For a long time, I prioritized program participants, because I thought, without participants there would be no program. Now, drawing on the voices of staff (as well as my personal experiences as a staff member), I recognize that there’s a stronger need for balancing the perspectives of both staff and program participants.

As a result, I prioritize speaking directly to staff who oversee the programs I’m evaluating, and they clue me in to three important factors:

  • How the program is supposed to run
  • How the program actually runs
  • How they really feel about the program

Staff play an integral role in the success of your programming. As they experience the day-to-day compared to leadership, staff should be positioned to bring up concerns AND feel supported in the process. Yet, staff voices are often deprioritized to amplify the expectations of funders, program participants, and other stakeholders.

During a recent project, my project partner and I conducted qualitative interviews with community experts to support a foundation’s strategic investments. Using the interviews and a robust literature review, we drafted a field-driven theory of change. After presenting the theory of change to the community experts, we developed a training with foundation staff who were expected to implement the theory of change’s recommended interventions.

Before the training, we administered a pre-training assessment to assess staff’s general understanding of theories of change, and this specific theory of change. We learned:

  • Staff questioned the implementation of this theory of change. Specifically in relation to other theories of change that were developed for other foundational work;
  • Staff questioned the foundation’s culture around creating theories of change. To them, theories of change were seen as thought exercises, concept that looked good on paper but weren’t implemented as the foundation’s strategy were ever evolving. They also questioned if this theory of change could be called something else. What would be more useful, AND (as this funding area was new to the foundation, if the foundation was truly ready for a theory of change.
  • Staff also questioned of this theory of change was amendable. As project partners, we weren’t aware until debriefing the pre-training assessment results to project staff leads that staff weren’t consulted at all before this process began. Staff weren’t asked about their experiences in supporting organizations in this area of work, these organizational nuances, how the foundation should prioritize their investments for this topic area based on program officers’ experience with organization, nor how this theory of change would be different from other theories of change the foundation had developed.

We pivoted , postponing the staff training until we had a better understanding of their experiences. After conducting staff interviews, we expanded the training into 2 parts, using the outcomes from the staff interviews, along with the theory of change to develop a more iterative process. Staff identified overlap between this field-driven theory of change and their department them’s theory of change, including a focus on community-based organizations, relationship building, shifting power dynamics, and reimagining funding and resource flows. Staff continued to express concerns over how this theory of change should be implemented, whether they had the infrastructure and capacity to lead this level of investments, and how the foundation’s leadership would respond.

This process served as confirmation of how the staff voice is crucial to the success of a program. In hindsight, the recommendations of the external experts aligned with what staff were experiencing with their grantee partners. However, we missed the mark by not consulting staff first, which generated 1) a lack of buy-in from staff and 2) developing a tool that runs the risk of sitting on the shelf along with the foundation’s other theories of change.

Key takeaway

Staff are struggling with your programming because they’re not being heard. Even when provided opportunities to share feedback, there’s always a risk of being ignored at best, or retaliated against at worst.

Having to accomplish the most with the fewest resources, the disconnect between what leadership thinks works best and what staff see in their day-to-day, demanding workloads, lack of effective communication, and prioritizing other stakeholders can lead to programming ineffectiveness.

Demonstrating to staff that their opinions are valued and will be acted on helps create a better workplace for everyone, and that benefits programming. By actively listening to staff (and doing something with their feedback), they will feel valued, respected, and engaged.

Raise Your Voice: In what ways are your staff struggling with your programs (and how are you addressing it)? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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