After achieving corporate support, creating a wellness team, and conducting a needs assessment, the team can begin drafting a wellness plan. The wellness plan should include the program mission statement, goals and objectives, timeline, budget, incentives, programmatic support necessary, marketing strategies, implementation plans, and evaluation plan.
In creating the plan, the wellness team should develop a mission statement and set specific goals and objectives based on the findings of the assessment. The wellness program mission statement contains information on the ultimate goals and overarching values of the program. It may be helpful for the worksite wellness mission statement to support the company mission statement. An example of a program mission statement is “Recognizing that employees perform their best when they are healthy, and that optimal employee performance is necessary for the company to be a leader in its field, the health promotion program aims to improve employee health and wellbeing (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001, p. 27)”.
Goals are broad statements and focus on long-term accomplishments. Goals should be realistic, contain information on when the accomplishment will be made, and be worded in a way to easily determine if the goal has been accomplished. “Reduce the prevalence of employee smoking from 30% to 25% by the end of the next fiscal year (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001, p. 27)” is an example of a goal. Objectives state short-term accomplishments and are related to the program goals. Some examples of objectives related to the goal of reducing employee smoking rates include, “Work with health plan to add smoking cessation benefits (including no-cost cessation counseling and pharmaceuticals) at plan renewal time” and “Participate in the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke Out this November (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001, p. 27)”. Detailed action steps must be developed for each objective. These steps can be assigned to different team members to ensure completion of action steps and achievement of goals (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001).
Creating a realistic timeline is a critical component of the wellness plan. When creating the timeline, include target dates contained in objectives and goals. For program activities, make sure to schedule kick off dates that do not conflict with company events or busy times of the year. It may be wise to link events with national health and wellness holidays such as a tobacco cessation program starting on Kick Butts Day. Activities should be scheduled at times that are convenient for program participants. For example, if family members are invited to attend smoking cessation or nutrition classes it may be best to schedule them in the evening (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001).
The wellness committee should create a budget to accompany the timeline. The committee can negotiate the budget and explain why the amount is needed to accomplish program goals and objectives. Research shows programs with moderate costs of $30 to $100 per employee per year are most likely to demonstrate cost savings (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001).
Program evaluation must be included in the planning process and budget. The program evaluation should examine both how well the program is working (process evaluation) and whether it is achieving expected results (outcome evaluation). Process evaluation examines the operation of the program such as tracking to see if all activities were implemented as planned. Information gathered through employee questionnaires or looking at participation rates also provides important information for process evaluation. This information can include who is utilizing the program, which activities are most popular among employees, if the participants’ needs being met by the program activities, and if the participants are happy with the program. The information gathered in process evaluation can be used to make modifications to the program to ensure program goals and objectives are met. Outcome evaluation is used to discover if these goals and objectives were met (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001).
Outcome data that show program success can be used to improve support for the wellness program. Data that show goals and objectives were not met can help lead to needed changes to make the program more successful. Some possible reasons goals and objectives may not be met are they were unrealistic, the program was not implemented as planned, there was not enough employee participation, or the program was not designed to achieve the desired results (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001).
The information gathered in outcome evaluation is necessary for program success (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001). It is important to remember creating a successful worksite wellness program is a process. It may take several modifications to make program activities and policies work for a particular company. Evaluation results not as good as expected do not prove the program is a failure; they serve as a guide for making improvements to the wellness program.
Other important components of the work plan are selecting incentives, finding programmatic support, marketing, and implementation (Healthy Workforce 2010, 2001). These areas will be discussed in detail in the Program Implementation section.