Worksite Wellness Program Evaluation Basics
Worksite Wellness Program evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Senior Management support.
Why evaluate your Worksite Wellness Program?
Worksite Wellness Program evaluation answers these questions:
• What change(s) occurred in the target population?
• ‘What’s in it’ for Senior Management?
• Are the resources that are being used worth the outcomes that are achieved?
• Were Worksite Wellness Program outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Worksite Wellness Program areas need improvement?
Worksite Wellness Program Fact of Life:
Worksite Wellness Program evaluation left to “chance” or until “there is time” will never happen.
• Worksite Wellness Program evaluation should be considered as an essential part of the whole plan for Wellness and not as something extra.
Where do you start?
Make it Simple. Worksite Wellness Program evaluation does not have to be complicated.
• Get baseline information.
• Baseline information is the health status of the target population at the beginning of the Worksite Wellness Program.
• Begin by collecting just 3 or 4 key items as the baseline. You will have better success collecting follow-up information later if you only need to get a few pieces of information.
• Don’t rely only on health indicators that require lab evaluation. Also use self-report information and health indicators that are measurable without lab tests.
• Collect information that relates to readiness.
• You should always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Worksite Wellness Program impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect information that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Senior Management: what Worksite Wellness Program outcomes will be important from Senior Management point of view?
• It’s never too late to incorporate Worksite Wellness Program evaluation into Worksite Wellness Programs.
• If your Worksite Wellness Program is already up and running and you didn’t plan for information collection ahead of time, start collecting information NOW.
• If you don’t have baseline information, then collect interim information and compare that to end-of-program information.
• Or, you can compare final Worksite Wellness Program outcomes to similar programs elsewhere.
If you can’t make any comparisons to other information, use resources like The Community Guide (http://www.thecommunityguide.org/ ) that have already evaluated the effectiveness of Worksite Wellness Program components. Compare the components of your Worksite Wellness Program to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.