David, I understand the constraints you're working under in highly regulated Public Sector organisations in the UK. I've been there myself to some extent.

I would argue that if HR and L&D departments can switch their focus from inputs (skills/competencies) to outputs (employee performance) it opens up a whole new set of opportunities - whether in public sector, private sector, highly regulated or other organisations.

We all know that improving skills/competencies is only a relatively small factor in overall employee performance and has only moderate impact on performance improvement. We often conveniently forget that fact. Take a look at the research from organisations such as the Corporate Leadership Council. CLC highlighted the fact that exposing employees to stretch assignments and new experiences and encouraging reflection on those experiences had approx. 300% greater impact on performance than simply improving knowledge, skills and competencies. Yet the HR/L&D departments of many organisations persist in focusing solely on competency maps and skill matrices - c'est la vie...

What does this have to say about evaluation? To me it says that evaluation is vital - we need to know how employee performance is contributing to organisational performance - but not the evaluation of what we generally see as 'learning' (i.e. knowledge and skills acquisition) - Kirkpatrick Level 2 - and what goes on in the L&D department.

We need to evaluate performance in the workplace, but not necessarily in terms of Kirkpatrick Level 3 either. Kirk 3 is based around evaluating the transfer of knowledge/skills obtained in events - 'courses'.

My own view is that the Kirkpatrick model, despite the tweaks Don, Wendy and Jim have made over the past 50 years, is still not a fit-for-purpose approach for the type of evaluation we really need. Its deep ties to learning as a series of events and the concept that evaluation follows on from a learning 'event' is just one blocker.

We should be evaluating performance in terms of organisational and business metrics - not some metrics dreamed up by the L&D department or educational researchers. Metrics need to focus on organisational outputs - such as customer satisfaction, response times, adherence to process etc. etc.

If we focus on these we'll find ourselves measuring not just knowledge, skills and competencies but also employee attitudinal and behavioural attributes and changes. That's where the real organisational 'gold' is located.