Determine Your Company's Needs
Determining your company's health and wellness needs is an essential component of a successful workplace wellness program. You may have many ideas for programs and activities. Before jumping ahead, you should first assess the needs of your organization so you can tailor programs to meet those specific needs.
One of the first steps to determining your company's needs is to conduct an assessment to discover your employee's interests and what types of programs would achieve high levels of participation. This initial research will help you define the general environment of the organization and the business goals for your company.
Worksite Evaluation
It is important for you to understand your organization in order to develop a wellness initiative that will be successful in your organization. An assessment will help you do just that.
Assessments will help you achieve a variety of objectives. Once completed, you will:
- Understand employees needs and wants
- Know current health issues present in your company
- Realize what the business environment looks like
- Determine types of programs to implement that fit employee and business needs and goals
Not only are worksite evaluations a great way to gather information and data, they can be used to create awareness about the wellness program as well as educate staff about program ideas. Your assessment can engage employees while creating commitment and buy-in.
Types of Wellness Assessments
Keep in mind that there are a multiple formats that you can use for assessments. You can conduct focus groups, one-on-one interviews, web/phone surveys or paper surveys. No matter which format you select, the type of assessment you use should depend on the information you are trying to gather.
- Workplace assessment: An important part of your wellness strategy is to identify your company’s existing wellness efforts and opportunities for enhancement of those efforts.
This checklist will help you to assess your workplace environment. - Current program evaluation: Make sure you evaluate programs or specific elements of programs that already exist. You need to assess those programs for employee satisfaction, participation and utilization levels to determine what is working and what items could use some improvement.
- Employee interest survey: You’ll want to get a good idea of what types of programs will interest your employees so you can ensure high participation levels. Read more about employee interest surveys and sample questions.
- Health risk assessment and/or biometric screenings:
When performing health risk assessments:- carefully evaluate health risk assessment tools and select one that is appropriate for your organization
- ensure assessment includes detailed supporting health information and supporting resources
- use a variety of methods to obtain the assessment information. (e.g. intranet, telephone, paper, one-on-one interviews). Be careful to identify and adapt to any language barriers.
Learn more about the MyHealthProfile health risk assessment.