Posted by admin | Posted in Employee Wellness, wellness program | Posted on 05-09-2010
An initial health testing can include a recent survey of employees’ interests as part of the assessment. Successful wellness programs are designed to meet the needs and interests of the personnel.
The information you need to get from a recent survey depends on the scope of your health promotion program. A sample survey can be obtained in the HOPE Publications Web site.
When you plan to adapt this sample survey or develop your own survey, keep the following hints in mind –
• Ask mainly closed-choice questions, namely if you will be sending the survey to a big number of employees. Closed-choice questions provide specific choices and are easy to tabulate. You may want to use a computer for data entry and analysis.
• Invite comments, suggestions and recommendations, or ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey. Open-ended items are more difficult to summarize.
• Include a brief explanatory cover letter with the survey with the signature of the company president. Be certain to include a statement about confidentiality and anonymity.
• Ask a group of representative workforce to review the survey before it is distributed. Find out if the questions will be understood by workforce and will not be objected to.
• Include demographic information at the beginning or end of the survey. Consider various ways that you might analyze the responses by demographic characteristics (gender, age, shift, site, department, etc.).
When considering who ought to get the survey, a simple rule is if you’ve under 500 employees, everybody ought to receive one. The public relations benefit of everybody receiving a recent survey can be significant.
Over 500 staff, a sample of the work population will suffice. A sample saves on costs and time. You could want to consider consulting with a statistician to determine an appropriate sample size for your worksite.
Needs surveys are confidential and anonymous; they do not request information that may identify a individuals.
Getting support from upper-level management is critical to the success of the health promotion program.
One way to do this is to survey managers (see forms) and conduct interviews with decision-makers in the organization. You can use the surveys here or make up your own.
When you decide to do your own, keep the survey short. It should not take more than ten minutes to complete.
The interview process can also serve as a means of educating management. Give concise fact sheets on the advantages of wellness programs for management.
When surveys and interviews are completed, tally the surveys and write brief summaries of the interviews. Give these reports to management.
Once completed present a brief executive summary to management. Highlight several interesting findings that may be used immediately to make decisions about the health promotion program.
Utilize charts and graphs to make your points. Prep a detailed report for wellness committee members itemizing each response. Give a short article about the survey in the business newsletter.
The higher the response the more precise and reliable the results. A minimum response of 40 percent to 50 percent is acceptable.