Measure Success and Plan your Next Steps
After you implement your program, you will begin to see results from your employees almost immediately. Pay attention to feedback early on and begin documenting results from each activity and event individually.
The research and planning you did prior to launching a wellness initiative was critical. At program completion, the evaluation and communication of program successes and enhancements for future activities is essential.
Purpose of Evaluation
Your workplace wellness program is coming to a close. You must take the necessary time to perform a detailed evaluation of your program, especially noting how it tied back into business goals and employee satisfaction.
It is imperative that you evaluate your program.
Evaluations are performed to:
- Determine if/how program goals were achieved
- Evaluate the success and decide if the program is worth repeating
- Identify opportunities for future improvements
- Connect programs back to company goals and objectives
- Create a framework for an ongoing cost benefit and ROI analysis
- Assess, over time, the health and cost benefits of each program
- Provide program impact details that you can communicate to employees and management
Program Evaluation
Keep in mind that evaluation is an ongoing process. Evaluation should be done throughout your wellness program, examining individual activities, coupled with a full analysis of the program at its completion.
A post evaluation survey can help collect information about your program's effectiveness and provide suggestions for future programming. Depending on the type of programs you implemented within the workplace, consider gathering information in the following areas:
- Participation/utilization rates
- Satisfaction levels
- Program components that participants enjoyed (e.g.. the Lunch-n-Learn seminar on healthy eating, team competition, pedometers to track steps)
- Overall perception of health and wellness
- Health risk changes over time
- Readiness to change levels over time (e.g., you may determine that a high percentage of your employees went from thinking about exercising to actually working out twice a week)
- Health behaviors over time (e.g. increase the number of minutes they engage in physical activity, increase their awareness around stress management techniques, lose weight, learn how to read nutritional labels)
- Cost benefit of programs
- Suggestions/feedback
The post evaluation survey is a great time to recruit new wellness committee members, by incorporating a "Please contact me, I'd like to be more involved" section at the end of the survey.
It is also worthwhile to document any positive changes in worksite policies or environmental support (healthy cafeteria choices, smoke free worksite, etc.). These positive long-term benefits are essential to senior management.
For more detailed information on Return on Investment (ROI) and to view a sample ROI illustration, visit our Demonstrating ROI page.
Your Results
You have collected the results from your workplace wellness initiative. Now what do you do with the results?
Communicate results with senior management and your entire employee population. Sharing the successes and challenges with everyone will continue to foster support and enthusiasm for the wellness program.
Results can be used to:
- Revise processes, programs, committees and/or resources
- Advocate for additional resources based on current cost savings or cost benefit
- Demonstrate the value of the program (testimonials)
- Select what aspects of program to keep and what to get rid of or improve upon
- Determine value of assessment measures
- Create ongoing action plans for employees
- Share best practices and successes in journal articles or at conferences