Bottom Line Up Front Employee Wellness Initiatives

Keeping the bottom line up front Bottom Line Up Front in Company Health Promotion Initiative will help you get and sustain Upper Management support. A Bottom Line Up Front approach will also help you more realistically measure the impact of your Employee Wellness Program.

The bottom line in Employee Wellness Initiatives answer two key questions:
• How will participant health be improved?
• What’s in it for Upper Management?

The ultimate bottom line: all roads should lead to readiness.
• Always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Company Health Promotion Initiative impacts readiness.
• Think like Upper Management: what Company Health Promotion Initiative outcomes will be important from a Upper Management point of view?
• Develop line-centered language that communicates those outcomes.
• Ask members how they think a particular Company Health Promotion Initiative enhances force readiness. This input is a valuable source of information.

Use the following steps as a Bottom Line Up Front approach to Employee Wellness Programs.

Step 1: Think about the end of the Company Health Promotion Initiative first and plan backwards.
• It has been said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
• Before planning or implementing any part of the Employee Wellness Program, be able to answer the questions: how will participant health be improved? What’s in it for Upper Management?

Step 2: Establish concrete Company Health Promotion Initiative outcomes.
• Establish up front what the Company Health Promotion Initiative is working towards.
o For example: will members lose weight? Walk more steps? Decrease injuries? Move to another stage of change?
• Establish any processes or procedures that will be improved.
o For example: which pharmacy operations will become more efficient? How will record-keeping be streamlined?

Step 3: Determine what will be measured to show that Company Health Promotion Initiative goals were met.
• Consider what information is really needed to show Company Health Promotion Initiative effectiveness. Avoid the temptation to collect every possible piece of data. Choose a handful of important information points and stick to those.
• Think backwards when deciding what information to collect – consider how easily follow-up information can be collected when a Company Health Promotion Initiative ends. Getting follow-up information is frequently a challenge.
• Only collect information for health behaviors or indicators that the Company Health Promotion Initiative actually affected.
o For example: if the main Company Health Promotion Initiative goal is that members will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Company Health Promotion Initiative outcome (unless the Company Health Promotion Initiative specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Company Health Promotion Initiative cannot (or did not) affect.

Step 4: Determine what Company Health Promotion Initiative elements must be included to move members towards the Company Health Promotion Initiative goals.
• The concrete Company Health Promotion Initiative outcomes identified in Step 2 are the compass for keeping the Company Health Promotion Initiative on track. All Company Health Promotion Initiative elements should lead towards that ultimate goal.

Working backwards when planning and implementing Employee Wellness Initiatives is really forward thinking. Keeping the bottom line up front is a smart approach to Employee Wellness Programs.