How to Write Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals and Objectives
Why have Worksite Health and Wellness Program objectives?
Worksite Health and Wellness Program objectives take your company’s priorities for employee health improvement and make them specific and measurable. Well-defined Worksite Health and Wellness Program objectives provide direction for selecting Strategies and a basis for which to measure progress.
Writing Worksite Health and Wellness Program objectives
Writing Worksite Health and Wellness Program objectives is not complicated or difficult. It does require some thought, about your company’s Worksite Health and Wellness Program vision for a culture of wellness and they should be:
Specific Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals
Measurable Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals
Attainable Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals
Realistic Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals
Timely Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals
Specific Worksite 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 objectives about specific outcomes (reducing smoking among workers) and other objectives about specific progress (implementing a smoke-free campus policy or reducing the price of fresh fruit in the cafeteria to 25 cents a piece).
Measurable Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals: Making your objectives measurable provides a means of evaluating your progress and success. There is a saying: “what gets measured, gets done.” Measurable objectives 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-smoking program to 120 workers per year.”
Attainable Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals: Determine objectives that challenge your company to change and that will demonstrate a real commitment to employee health. At the same time, set objectives 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 Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals: Write objectives 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 Worksite Health and Wellness Program Goals: When do you hope to achieve the goal? Next week? Next year? Without a timeframe, the goal is still not clear 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”.
