
- engagement with your initiative
- user satisfaction
- changes in behaviour or investment
- changes in awareness or knowledge.
It may be useful to work with an evaluation expert to build a model that outlines how your activities will lead to outcomes over time. You may also find ideas in ‘Measure what matters’.
Some questions to help you evaluate your initiative
These questions can help you decide the best way to evaluate your initiative:
- How are we going to evaluate the impact of our initiative?
- How will evaluation help us refine our initiative?
- Who needs to see the outcomes of our initiative?
- What data do we need for our evaluation model?
Keep your initiative relevant. Issues can change over time. Or perhaps things do not work as expected. You’ll need to collect data and get feedback from people involved. Be prepared to change things over time.
Engagement and reach
The best initiatives are only as good as their ability to reach and engage their intended audiences. Lessons learnt from other initiatives include the need carefully consider how to reach and influence your intended audience.
You may use existing communication channels within the industry. People on the ground may engage with people in particular locations. You may use champions or respected leaders or patrons to spread your message.
When deciding your communication strategy, think about the groups you want to reach, your key channels and messages, the aims of communications or engagement activities, and how you will measure outputs and outcomes of communication activities.
Working to make the industry approach part of business as usual or procurement processes can also help uptake and reach.
Some questions others have asked to identify the best way to communicate and reach their target audiences include:
- How are we going to reach people in the industry?
- What existing channels can we leverage?
- Who are the key influencers in our industry?
- How much do we need to budget for effective communication?