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Intervention
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Course Assessment Guide

Now that you have gone through each of the learning modules, it is time to apply
the course insights to design a research project of your own! Follow this guide for
step-by-step support to complete your final assessment.

A. Course Recap
A brief summary of the different themes covered in each module of the course.

B. Intervention Planning
Brainstorm and evaluate potential interventions.

1. Articulate Your Motivation

Thinking about the problems at your firm and articulating the motivation to make changes.

2. Scope the Landscape

Engaging stakeholders and conducting research to improve understanding of the problem.

C. Preparing Your Intervention

Outline the problem driving your intervention and hypothesize potential outcomes.

3. Define Your Problem Statement

Clearly stating the problem and its consequences on the firm and employees.

4. Plan Your Intervention

Brainstorming and designing possible interventions to tackle the problem.

5. Formulate a Hypothesis
Formulating testable statements predicting the potential impacts of the intervention.

D. Formalizing Your Intervention

Refine the details of your intervention and plan for ways to scale your plan.

6. Impact Evaluation
Applying the intervention within the target group and measuring the impacts.

7. Decide Next Steps

Assessing if the intervention should be scaled, refined, or taken back to the drawing board
Course Recap

Soft Skills

This module explored the difference between

technical and soft skills as well as the benefits
that providing transferable personal life skills
training can have on worker development and
business outcomes.

Worker Voice

This module presented the importance of

effective and transparent worker-management
communication. Case studies highlighted how
worker-voice tools may be designed to improve
business outcomes.

Workplace Health & Safety

This module explored different dimensions of

health and safety amongst the workforce, along
with the consequences of overlooking it. Further,
we examined how investing limited available
capital effectively can enable the design of
interventions that address these challenges.

Managerial Quality

This module outlined what it means to be an

effective manager and detailed the role they play
in dealing with production shocks, in improving
worker communication and morale of the
workforce, as well as in improving the firm's
bottom line.
Intervention Planning

To begin developing your worker wellbeing intervention, we strongly recommend that you take a
moment to brainstorm and survey your context. The first two steps in this development guide
are meant to be reflective planning exercises and will help you situate your intervention within
the bounds of your workplace context. These first two steps are:

1. Articulate Your Motivation

Thinking about the problems at your firm and articulating the motivation to make changes.

AND

2. Scope the Landscape

Engaging stakeholders and researching to improve understanding of the problem.

Your assessment task requires you to develop a workplace intervention plan to improve worker
wellbeing. Your intervention should focus on one of the module topics: soft-skills development,
worker voice, workplace health, and safety, or improving managerial quality. As part of your plan,
you will need to conceptualize a randomized controlled trial, or RCT, that would enable the
evaluation of your intervention's impact. This is a detailed task and, as such, it will benefit from
thoughtful planning before drafting a final plan.

Begin the process of developing your worker wellbeing intervention plan by thinking through the
guiding questions offered in the next two pages of this guide. Feel free to record your thoughts
or simply store your reflections in your mind to guide you as you proceed. Your reflections from
this brainstorming exercise, coupled with your Workbook responses (if you opted to complete
them), should serve as the foundation of your final assessment.

Now, proceed to the guiding Articulate the Motivation and Scoping the Landscape pages.
Articulate Your Motivation

Operational improvement through marginal

gains or major transformation programs is an
ever-present goal for business owners and
leaders. Firms must continually ask themselves:

How can we do things better?

What are we doing wrong?
Are there new opportunities to pursue?
What are the problems we need to solve?

Firms with a large number of employees have to

find innovative ways to keep each cog in the
larger machine functioning smoothly. Before
implementing changes, firms must understand
why they need to make these changes.

Articulating motivation is often the trickiest (but arguably the most important) part of
designing a sustainable solution.

To get started, you first need to understand the situation within your organization, as well as in
the context of the wider business and research landscape. To best inform your worker wellbeing
intervention plan, begin by identifying your "why?".

Take a step back to analyze some of the problems or opportunities, and summarize their
importance in the context of the organization. Consider:

Are employees complaining and/or quitting? What are the complaints about?
Do employees lack certain skill sets? What is the result?
Has productivity been declining?
What are the consequences of shortcomings for the firm and employees?

If you were able to identify any specific complaints or challenges, consider what module theme
most closely relates to that issue. Identifying a related module theme will help you to hone in
on what kinds of interventions may alleviate those workplace issues and what other
considerations should be given.
Scope the Landscape

Once you have broadly analyzed the problems

that affect your organization, the next step is to
conduct what researchers call scoping.

Scoping involves starting conversations with

stakeholders and trying to understand an
identified problem on the ground. This process
narrows down the specific challenges that need
to be addressed and helps leaders to
understand the root of the problem.

No problem exists in a vacuum. While

understanding the root of a problem is a good
start, having an understanding of the larger
workplace landscape is necessary to develop a
successful workplace intervention.

Ponder cause-and-effect in your context

Just as there are conditions that contribute to the underlying issue you hope to solve, there are
also likely further negative outcomes that result from that underlying issue. You may be able to
identify several root problems in your workspace. To decide which is most urgent to address,
consider which leads to the greatest number or most significant subsequent issues.

Conduct background research!

The questions and challenges that you seek to address have possibly been addressed in some
form by researchers or business leaders already. When conducting background research,
consider questions such as:
Have other organizations faced similar problems?
Are there any relevant case studies?
What channels or pathways exist to solve a particular problem?
Will any of these approaches work in my setting?

For example, soft skills have often been ignored by organizations, but with growing evidence
of the importance of these skills, GBL along with Gap Inc. ran an evaluation to improve soft
skills amongst female garment workers in India and found extremely encouraging results.

Armed with this knowledge, you should now have a good idea of 1) what problem you want to
address in your context, 2) why it is important, and 3) how to potentially go about forming an
intervention.
Preparing Your Intervention

After working through the previous two sections, you should have solidified your why in your
Worker Wellbeing Intervention Plan. Now it is time to turn your attention to the how. To begin
carving out the details of your intervention, you will turn your attention to the next three
sections:

3. Define Your Problem Statement

Clearly stating the problem and its consequences on the firm and employees.

4. Plan Your Intervention

Brainstorming and designing possible interventions to tackle the problem.

5. Formulate a Hypothesis
Formulating testable statements predicting the potential impacts of the intervention.

These sections will guide you in defining some of the specifics of your intervention plan. While
the previous two sections were intended to be thought exercises to help orient you to this
assessment task, the following three sections are meant to help you outline the general
framework for your intervention plan. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you begin drafting
your thoughts as you work through these sections to begin formalizing your plan. Having a draft
of your early vision for an intervention plan will be of great use as you work through subsequent
sections in this guide.

As you work through these three sections, be conscious of the fact that each of these three
components maps directly requirements for your peer review submission. The ideas you
generate in these three sections should be used to inform the Problem Statement, Hypothesis,
and Evaluation fields of your peer-review submission.

Now, proceed to the guiding Define Your Problem Statement, Plan Your Intervention,
and Formulate a Hypothesis pages.
Define Your Problem Statement

What is the current What are the Ideating possible

problem? consequences? solutions

Now that you have identified a problem, it What are the consequences?
is crucial to document the extent to which
it affects your organization. You may have Working from your established problem
begun this process while scoping your involving your stated stakeholders, you can
landscape, but clearly defining the now outline the specific consequences of
variables your problem affects and its that problem. Consider:
impact on your firm can make the process
of addressing it much easier and more What are the direct and indirect
methodical. The prompts on this page will consequences of the problem?
inform the first part of your assignment
submission: the Problem Statement. Direct consequences could imply the
problem's effect on productivity or profits,
What is the current problem? while indirect effects could be the impact
your problem has on the workforce's
Post scoping, you should know what morale and happiness. It can also include
problem you want to tackle through your things such as the attrition rate or
intervention. To be able to clearly absenteeism within the firm. Carefully map
articulate a problem statement, you need out all the variables that are affected by
to address a couple of other questions: your problem and the pathways by which
they are affected.
Who are the relevant stakeholders in
this problem? Ideating possible solutions
How do these stakeholders perceive
the issue at hand? Now that you've defined your problem, it's
time to ideate possible solutions. The first
Workers are one important stakeholder idea rarely is the best one, so it's good
group, and they are likely the ones who practice to ideate many solutions. As you
will form the target group of your plan, ideate, consider what works and what will
making it vital to understand their not with stakeholders, will your idea
perceptions of the issue, as well as how benefit those it's intended to, and if your
that view compares to other stakeholders. idea replicates past failed documented
interventions.

Before proceeding, you should have a firm understanding of:

- The problem that you are trying to solve
- Why your problem is relevant and worth solving
- Which stakeholders are impacted by your problem
Plan Your Intervention

Thus far, you've identified your problem Understanding the needs and accessibility
and relevant stakeholders. Now you can of the target group is essential for any
begin to work towards designing a solution intervention to be successful.
to your problem. Designing a solution can
be tricky, but finding inspiration in relevant For example, older populations may
research can be a good place to start. struggle with digital innovations while
Whether you follow an existing model or younger populations are more open to
develop your intervention informed by past change. Similarly, in a developing country
interventions failures, Your plan should context, before designing a mobile app-
include the following elements: based intervention for workers, it would
be important to understand if the digital
Describe Your Intervention and technological landscape is conducive
Begin by outlining what it is that you plan to its usage or if the target group owns
to do to solve your problem. You will add in and is comfortable using a smartphone
details throughout this step, but begin by and so on.
addressing the following:
Limiting access only to the treatment
Are you introducing a new resource? If group
so, what is it?
Are you changing an existing policy? Your design must account for the fact that
Creating a new one? only a subset of the target group can have
How will your change be implemented access to the intervention and the other
and communicated? subgroup should not (a key aspect of
How does your change improve the RCTs). This is crucial for analyzing accurate
problem at hand? estimations of the impact of the
intervention.
Once you develop the foundation of your
plan based on these questions, you will be For example, if your intervention were an
ready to begin adding in finer details. app designed for factory workers (let's
forget about what it would achieve for the
Outline the demographics of your time being) and accessed via a tablet at
target group the factory floor, then one could design
the application such that only those who
You must decide which stakeholder group are meant to get the treatment (or
will be the target of your intervention, and intervention) are granted access to it via
how many individuals you plan to target. biometric authentication or a user-ID and
Again, you may opt to let research inform password.
your choice or you can forge your own
design.

Before proceeding, you should have a firm understanding of:

-The fine details of your intervention
-Who you target group is
-How you will maintain a target group and a control group
Formulate a Hypothesis

By developing an intervention plan you are As can be seen, these are open-ended
taking on the role of research and, as such, statements even though they are framed
your aim is to test and predict the in a way that suggests a particular direction
outcome of your intervention. This of the impact. This will enable you to
prediction is known as a hypothesis. assess the degree to which your
hypothesis was correct, or evaluate why
A hypothesis must be specific, testable, your hypothesis was misguided depending
and based on available evidence. It should on your findings.
include the key variables involved in the
intervention and the potential observed For example, a trial conducted by GBL
changes or pathways of impact. tried to assess the effect of improving living
conditions in hostels for Shahi factory
For example, one of GBL's projects, workers. Two surveys were conducted to
covered in this course wanted to assess measure perceived changes in living
the effects of switching from the use of conditions as well as satisfaction and
incandescent lights to using LED lights on subjective well-being among residents. A
the factory floor. hypothesis for this trial could have been
that these improvements in hostel
Literature on this subject suggested that a management would lead to an increase in
hot working environment negatively the self-reported well-being of workers.
impacts productivity and the capacity to The trial results however showed that
work. Hot environments have effects on workers reported large declines in
the physical health of workers as well. satisfaction with housing and their job, as
Additionally, we know that LEDs produce well as substantial increases in their
less heat as compared to incandescent psychological distress as a result of the
lights. treatment. A bit surprising isn't it? Well,
that's precisely why one must be prepared
Now given these facts, one can see a to tackle more questions as part of the trial
potential pathway of impact. and formulate as many hypothetical
queries as possible.
Two workable hypotheses are:
Before proceeding, you should have a firm
The switch from incandescent light to understanding of:
LED on the factory floor will lead to a -The variables your plan will manipulate
decrease in the ambient temperature of -Outcomes of similar past interventions
the factory floor. -What outcome is likely from your manipulation
of variables
The switch from incandescent light to
LED on the factory floor will lead to an
increase in the overall productivity of the
factory floor.
Formalizing Your Intervention

At this stage, you should have a rough outline for your intervention inspired by your motivation
to solve a relevant problem and informed by the limitations and affordances of your context. The
next two sections will serve two purposes:

6. Impact Evaluation
Applying the intervention within the target group and measuring the impacts.

You should have a general framework for what your intervention plan aims to do and a tentative
plan of how to conduct a randomized controlled trial to measure its effectiveness. While you
may have already put a lot of thought into your design, this section will help you to add
additional details to your plan to refine its design and to develop the clarity needed to
communicate your plan in your assignment submission.

The Impact Evaluation section outlines 6 steps for assembling your peer review submission.
Thus far, you have worked through the first 3 steps: Identifying a Target Group, Randomly Assign
Who Receives the Treatment, and Applying the Intervention. The other 3 steps (Monitor the Progress
of the Trial, Evaluate the Outcomes, Assess the Results & Decide Next Steps) were developed to help
you think through how to make use of what your intervention will reveal. The guiding questions
will help you refine your evaluation method in a way that ensures you can act on your findings.

Developing intervention plans is naturally an iterative process, so don't dwell on feeling like you
need to add to your original plan. Instead, carefully think about each of the suggestions offered
and consider what further details would be helpful to communicate the full scope of your
intervention plan to a peer. Add in details to your existing plan where necessary, and be
methodical and detailed in the new elements you draft. Ideally, your plan should be nearly
refined for submission by the end of this step.

7. Decide Next Steps

Assessing if the intervention should be scaled, refined, or taken back to the drawing board

With your near-complete Worker Wellbeing Intervention Plan in hand, the last part of your peer-
reviewed assignment requires you to discuss what your "next steps" would be after analyzing the
impact of your intervention. It might be helpful to plan for contrasting outcomes: one positive for
if you wish to scale your intervention and one negative for if your intervention needs to be
reconsidered.

Now, proceed to the guiding Impact Evaluation and Decide Next Steps pages.
Impact Evaluation

Now it is time to turn your attention to how you will measure and evaluate the impact of your
planned intervention. The measurement and evaluation process will inform the accuracy of your
hypothesis and the overall effectiveness of your intervention, as well as provide insights on
returns to the firm and assess the potential for scaling-up. To help develop your means of
evaluation, we will think through the flow diagram below. The following pages offer specific
considerations and guiding questions for each step.

1 2
Who should be How can this
selected for the process be fair and
trial? random?

Identify Target Group Randomly assign to

receive the treatment

3 4

This could include This could be done

conducting training through surveys or
programs! data analysis!

Apply the Monitor the progress

Intervention of the trial.

5 6

What should we do
How did it go? Was
next? Can we scale-
it successful?
up?

Evaluate the Assess the results and

outcomes decide next steps
Impact Evaluation

1 2

How can this process be

fair and random?

Identify Target Group Randomly assign to

receive the treatment

[1] Identify Target Group Lottery Method of Randomization

The target group is the set of participants When it comes to implementing the
who will be a part of the study. project, from a firm perspective, things can
start to get a bit tricky.
From scoping activities and formulating a
problem statement, you should have a The whole premise of RCTs as an
good understanding of the type of people experimental method relies on the fact
suitable to participate in the trial and how that amongst similar people, only one
many people will be required. subgroup receives the intervention and
the other doesn't.
[2] Randomly assign participants to
receive the treatment This can lead to questions such as:

From the target group, a subset should be “Hey, how come I’m being passed over?
randomly selected to receive the Why is this other person getting this
intervention (treatment), and the special service?”
remaining group should not (control) to
enable comparison and causal analysis of To solve this, researchers follow a simple
the intervention. lottery method, which is the gold standard
followed to allocate people into treatment
This process is called randomization. and control groups fairly.

Why randomize? It is like picking names out of a hat.

Communicating the reasons for not being

Randomization of participants into one
able to provide everyone with the
of the groups allows us to assume that intervention, and telling employees that
on average, the two groups will have they have a fair chance of being part of the
similar characteristics, and hence be treatment, is crucial in ensuring
comparable. This is important when compliance and reducing demoralization.
interpreting your findings.
 Impact Evaluation

3 4
This could be done
through surveys or
This could include data analysis!
conducting training
programs!

Apply the Monitor the progress

Intervention of the trial.

[3] Apply the intervention [4] Monitor the progress of the trial

At this stage, post-randomization, the Monitoring involves keeping a track of

treatment group must receive the whether participants are actually receiving the
treatment or intervention and the control treatment, if any participants have dropped
group must not. out of the study if those in the control group
have somehow gained access to the
Rolling out your intervention will require a treatment (and whether they need to be
fair amount of thought and planning to excluded from the results), and so on. Often,
ensure a successful implementation. surveys are utilized to monitor how the
Communication is key for participants to intervention is playing out (in addition to
understand the logistics of the observation). Thoughtful monitoring is a must.
intervention. Think about the setting you
What are surveys and how does one
work in and plan the best way to
administer them?
communicate expectations. Consider
questions such :
Surveys are instruments used to collect
personal data, as well as data on key
How can I call the workers to a 30min
variables for the study from the target
training without affecting production too
group.
much?
Surveys are useful in understanding
With COVID-19 health safety norms, how
the target group, evaluating outcomes,
must we maintain adequate social
and documenting the progress of the
distancing?
study.
What is the most efficient way to
Depending on access to the target
communicate information?
population, surveys can be conducted
in different ways - online
These are just a few questions to think
questionnaires, telephone surveys, in-
about to ensure smooth deployment.
person surveys, and so on.
Establishing a relevant point of contact for
App-based tools now exist which can
participants, as well as conducting a pilot
eliminate the hassle of pen-paper
to fine-tune aspects of the implementation
surveys.
would be important steps as well.
Impact Evaluation

[5] Evaluate the outcomes

5 Following the intervention period, data will need to

be collected on the final outcomes in order to draw
conclusions on the research hypothesis set out at
How did it go? the beginning of the project.
Was it successful?

Evaluate the Depending on the hypothesis, this information could

outcomes be gathered through another survey, interviews with
stakeholders, or through analysis of firm metrics –
including worker productivity and output, or financial
data (revenue, costs, profits), to name a few.

The data collected should allow you to determine if

your hypothesis was correct or not, and how you
might proceed with further implementation.

Consider an example:

Let's say you wish to know the effects of the intervention on attrition rates in a firm. At the end of
the intervention period, you analyze the average attrition of each group (treatment and control)
to find any relative effects, if any. Let's assume the treatment group showed lower attrition than
the control group. We can then deduce that the intervention did have its desired effect.

However, often you may find very limited or no effect at all, and in some cases, you may observe
results that contradict your hypothesis altogether. Results must be carefully analyzed from a firm
perspective, as each firm has different requirements and different expectations.

With the final set of results, you can now move forward and analyze the intervention's rate of
return to the firm. Even though the trial may show positive effects, conducting a cost-benefit
analysis is important to see whether it makes business sense to continue the program.
Decide Next Steps

What should we do next? Was the trial

Can we scale-up? successful?

Assess the results and

decide next steps YES

[6] Assess the results and

decide next steps
Can the
The purpose of conducting a pilot program is
solution be
to assess whether an intervention yields the
scaled?
desired outcomes in a controlled environment.

Implementing the intervention at a larger scale

can be considered depending on the outcome
NO
of the intervention. Generally, three situations
arise at the end of a trial:
YES
Scale the
The trial was effective and the same solution
solution could be implemented at scale.

The trial was effective, however, scaling the

solution as-it-is may not work and will
need to be adapted.
NO
Adapt the
For example, a technology solution could have
had the desired outcomes in the trial, but the solution
cost of scaling it from a few hundred people to
thousands of people could be too high for the
firm to justify.

The intervention and trial were not Reassess and

successful. It is important to conduct
understand
post-program surveys and analyses to
why
understand what went wrong.

Retooling the product and making small changes could be an option to test different ways of
implementation. In some circumstances, one may also need to go back to the drawing board to
rework and review the program thoroughly. Consider how you might approach these different
possible outcomes for your intervention.
Assessment Checklist

This guide has provided a step-by-step process on how to design your evaluation, from ideation
through to implementation and analysis of your intervention. Follow this checklist when
completing the peer-reviewed assessment to ensure you've addressed all relevant questions
and also when thinking of program designs in the future!

Identify the "why?"

– What problems are being faced by your organization? Why is an intervention required?

Understand the landscape: Scoping and Research

– How are stakeholders being affected? Can learnings be applied from other case studies?

Define the problem

– What is the specific problem that is going to be addressed through this project?

Plan the intervention

– Based on insights from research, what potential interventions are worth testing?

Formulate the research hypothesis

– What impact do you predict the intervention will have on business and worker outcomes?

Apply the intervention and monitor progress

– How should a randomized controlled trial be implemented to test the intervention?

Analyse the results and decide next steps

– What should be considered when deciding if scaling an intervention makes business sense?
Acknowledgments

This Intervention Development Guide was produced by the Center for

Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan and Good Business Lab
to accompany the open online course called "How to Create a Good
Business" available through Coursera.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

International License.