Workplace Wellness Program Evaluation Basics
Workplace Wellness Program evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Senior Management support.
Why evaluate your Workplace Wellness Program?
Workplace 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 reached?
• Were Workplace Wellness Program outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Workplace Wellness Program areas need improvement?
Workplace Wellness Program Fact of Life:
Workplace Wellness Program evaluation left to “chance” or until “there is time” will never happen.
• Workplace 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. Workplace Wellness Program evaluation does not have to be complicated.
• Get baseline data.
• Baseline data is the health status of the target population at the beginning of the Workplace Wellness Program.
• Start by collecting just 3 or 4 primary items as the baseline. You will have better success collecting follow-up information later if you only need to get a few pieces of data.
• 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 data that relates to readiness.
• You should always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Workplace Wellness Program impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect data that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Senior Management: what Workplace Wellness Program outcomes will be important from Senior Management point of view?
• It’s never too late to incorporate Workplace Wellness Program evaluation into Workplace Wellness Programs.
• If your Workplace Wellness Program is already up and running and you didn’t plan for data collection ahead of time, start collecting data NOW.
• If you don’t have baseline data, then collect interim data and compare that to end-of-program data.
• Or, you can compare final Workplace Wellness Program outcomes to similar initiatives elsewhere.
If you can’t make any comparisons to other data, use resources like The Community Guide (http://www.thecommunityguide.org/ ) that have already evaluated the effectiveness of Workplace Wellness Program components. Compare the components of your Workplace Wellness Program to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.
