Health And Wellness Programs

Keeping the bottom line up front Bottom Line Up Front in Company Health and Wellness Program will help you get and sustain Senior 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 Plans answer two primary questions:
• How will participant health be enhanced?
• What’s in it for Senior Management?

The ultimate bottom line: all roads should lead to readiness.
• Always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Company Health and Wellness Program impacts readiness.
• Think like Senior Management: what Company Health and Wellness Program outcomes will be important from a Senior Management point of view?
• Develop line-centered language that communicates those outcomes.
• Ask participants how they think a particular Company Health and Wellness Program 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 and Wellness Program 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 starting any part of the Employee Wellness Program, be able to answer the questions: how will participant health be enhanced? What’s in it for Senior Management?

Step 2: Identify concrete Company Health and Wellness Program outcomes.
• Identify up front what the Company Health and Wellness Program is working towards.
o For example: will participants lose weight? Walk more steps? Decrease injuries? Move to another stage of change?
• Identify any processes or procedures that will be enhanced.
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 and Wellness Program goals were achieved.
• Look at what data is really needed to show Company Health and Wellness Program effectiveness. Avoid the temptation to collect every possible piece of data. Choose a handful of important data points and stick to those.
• Think backwards when deciding what data to collect – consider how easily follow-up data can be collected when a Company Health and Wellness Program ends. Getting follow-up data is often a challenge.
• Only collect data for health behaviors or indicators that the Company Health and Wellness Program actually affected.
o For example: if the main Company Health and Wellness Program goal is that participants will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Company Health and Wellness Program outcome (unless the Company Health and Wellness Program specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Company Health and Wellness Program cannot (or did not) affect.

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

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