Why evaluate your Corporate Wellness Program?

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

Corporate Wellness Program Fact of Life:

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

• Corporate Wellness 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. Corporate Wellness 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 Corporate Wellness Program.
• Start 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 Corporate Wellness Program impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect information that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Upper Management: what Corporate Wellness Program outcomes will be important from Upper Management point of view?

• It’s never too late to incorporate Corporate Wellness Program evaluation into Corporate Wellness Programs.
• If your Corporate Wellness 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 Corporate Wellness 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 Corporate Wellness Program components. Compare the components of your Corporate Wellness Program to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.