aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Jorja Millar (WorkSafe  Victoria), Clara Walker (Cancer Council Victoria)

Giving evaluation data back to the end user: experience from two workplace health initiatives
As program participants are increasingly being saturated with requests to participate in surveys and other data collection, there is a need for evaluation data collection to not be a burden on program participants. One way to do this is to collect and give back data that meet the needs of program participants.

This paper explores the process of developing and implementing data collection tools where the findings are used not only for overall evaluation of an initiative, but for end users' purposes, including conducting their own planning, economics of prevention, and evaluation. These data collection approaches are therefore not passive, but also influence the intervention through a design-thinking approach.

We will explore this topic via two case studies from Victorian workplace health and wellbeing initiatives. Our initiatives support workplaces to be prevention led and create healthier workplace environments to improve employee health and wellbeing. Therefore our initiatives are multi-layered, with overall state-wide frameworks influencing workplace initiatives to ultimately benefit individual employees.

We will highlight key challenges and lessons learned from the process of developing and implementing multi-purpose data collection tools which support our evaluation objectives and also provide tailored feedback to workplace end users to support their own planning, implementation and evaluation. We will also provide an overview of initial user experience and feedback and how the tools support ongoing improvement of our health and well-being initiatives. This paper will provide practical insights for evaluation practitioners of all backgrounds who are looking to use a client-centric approach and increase engagement with evaluation data collection through creating value for end users.