Why have Employee Health and Wellness Program goals?
Employee Health and Wellness Program goals take your company’s priorities for employee health improvement and make them specific and measurable. Well-defined Employee Health and Wellness Program goals provide direction for selecting Strategies and a basis for which to measure progress.
Writing Employee Health and Wellness Program goals
Writing Employee Health and Wellness Program goals is not complicated or difficult. It does require some thought, about your company’s Employee Health and Wellness Program vision for a culture of health and they should be:
Specific Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals
Measurable Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals
Attainable Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals
Realistic Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals
Timely Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals
Specific Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals: What is the specific outcome your company is looking for? “Reduce smoking among workers” is more specific than “Improve the health of workers.” You may wish to write some goals about specific outcomes (reducing smoking among workers) and other goals about specific progress (implementing a smoke-free campus policy or decreasing the price of fresh fruit in the cafeteria to 25 cents a piece).
Measurable Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals: Making your goals measurable provides a means of evaluating your progress and success. There is an adage: “what gets measured, gets done.” Goals which are measurable can be effective motivators for your company. “Provide more time for workers to be physically active” is much less measurable than “implement a daily 15-minute walking break into the schedule of all workers.” “Increase the number of workers who want to quit smoking” is less measurable than “increase enrollments in the stop-using tobacco program to 120 workers per year.”
Attainable Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals: Determine goals that challenge your company to change and that will demonstrate a real commitment to employee health. At the same time, set goals that are achievable. Goals that are set too far out of reach can be overwhelming and may become a barrier rather than a motivator.
Realistic Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals: Write goals that are do-able, given the skills, time, finances and overall strategy of the company. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn’t break them.
Timely Employee Health and Wellness Program Goals: When do you hope to achieve the goal? Next week? Next year? Without a timeframe, the goal is still vague and is much less likely to galvanize resources and energy within your company.
“Reduce the percent of workers who use tobacco from 20 percent to 10 percent” is much less of a challenge than “By the end of 2010, reduce the percent of workers who use tobacco from 20 percent to 15 percent”.
