Employer Wellness

Keeping the bottom line up front Bottom Line Up Front in Employer Health and Wellness Program will help you get and sustain Upper Management support. A Bottom Line Up Front approach will also help you more realistically measure the impact of your Employee Wellness Program.

The bottom line in Employee Wellness Programs answer two key questions:
• How will member health be improved?
• What’s in it for Upper Management?

The ultimate bottom line: all roads should lead to readiness.
• Always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Employer Health and Wellness Program impacts readiness.
• Think like Upper Management: what Employer Health and Wellness Program outcomes will be important from a Upper Management point of view?
• Develop line-centered language that communicates those outcomes.
• Ask participants how they think a particular Employer Health and Wellness Program enhances force readiness. This input is a valuable source of information.

Use the following steps as a Bottom Line Up Front approach to Employee Wellness Programs.

Step 1: Think about the end of the Employer Health and Wellness Program first and plan backwards.
• It has been said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
• Before planning or implementing any part of the Employee Wellness Program, be able to answer the questions: how will member health be improved? What’s in it for Upper Management?

Step 2: Establish concrete Employer Health and Wellness Program outcomes.
• Establish up front what the Employer Health and Wellness Program is working towards.
o By way of example: will participants lose weight? Walk more steps? Decrease injuries? Move to another stage of change?
• Establish any processes or procedures that will be improved.
o By way of example: which pharmacy operations will become more efficient? How will record-keeping be streamlined?

Step 3: Determine what will be measured to show that Employer Health and Wellness Program goals were met.
• Consider what data is really needed to show Employer Health and Wellness Program effectiveness. Avoid the temptation to collect every possible piece of data. Choose a handful of important data points and stick to those.
• Think backwards when determining what data to collect – consider how easily follow-up data can be collected when a Employer Health and Wellness Program ends. Getting follow-up data is often a challenge.
• Only collect data for health behaviors or indicators that the Employer Health and Wellness Program actually affected.
o By way of example: if the main Employer Health and Wellness Program goal is that participants will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Employer Health and Wellness Program outcome (unless the Employer Health and Wellness Program specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Employer Health and Wellness Program cannot (or did not) affect.

Step 4: Determine what Employer Health and Wellness Program elements must be included to move participants towards the Employer Health and Wellness Program goals.
• The concrete Employer Health and Wellness Program outcomes identified in Step 2 are the compass for keeping the Employer Health and Wellness Program on track. All Employer Health and Wellness Program elements should lead towards that ultimate goal.

Working backwards when planning and implementing Employee Wellness Programs is really forward thinking. Keeping the bottom line up front is a smart approach to Employee Wellness Programs.