Assessment of Employee Health Promotion Programs

It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of all Employee Health Promotion Programs. There are several very simple ways to evaluate Employee Health Promotion Programs:

How many attended the corporate health and Employee Health Promotion Program, and was there participation or a visible level of interest?

Use a short and simple pen and paper evaluation that people fill out at the end of the Employee Health Promotion Program /presentation. Statements that are rated on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) will give valuable information. Ask about:

The value of the Employee Health Promotion Programs to the individual

The style of the presenter

The presenter´s knowledge of the topic

The level of knowledge gained by the worker

Other areas that would be of interest for future Employee Health Promotion Programs

Examples of Questions about Employee Health Promotion Programs

This program provided me with information and/or skills I will use.

The presenter was knowledgeable about the subject matter.

There was adequate time for questions.

The methods used to present the information were effective.

Open-ended questions about Employee Health Promotion Programs may include:

The best component of this Employee Health Promotion Program was…

The component that needed improvement was….

I would attend another Employee Health Promotion Program by this speaker…

Topics I would like to see included in other presentations or Wellness Programs…

This would be a process evaluation that reviews how well the Employee Health Promotion Programs were started. It is also important to look at health outcomes and cost outcomes of Employee Health Promotion Programs.

More in-depth information about the cost-effectiveness of Employee Health Promotion Programs can be found by analyzing data before and after Employee Health Promotion Programs concerning healthcare claims, workers´ comp claims, sick time, productivity levels, etc. Health outcomes for Employee Health Promotion Programs can be measured by looking at health claims and sick time.

It is also important to look at the impact of Employee Health Promotion Programs on family members. For example, smoking by pregnant mothers may lead to the birth of a severely impaired child. This could cost an employer or health plan hundreds of thousands of dollars, an expense that could have been avoided with well-designed Employee Health Promotion Programs.

You can also compare the cost per worker of running the Employee Health Promotion Programs to the savings per worker. One evaluation of Employee Health Promotion Programs involving 20,000 to 25,000 workers at New York City-based Citibank showed a return of $6.70 for every dollar the business invested in Employee Health Promotion Programs. The findings were based on a study of medical costs and absenteeism.1

An ongoing evaluation of your Employee Health Promotion Programs should be performed each year and additional periodic evaluations of Employee Health Promotion Programs should be conducted on an ad hoc basis. An ad hoc evaluation of your Employee Health Promotion Programs might be initiated by a variety of triggers. For example, at the end of flu season, a business might want to evaluate its flu shot program.