Company Health Promotion Initiative Evaluation Basics

Company Health Promotion Initiative evaluation is critical for effective Wellness and will help you get Upper Management support.

Why evaluate your Employee Wellness Program?

Company Health Promotion Initiative 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 Company Health Promotion Initiative outcomes expected? (Unexpected outcomes may have occurred.)
• What Company Health Promotion Initiative areas need improvement?

Company Health Promotion Initiative Fact of Life:

Company Health Promotion Initiative evaluation left to “chance” or until “there is time” will never happen.

• Company Health Promotion Initiative evaluation should be considered as an fundamental part of the whole plan for Wellness and not as something extra.

Where do you start?

Make it Simple. Company Health Promotion Initiative 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 Employee Wellness 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 Company Health Promotion Initiative impacts readiness. Plan ahead to collect information that will demonstrate this connection.
• Think like Upper Management: what Company Health Promotion Initiative outcomes will be important from Upper Management point of view?

• It’s never too late to incorporate Company Health Promotion Initiative evaluation into Employee Wellness Programs.
• If your Company Health Promotion Initiative 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 Company Health Promotion Initiative 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 Company Health Promotion Initiative components. Compare the components of your Company Health Promotion Initiative to those that have been proven effective elsewhere.