6 Steps Of Wellness Assessment For A Healthy Workplace In 2024

Living well is a constant process that requires balance and continuous focus on different aspects of healthy living. Despite acknowledging its importance, most corporate employees get caught up in busy schedules and neglect their wellness, thereby facing health problems.

So to keep the employees' wellness in order and to ensure that the smooth conduct of business, wellness assessment is an important exercise. It is crucial from the employer’s end to keep track of employee wellness so that no hurdles come between the organization’s success and employee wellness.

Writing in an internal Apple memo on a cold January morning in 2009, Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, mentioned, “ I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I thought. Some of them have to do with the misfortune and some with my negligence”. A legend by all stretch of the imagination acknowledged how his failure to assess his wellness led to health issues, eventually resulting in death.

Similarly, a few years back, the CEO of McDonald’s, James Cantalupo, also died due to cardiac arrest. They were some of the elites and privileged businessmen. Yet, they succumbed to death because of the failure of timely wellness evaluation.

So holistic assessments are essential in the workplace. It will ensure that there is no compromise from the employees’ end on their wellness and the potential risks on their safety are managed smoothly.

Employers must help their employees learn the value of embracing healthier behaviors. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, workplace stress amongst employees is an evolving issue. The focus now on ensuring workplace wellness is more than ever.

But firstly, let us understand what wellness assessment is all about.

What is a Wellness Assessment?

Wellness is much more than just being disease-free. According to G.W.D, it is an active process of transition and progression. It is the process of becoming familiar with making choices towards a healthy and rewarding life. Pfizer defines it as the act of adopting healthy habits on regularly to achieve better physical and mental health.

Thus, Wellness Assessment can be understood as the process of evaluating an employee’s physical, spiritual, social, and environmental wellbeing. Certain sets of questions and data-driven methods will be implemented in this regard.

The collected data will be analyzed and the learnings from it will be used to improve the factors which have an impact on employee’s health and wellness.

Employees should also take this activity seriously and respond in their best possible way. It will provide necessary information which will help management to formulate an efficient wellness program. For an employee to perform best of his abilities, he must adhere to all the steps and make the wellness assessment successful.

Need For Wellness Assessment

Before working on any solution, it is always essential to understand the problem. Unhealthy lifestyle choices are the main reasons for the wellness slump in any workplace. It results in massive losses which causes a costly problem for organizations. According to a recent report by Hubspot , every year a loss of around 2 trillion dollars occurs from productivity issues alone.

Hence, a wellness assessment is vital. It will provide employers with information about the health status of their employees. It helps the management to prepare more user-friendly and efficient corporate wellness programs.

In the podcast by HRD connect, HR veterans Chuck Heaton, Chuck Kemper, and Jason Anderson talk on wellness assessments. They mention that engagement levels must be properly measured. It has a direct correlation to organizational success. It improves safety, productivity, retention, customer relations, profit, and shareholder return.

6 Steps of Wellness Assessment at Workplace

1. Innovative assessment questionnaires

Use innovative assessment questionnaires and data-driven solutions with the latest health technology available. It will help to guide employees towards healthier outcomes. It helps to enhance the organization's bottom line.

The assessment must cover all the nine dimensions of wellness. Its own set of pertinent questions should represent each dimension of wellness. The questions must focus on employees’ health history and work-related information.

Keep the responses anonymous. It will help to ensure that the received data is accurate. Employees who feel their identity is not anonymous usually offer agreeable responses.

It will provide a snapshot of how employees feel about their wellness. Use the Job Quality Index, which is another tool to test work quality.

2. Assess the Work Environment

Tour your workplace and complete the environmental assessment. Check the facilities available for environmental factors that may affect staff wellness. Examine the access to healthy food, opportunities for physical activity, and workplace health and safety. Consider all other factors which support employee wellness.

Learn about the organization from different perspectives. Engage in group and individual interviews with key employees. Change the workplace environment to help promote healthy lifestyles.

3. Measure the Engagement Levels

Every organization is unique. So how an Employer engages his employees looks different too. According to research from GALLUP, organizations in the United States with highly engaged employees have 17% higher productivity and 21% higher profit.

Measure employee engagement levels to build trust. Identify strengths and problem areas. Understand how to engage your employees which work best for the organization. Use pulse surveys, conduct workplace audits. Employ tools like Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), which is an efficient method to measure employee engagement.

4. Consider the COVID-related risks

Coronavirus pandemic has brought unprecedented times in the entire world. The workforce dynamics have changed around the world. The staff has shifted to work from home for most of the months last year. It has brought a fresh set of challenges related to Employee wellness.

Job uncertainty, mental health issues, and isolation have increased the stress. A lot of these employees are now reporting symptoms of depression. An agile approach from employers will help in better health management. The onus is on them to ensure there is no impact on the flow of business operations.

Communicate with your Employees from time to time. Even a simple phone call goes a long way to encouraging your employee’s morale. Ask your employees to communicate with their peers a lot more. Conduct recreational activities over online platforms. Incorporate several engaging contests and challenges in the wellness platform, and reward them.

5. Data Analysis and Interpretation

Integrate and summarize the information collected. Interpret this information from the point of view of your wellness needs. Compare health plans and health care cost patterns of employees.

Use break-even analysis to find potential values of the existing or future programs. Devise a timely intervention and construct a forecasting framework.

Choose an appropriate index as a baseline. The baseline value will influence the outcome and reflect the status of the forecast.

6. Findings and Implications

Consider all the parameters and ensure that it covers all points of wellness. Adjust your existing wellness program. Revise a few changes and make it more efficient and engaging.

Develop an action plan that includes a timeline and budget to target desired goals.

Using Vantage Fit App for Wellness Assessment

Vantage Fit is an application dedicated to wellness that is transforming the workplace. It is an engaging platform for users to keep track of their wellness activities. Users can create a customized profile and complete specific fitness tasks. On completion, they will be getting points that they can redeem later.

The application gathers all the essential wellness information from the users like weight, eating patterns, etc, and provides an overall health score and specific recommendations for improvement.

Book a demo to learn how Vantage Fit can help you create a successful wellness assessment in your company

Conclusion

There are only a few well-specified methods of program evaluations. Despite that employers continue to invest in wellness programs, and for good reasons. Making wellness a business priority improves employees’ health and inculcates workplace culture. Thus, it will provide greater zeal and commitment from the employees and promote better ROI.

Foster a culture of wellbeing and focus on long-term goals. Find new ways to engage your employees. Make them take part in health risk assessments.

Teach them about giving due importance to their personal health. Show your employees that you value their welfare.