Drug Education and Intervention in the Workplace

Program assessment may be The previous step, but it must be planned at the onset of your efforts!  Assessment helps you identify what parts of the program are working well and what parts need improvement.  Then, based on the assessment data, adjustments are able to be made to fine-tune your wellness program.   Adjusting the program based on assessment data is critical to its continued effectiveness.  

Evaluating your program does not have to be be complicated.  However, it is important to plan how you will oversee your wellness efforts and determine effectiveness during the planning phase or Step 5.  Also be sure to to evaluate the program based on the objectives you already identified during your organizing process.  

In order to evaluate your program you need to have a system to document specifics as you go along.  This can be as simple as maintaining file folders on programs that are available, or a computer document with a table or spreadsheet summarizing information collecting.  Consider:

• Program topic and numbers of employees who participated
• The numbers of handouts taken by workers or distributed and on what subject matters
• The number of participants in a behavior modification program and how many met their goals as well as how many attended all of the sessions
• Numbers of staff members who continued the healthy behavior modification following the program?
• Overall employee satisfaction with the program or each topic.  

Depending on your goals/objectives, gather desired data and compare it to previous data gathered during the initial assessment to determine if the goals/objectives were met.  Such data might include

• Absentee rates
• Injury rates
• Health risk factors Insurance expenditures  

Summarize and Report Company Wellness Program Results

Once you have collected all of the assessment information it needs to be reviewed with the Workplace Health Promotion Program Committee and summarized.  You will probably have positive results and some areas where a change is required or additional focus required for continuous improvement.  This not-so positive information can be used to make any required adjustments as well as to plan for next year and is important to include in your report.  

It is important to communicate the wellness program results to both management and employees.  Consider how management usually receives reports on operations and work rate problems and include the yearly wellness program report in the same format.  At some businesses the reports are made during management meetings using presentation styles such as authority point slides.  At other businesses, graphs and bar charts are the norm or a list of the objectives and the summary outcomes reported.  

No matter the format, it’s important to convey the outcomes and successes achieved, including any anecdotal stories, as well as areas for improvement.  Be sure to link the outcomes to the corporation mission and bottom line whenever possible.

Staff Members want to receive the same information!  Consider using the same communication channels used when informing employees of the wellness program:

• Employer newsletters,
• Bulletin boards,
• E-mails  

Also consider celebrating successes and recognizing achievements by:

• Posting pictures from programs
• Highlighting performance stories
• Posting pictures of successes
• Scheduling a celebration
• Recognizing champions