Employer WellnessEmployer wellness programs and employer wellness consulting services

Employer Wellness Program evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Upper Management support.

Why evaluate your Employee Health Promotion Program?

Employer Wellness Program evaluation answers these questions:

• What change(s) occurred in the target population?
• ‘What’s in it’ for Upper Management?
• Are the resources that are being used worth the outcomes that are reached?
• Were Employer Wellness Program outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Employer Wellness Program areas need improvement?

Employer Wellness Program Fact of Life:

Employer Wellness Program evaluation left to “chance” or until “there is time” will never happen.

• Employer 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?

Keep it simple. Employer 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 Employee Health Promotion 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 Employer Wellness Program impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect data that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Upper Management: what Employer Wellness Program outcomes will be important from Upper Management point of view?

• It’s never too late to incorporate Employer Wellness Program evaluation into Employee Health Promotion Programs.
• If your Employer 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 Employer 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 Employer Wellness Program components. Compare the components of your Employer Wellness Program to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.