Employee Wellness Newsletter : Worksite Wellness Program: Monitor and Review Your Worksite Wellness Program  

Program evaluation may be The last step, but it must be planned at the onset of your efforts!  Assessment helps you identify what parts of the program are working well and what parts need 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 vital to its continued success.  

Reviewing your program does not have to be be complicated.  However, it is important to plan how you will oversee your wellness efforts and determine success during the planning phase or Step 5.  Also be sure to to evaluate the program based on the objectives and goals you already established during your planning process.  

In order to evaluate your program you need to 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 workers who participated
• The numbers of pamphlets taken by workers or distributed and on what issues
• The number of participants in a behavior modification program and how many met their goals 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 and objectives, gather desired data and compare it to previous data gathered during the initial assessment to determine if the goals and objectives were met.  Such data might include

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

Summarize and Report Corporate Health Promotion Program Results

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

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

No matter the format, it’s valuable 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 corporation mission and bottom line whenever possible.

Workers wish to receive the same information!  Consider using the same communication channels used when informing workers of the wellness program:

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

Also consider celebrating successes and recognizing achievements by:

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