Workplace Health Promotion Program Evaluation Basics
Workplace Health Promotion Program evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Upper Management support.
Why evaluate your Workplace Health Promotion Program?
Workplace Health Promotion Program 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 achieved?
• Were Workplace Health Promotion Program outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Workplace Health Promotion Program areas need improvement?
Workplace Health Promotion Program Fact of Life:
Workplace Health Promotion Program evaluation left to “chance” or until “there is time” will never happen.
• Workplace Health Promotion Program evaluation should be considered as an essential part of the whole plan for Wellness and not as something extra.
Where do you start?
Keep it simple. Workplace Health Promotion Program 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 Health Promotion Program.
• Begin by collecting just 3 or 4 key 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 Workplace Health Promotion Program impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect information that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Upper Management: what Workplace Health Promotion Program outcomes will be important from Upper Management point of view?
• It’s never too late to incorporate Workplace Health Promotion Program evaluation into Workplace Health Promotion Programs.
• If your Workplace Health Promotion Program 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 Workplace Health Promotion Program outcomes to similar initiatives 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 Workplace Health Promotion Program components. Compare the components of your Workplace Health Promotion Program to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.
