Worksite Wellness Plan Evaluation Basics

Worksite Wellness Plan evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Upper Management support.

Why evaluate your Workplace Wellness Program?

Worksite Wellness Plan 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 Worksite Wellness Plan outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Worksite Wellness Plan areas need improvement?

Worksite Wellness Plan Fact of Life:

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

• Worksite Wellness Plan evaluation should be considered as an essential part of the whole plan for Wellness and not as something extra.

Where do you start?

Make it Simple. Worksite Wellness Plan evaluation does not have to be complicated.
• Get baseline information.
• Baseline information is the health status of the target population at the beginning of the Workplace Wellness 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 information.
• 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 information that relates to readiness.
• You should always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Worksite Wellness Plan impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect information that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Upper Management: what Worksite Wellness Plan outcomes will be important from Upper Management point of view?

• It’s never too late to incorporate Worksite Wellness Plan evaluation into Workplace Wellness Programs.
• If your Worksite Wellness Plan is already up and running and you didn’t plan for information collection ahead of time, start collecting information NOW.
• If you don’t have baseline information, then collect interim information and compare that to end-of-program information.
• Or, you can compare final Worksite Wellness Plan outcomes to similar programs elsewhere.

If you can’t make any comparisons to other information, use resources like The Community Guide (http://www.thecommunityguide.org/ ) that have already evaluated the effectiveness of Worksite Wellness Plan components. Compare the components of your Worksite Wellness Plan to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.