Employer Wellness

Program evaluation may be The last step, but it should be planned at the onset of your efforts!  Evaluation helps you identify what parts of the program are working well and what parts need improvement.  Then, based on the evaluation data, adjustments can be made to fine-tune your wellness program.   Adjusting the program based on evaluation data is critical to its continued success.  

Reviewing your program need not be terribly complex.  However, it is valuable to plan how you will oversee your wellness efforts and determine performance during the planning phase or Step 5.  Also be sure to to evaluate the program based on the goals and objectives you already established during your planning process.  

In order to evaluate your program you must have a system to document specifics as you progress.  This can be as simple as maintaining file folders on programs that are available, or a computer document with a table or spreadsheet summarizing information collecting.  Consider:

• Program topic and numbers of staff members who participated
• The numbers of brochures taken by employees or distributed and on what topics
• The number of participants in a behavior modification program and how many met their goals/objectives as well as how many attended all of the sessions
• Numbers of staff members who continued the healthy behavior modification following the program?
• Overall employee satisfaction with the program or each topic.  

Depending on your objectives and goals, gather desired data and compare it to previous data gathered during the initial assessment to determine if the objectives and goals were met.  Such data might include

• Absentee rates
• Injury rates
• Health risk factors Insurance costs  

Summarize and Report Worksite Wellness Program Results

Once you have collected all of the evaluation information it needs to be reviewed with the Workplace Wellness Program Committee and summarized.  You will probably have beneficial results and some areas where a change is necessitated or additional focus necessitated for continuous improvement.  This not-so beneficial information can be used to make any necessitated changes as well as to plan for next year and is important to include in your report.  

It is significant to communicate the wellness program results to both senior staff and workers.  Consider how senior staff usually receives reports on operations and productiveness concerns and include the annual wellness program report in the same format.  At some organizations the reports are made during senior staff meetings using presentation styles such as authority point slides.  At other organizations, graphs and bar charts are the norm or a list of the objectives and the summary outcomes announced.  

No matter the format, it’s significant to convey the outcomes and successes achieved, including any anecdotal stories, as well as areas for improvement.  Be sure to link the outcomes to the business mission and bottom line whenever possible.

Staff Members desire to receive the same information!  Consider using the same communication channels used when informing staff members of the wellness program:

• Company newsletters,
• Bulletin boards,
• E-mails  

Also consider celebrating successes and recognizing achievements by:

• Posting pictures from events
• Highlighting success stories
• Posting pictures of successes
• Scheduling a celebration
• Recognizing champions