The first barrier to program evaluation is the reluctance of key figures to make decisions and be involved in the change process. It often happens that busy politicians or managers tend to delegate the assessment responsibility to incompetent employees: this leads to the violation of the company’s integrity and the absence of the program’s expected impact. If an evaluation is not considered a priority for those responsible, it is a severe problem. The evaluator, especially if they are the leader, should be the company’s inspiration and motivator, but if they are not willing, the subordinate staff will not be interested in the program either.
For instance, when the manager transfers control over the evaluation to an assistant without professional experience, it can cause serious problems for the company: lack of following the plan, incompetent management, and conflicts. On the other hand, the abundance of data coming from different departments also becomes a severe challenge for the responsible person. It is important to remember that quality should always dominate over quantity, but in practice, the situation becomes different, namely the manager has too much information and little time and resources to analyze it. This problem leads to undesirable effects in terms of both inconsistencies of data and poor program evaluation. For example, if a key person has hundreds of e-files that they need to read carefully before the assessment, they are likely to neglect to read them in favor of a faster assessment result. As a result, the program will not get a complete and fair assessment.