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Paralegal skills and establishing an Advice Centre

Evaluating the activities in an organisation

Evaluation means measuring the value of what the organisation is doing. It is a way of stepping back from our work and asking ourselves: 'How are we doing? What should we change to do things better?' Different people have different ideas of progress and problems. At an evaluation session, people come together to share their ideas in an organised and planned way.

When we evaluate, it is much easier to make decisions about the future of the organisation. For example, after an evaluation it may be clear that the structure of the organisation is not working very well. Therefore, the structure will have to be changed. It may become obvious after an evaluation that the work methods being used by the employees of the organisation are not very effective. People will then have to think about ways of improving the effectiveness of the organisation.

Here are some examples of questions that can be part of an evaluation:

• what has been achieved in the time between this evaluation and the last one?
• what things have not been achieved?
• what needs to be continued, changed or stopped?
• what are the organisation's strengths and weaknesses?

The reasons why we evaluate can be seen from the different reasons given around this 'wheel':

When to evaluate

Evaluation is usually an ongoing process. This means that a day (or more) is set aside for evaluation at regular times in the year, or maybe only once a year.

Sometimes if employees have been working on a specific project, then it is worthwhile to make time for an evaluation after the project has been running for a while.

Ways of evaluating

There are many different ways of evaluating in a group. The aims of evaluating should be to encourage everyone to join in actively and to get out the information and ideas that will help the organisation understand its problems in a way that will make everyone feel motivated to do something about them. Evaluations should show the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.