Wellness Plans : Health Promotion Program Evaluation.

Program evaluation could  be the last step, but it should be planned at the beginning of your efforts! Evaluation assists you identify what parts of the health promotion program are working well and what parts need improvement.  

Then, based on the analysis data, adjustments could be made to fine-tune your wellness program.   Adjusting the wellness program based on analysis data is crucial to its continued success.  

Evaluating your wellness program doesn’t have to be complicated.  HOWEVER, it’s vital that you plan how you will monitor your wellness efforts and determine success during the planning phase.  

Moreover remember to evaluate the wellness program based on the goals and goals you already identified during your planning process.  

In order to evaluate your health promotion program you need to have a system to document specifics as you go along.  This may be as simple as maintaining file folders on health promotion programs that are offered, or a computer document with a table or spreadsheet summarizing information collecting.  Consider –

• Program topic and numbers of personnel who participated

• The numbers of pamphlets taken by workforce or distributed and on what topics

• The number of participants in a behavior modification program and how many met their goals as well as how many attended all the sessions

• Numbers of workers who continued the healthful behavior modification following the health promotion program?

• Overall employee satisfaction with the wellness program or each topic. Here’s a sample examination form.  

Depending on your objectives and objectives, gather desired data and compare it to previous data accumulated during the initial assessment to determine if the objectives were met.  Such data might include

• Absentee rates

• Injury rates

• Health risk factors Insurance costs  

Summarize and Report Health Promotion Program Results

Once you’ve gathered all of the evaluation information it needs to be reviewed with the Health Promotion Committee and summarized. You will probably have positive results and some areas where a change is needed or additional focus required for continuous improvement.  

This not-so positive information could be used to make any needed changes in addition to to plan for next year and is vital that you include in your report.  

It’s crucial to communicate the wellness program results to both senior management and staff members.  Consider how senior management ordinarily receives reports on operations and productivity issues and include the annual wellness program report in the same format.  

At some corporations the reports are made during upper management meetings using presentation styles like power point slides.  At other corporations, graphs and bar charts are the norm or a list of the objectives and the summary outcomes reported.  

No matter the format, it is imperative that you convey the outcomes and successes achieved, including any anecdotal stories, as well as areas for improvement. Be sure to link the outcomes to the company mission and bottom line whenever possible.

Staff Members want to receive the same information!  Consider using the same communication channels used when informing employees of the wellness program –

• Corporation newsletters,

• Bulletin boards,

• E-mails  

Additionally consider celebrating successes and recognizing achievements by –

• Posting pictures from events

• Highlighting success stories

• Posting pictures of successes

• Scheduling a celebration

• Recognizing champions