Guidance

Step 5. Track the outcomes of your actions

Updated 7 April 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Measuring and monitoring progress allows you to:

• produce a set of metrics before you start an action (‘baseline’)
• track changes after you start

This helps you understand whether your actions are working and if you are making progress toward your goals.

When you take action, you should test if progress is happening as intended. Monitoring is a way to gather information to track progress towards your objectives.

Each action in the list of actions developed by the government includes a section on tracking progress for that specific action.

Why you should monitor progress

Your plans may work differently in different contexts (such as different teams, job types or locations). Look at your own data to check for differences after you introduce a new action, against a baseline of data that pre-dates your work on that action. This may help you decide whether to continue with an action or change it, recognising that some actions may take time to have an impact.

Monitoring is the systematic process of collecting, analysing and using information to track an action’s progress towards reaching its objective. 

Monitoring can help you:

• show accountability and commitment to your goals

• provide early and ongoing insights

• provide data to help shape the implementation of an action

Evidence shows that you are more likely to reach your goals when you monitor your progress.^{[footnote 1]} Making this information public can help support further progress.

How to measure progress

The data you need to monitor depends on your specific goals, including the  short and long-term outcomes you decided to target in step 1. 

Each action guidance page contains a ‘tracking progress’ section which outlines the suggested metrics to monitor progress for each action. Record these metrics before you put each action in place. Make a plan for how you will monitor changes later.

You may also want to consider what administrative workforce data you currently collect. To measure the progress of your action plan as a whole, choose metrics you may expect to change once you introduce your actions and link these to your target outcomes. This will help you assess whether your chosen actions are effectively creating progress towards your targets. It is more efficient to try and use or improve data you already collect, before you consider collecting new data.

Measure outcomes at regular intervals while you implement your action plan. Use the same analysis so you can compare outcomes over time.

If possible, look at data monthly or annually after you start. Some changes take time to appear. This also helps you see if changes are lasting.

Understand different groups

Look for differences in outcomes in your workforce administrative data across parts of your organisation or for different groups of employees to see if changes are consistent.

You can also use other forms of data collection to better understand changes in your monitoring data and the experiences of your employees. These include:

• interviews

• focus groups

• staff surveys

Using feedback from employees may help you to better understand how much of any change might be due to the action you have taken. 

Evaluating your action plan

You may choose to use evaluation methods to help you better understand if an action is being rolled out effectively and whether it is actually delivering the results you intended.

Evaluation is the systematic assessment of an intervention’s design, implementation and outcomes. While monitoring metrics helps you track progress towards your targets, evaluation provides a deeper understanding of why and how an action may or may not have worked.

Evaluation findings can offer useful insights for organisations attempting to make meaningful change. As evaluation can be resource intensive, it may not be proportionate for every organisation to undertake a formal evaluation.

If you choose to conduct an evaluation, you should plan your evaluation activities before introducing any actions. Early planning ensures you collect sufficient baseline data to measure change accurately.

Understanding the specific impact of an action can be complex, particularly if you are implementing multiple actions at the same time. This can make it difficult to isolate which specific action caused a change in your data.

The appropriate evaluation method will depend on:

• the type of action being implemented
• the quality and availability of your workforce data
• your specific research questions

For comprehensive guidance on designing and conducting an evaluation, see The Magenta Book: central government guidance on evaluation (GOV.UK).

1. Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩