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Operationally Useful Data about the Value and Effectiveness of Organizational Ombuds

An Introduction to a Resource Repository of Working Papers for Comment

©2026 By Tim Hedeen and Mary Rowe, with Jennifer Schneider and Hector Escalante

This Resource Repository is a work in progress. It is open to improvements, additions, deletions, critique, revision and random commentary. If any page here is helpful, or needs revision, please let us know. Please contact Mary Rowe or other co-authors, if you can help to improve these pages or have another page to offer.

The purpose of the Repository is to support identifying—and helping to quantify—the value of an Organizational Ombuds (OO). We need metrics:

  • at a time when keeping confidential data requires foresight and great care, and
  • at a time when many employers and organizational members have little idea about the work of an OO—and welcome metrics and stories with operationally useful information, and
  • at a time where some organizations are looking to AI to perform human services, and, therefore, ombuds would like to highlight services where ombuds excel and AI is limited.

All drafts here are meant for discussion by organizational ombuds. AI was used extensively for several topics; pages where AI was used are marked in red. AI itself often notes that “AI responses to queries may be inadequate, incorrect or offensive.”  Please always verify anything from AI.

See if the papers in the Resource Repository help to identify and quantify operationally useful data and help you to communicate how often you deal with various issues each week. Some of the papers here, like the Friday Checklist, are meant to be templates—or ideas to consider—for organizational ombuds to revise or use in ways that fit each practice.

 

 

RESOURCE REPOSITORY INDEX

Value and Effectiveness Resources for Organizational Ombuds

Working Papers for Comment

I. Introductory Materials


II. A Friday Checklist (Template) in Addition to the Ombuds Database


III. Ideas about Collecting, Assessing, Using, and Communicating Organizational Ombuds (OO) Data Within OO Standards of Practice 

IV. Additional Resource Lists for Databases, Friday Checklists, and Paper-and-Pencil Notes

V.    AI and Ombuds Work

VI.    Mediation: An Additional Source of Ombuds Value and Effectiveness

 

VII.   Research Bibliography about the Value and Effectiveness of Organizational Ombuds