Bottom Line Up Front Employee Wellness Programs

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

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

Step 2: Identify concrete Employer Wellness Program outcomes.
• Identify up front what the Employer 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 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 Employer Wellness Program goals were met.
• Look at what data is really needed to show Employer 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 Employer Wellness Program ends. Getting follow-up data is frequently a challenge.
• Only collect data for health behaviors or indicators that the Employer Wellness Program actually affected.
o For example: if the main Employer Wellness Program goal is that members will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Employer Wellness Program outcome (unless the Employer Wellness Program specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Employer Wellness Program cannot (or did not) affect.

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

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