Designing, Implementing and Evaluating Organisational Interventions

• Background

In recent years, organizational interventions aimed at improving employee well-being through changing the way work is organized, designed and managed has gained popularity. The implementation and evaluation is such complex intervention is challenging for researchers and practitioners. It has been argued that it is crucial to understand what works for whom in which circumstances in order to inform future interventions (Nielsen, 2017). Such an understanding requires researchers to develop their knowledge on how to plan, implement and evaluate such interventions with a view to documenting the intervention processes and the factors that may explain any improvement in health and well-being.

To advance researchers’ understanding of how to plan, implement and evaluate interventions, frameworks have been developed that employ a phased approach to organizational interventions. It is crucial that to develop our understanding of what works for whom in which circumstances, researchers are aware of how to design, implement and evaluate intervention processes and understand how to fit activities to the organizational context. Furthermore, it is important not only to evaluate the process post-intervention but develop methods and tools that may help change agents within the organization (e.g. occupational health and safety practitioners and line managers) to monitor progress and take corrective action if the process is not on track.

The overarching aims of this workshop are to a) share a recent framework for how to design, implement and evaluate organizational interventions, and b) provide the participants with practical insights into the design, implementation and evaluation of organizational interventions by drawing on participants’ own expertise and experiences.

• Session Description:

The first half of the workshop will focus on presenting a recent framework for planning session will involve the presentation of one recent framework for developing interventions developed by Nielsen, Randall and colleagues (2010). This framework outlines five phases of designing, implementing and evaluating organizational interventions. Participants will then engage in group work discussing important tools and considerations of each phase based on their own experiences. A key part of the discussions will be to develop an understanding of how intervention activities may be integrated into existing organizational practices to ensure intervention fit.

The second half of the workshop will focus on the collection, interpretation and use of process evaluation data during each phase of the framework. Evidence about the utility of different data collection methods will be presented to enable participants to formulate and evaluate specific plans for the process evaluation of interventions. The opportunities and challenges associated with the integration, interpretation and use of these data will be presented. New methods will be introduced to participants that show how process evaluation data can be integrated into intervention decision-making. Participants will then explore how process evaluation data from each stage can be used to enhance intervention implementation and reduce the risk of intervention failure.

• Session Outcomes

When this workshop is complete, participants should be able to:

1. List and describe the phases an organizational intervention goes through.
2. Have an understanding of key elements in each phase, e.g. what needs to be considered when setting up an intervention.
3. Have an understanding of the need to tailor intervention activities to the organizational context and the people within the organization.

4) List and evaluate a number of different methods that can be used to collect process evaluation data.

5) Integrate different sources of information about intervention processes to evaluate the fit of the intervention to stakeholder needs and the organizational contexts.

6) Describe how process evaluation data can be used to enhance intervention-related activities and employee well-being outcomes.