Wellness Program Incentives

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

Evaluating your program does not have to be be terribly complex.  However, it is valuable to plan how you will monitor your wellness efforts and determine performance during the planning phase or Step 5.  Also keep in mind to evaluate the program based on the goals you already established during your organizing process.  

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

• Program topic and numbers of workers who participated
• The numbers of pamphlets taken by employees or distributed and on what subject matters
• 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 workers who continued the healthy behavior change following the program?
• Overall employee satisfaction with the program or each topic.  

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

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

Summarize and Report Workplace Health Promotion Program Results

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

It is valuable to communicate the wellness program results to both upper management and employees.  Consider how upper management usually receives reports on operations and work rate issues and include the annual wellness program report in the same format.  At some businesses the reports are made during upper management gatherings using presentation styles such as authority point slides.  At other businesses, 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.

Employees desire to receive the same information!  You might use the same communication channels used when informing staff members of the wellness program:

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

Also consider celebrating successes and recognizing achievements by:

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