Keeping the bottom line up front Bottom Line Up Front in Employee 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 Health and Wellness Program.
The bottom line in Employee Health and Wellness Programs answer two primary questions:
• How will participant health be improved?
• 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 Employee Health and Wellness Program impacts readiness.
• Think like Senior Management: what Employee Health and Wellness Program outcomes will be important from a Senior Management point of view?
• Develop line-centered language that communicates those outcomes.
• Ask members how they think a particular Employee 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 Health and Wellness Programs.
Step 1: Think about the end of the Employee 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 Health and Wellness Program, be able to answer the questions: how will participant health be improved? What’s in it for Senior Management?
Step 2: Identify concrete Employee Health and Wellness Program outcomes.
• Identify up front what the Employee Health and Wellness Program is working towards.
o For example: will members lose weight? Walk more steps? Decrease injuries? Move to another stage of change?
• Identify 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 Employee Health and Wellness Program goals were met.
• Look at what information is really needed to show Employee Health and Wellness Program 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 determining what information to collect – consider how easily follow-up information can be collected when a Employee Health and Wellness Program ends. Getting follow-up information is often a challenge.
• Only collect information for health behaviors or indicators that the Employee Health and Wellness Program actually affected.
o For example: if the main Employee Health and Wellness Program goal is that members will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Employee Health and Wellness Program outcome (unless the Employee Health and Wellness Program specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Employee Health and Wellness Program cannot (or did not) affect.
Step 4: Determine what Employee Health and Wellness Program elements must be included to move members towards the Employee Health and Wellness Program goals.
• The concrete Employee Health and Wellness Program outcomes identified in Step 2 are the compass for keeping the Employee Health and Wellness Program on track. All Employee Health and Wellness Program elements should lead towards that ultimate goal.
Working backwards when planning and starting Employee Health and Wellness Programs is really forward thinking. Keeping the bottom line up front is a smart approach to Employee Health and Wellness Programs.
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