Health and Wellness Leads : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Assessment Guide

What Do You Seek to Achieve?

Ponder why you’re evaluating and what your assessment is going to measure.

If you’re trying to discover whether program has been efficacious, see if you stuck to your mission statement and met your goals and objectives.

If you don’t have a mission statement or goals/objectives, agree with upper management and your employee Worksite Health Promotion Program Committee how your organization will measure success.

For example, you can track success by changes in:

• Physical measures (e.g., strength, flexibility, waist circumference of workers).
• Psychological measures (e.g., employee morale, satisfaction levels, stress levels).
• Productivity measures (e.g., decline in absenteeism rates, increased employee productivity).

Thinking About employees

If you’re considering making improvements to the plan, think about whether the plan is still relevant and appropriate for employees. Find out if there are any obstacles to participation in the program or to participation in physical exercise during the workday.

As employees are the ones participating in the program, it’s important to give them a chance to offer feedback on the physical exercise plan.

Choosing an Evaluation Method

Decide on your assessment method. Both measurable results (e.g., absenteeism rates or questionnaire responses) and descriptive results (e.g., one-on-one interviews or focus groups) can be used to evaluate. The method you choose will hinge upon the time and funding available and what you want to measure.

Deciding How to Do the Assessment

Plan when and where you will do your assessment (and who will be evaluated). For more information, read the “Types of Evaluations” section on this website.
You may want to pilot test your evaluation (e.g., with members of the Company Health Promotion Program Committee) before sending it out to employees. The employee Company Health Promotion Program Committee may also wish to evaluate the initiative’s planning process.

Doing the Evaluation

• Compare your outcome to baseline information (i.e., evaluation results from before the launch of your initiative). If you don’t have this information, save your evaluation outcome to compare with later results. You can also look at other information you may have, such as employee satisfaction survey results.
• Analyze and share meaningful and simple-to-be aware of results with upper management and employees.
• Evaluation results can be used to improve the current physical exercise program and/or to develop new pushes in future.