Employee Wellness : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Evaluation Guide

What Do You Wish to Achieve?

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

If you’re trying to find out whether plan has been efficacious, see if you stuck to your mission statement and met your goals/objectives.

If you do not have a mission statement or objectives and goals, agree with upper management and your employee Workplace Wellness Program Committee how your organization will track success.

By way of example, you can track success by changes in:

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

Thinking About staff members

If you’re thinking of making improvements to the plan, consider whether the plan is still relevant and fitting for employees. Find out if there are any barriers to participation in the program or to participation in physical activity during work.

As employees are the ones participating in the program, it’s valuable to give them a chance to support feedback on the physical activity initiative.

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

Decide when and where you will do your evaluation (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 participants of the Worksite Wellness Program Committee) before sending it out to staff members. The employee Worksite Wellness Program Committee may also want to evaluate the initiative’s planning process.

Doing the Evaluation

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