Measuring behavioural change – a tough nut to crack?

By Caitlin Bethell, Head of Psychology

Changing behaviours is hard and even though it’s not impossible, it needs time, effort and consistency from every individual. What’s even more difficult is to track and measure it. Especially, when we think about behavioural change on a cultural level, we often don’t see it straight away. The results of a behaviour change effort only shows after about 18-24 months; and sometime that impact is not even clearly visible – more often than not, the change is more of a feeling that might come through a story or a reflection of a point in time.

When organisations try to change their culture, they can sometimes fall short at actually being able to recognise how and when behaviours are changing.  The change is difficult to measure and hard to quantify.

At In Diverse Company, measurement is one of our five core pillars. It is the most critical, albeit challenging, part of any inclusion, behavioural or culture change work. Therefore, we have designed our own 4-stage evaluation model and apply the principles of this model to all our client work. We use our learning and engagement platform, Include LXP™, to effectively measure and track behaviour change at different levels of a programme or a project.

1. Initial Reaction– this stage looks at the initial response the programme receives: 

1. During face-to-face sessions, through using an evaluation looking at the content, materials, facilitators, what the participants found most and least beneficial.
2. On the platform, individuals can respond to tasks through star ratings on the programmes and likes.
3. The insight we would gather from individuals will be both qualitative and quantitative to provide us information on what the specifics they enjoyed were and what can be improved initially.
4. At this point, we will ask what behaviours they will commit to and revisit this throughout.

2. Personal Learning– this stage is to review what learning has taken place and if it has made an impact on the person at the individual level: 

1. During the face-to-face programmes, there will be a discussion around the content they will have completed on the platform.  Their understanding of the material will be shown through the discussions they have and their ability to take part in the problem-solving activity.
2. When individuals are participating in tasks on the platform, they will be asked questions relating to the material.  Questions within tasks come in different formats – poll questions, multiple-choice or free text.  These answers could be anonymised and shared to view how their learning is going.

3. Individual Behaviour Change– here we look to see whether the behaviour has changed as a result of the programme: 

1. During the face-to-face programmes, there will be group discussions about how they have been implementing their habits in their work.  As all members of the group will be involved in the same habit formation process, colleagues will be able to confirm if they see them implementing those behaviours.  To gather this information, the facilitators will gather verbatim comments and ask individuals if they are willing to share.
2. On the platform, individuals need to keep habit logs of how they are getting on with their habits and what they have been putting into place. Data can be gathered from here and anonymised. There is also the functionality to be able to endorse colleagues who are showing these habits.

4. Organisational Culture Impact– this would look at the wider impact the programme has had on the organisation: 

1. Include LXP has the functionality to send out a quarterly cultural survey, and other engagement surveys, which can provide insight into what employees think about the organisation and its culture at any point in time.  By doing this regularly and consistently, improvements will be seen on the platform.
2. Executives have access to a dashboard where they can see an overview of the improvements made in an organisation – therefore seeing the behaviour change quantified.

Through using Include LXP, behaviour change can be measured and tracked consistently providing organisations with a clear view of what they have done, what they can do differently and what they can improve.

If you’re interested to know more about our behaviour change programmes, Include LXP or any other products, please email us at info@indiversecompany.com.