Health Handouts : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Evaluation Guide

What Do You Wish to Achieve?

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

If you’re trying to discover whether initiative has been efficacious, see if you followed your mission statement and met your objectives.

If you don’t have a mission statement or goals, decide with upper management and your employee Employee Wellness Program Committee how your organization will measure success.

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

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

Thinking About workers

If you’re considering making improvements to the plan, consider whether the plan is still relevant and fitting for workers. See if there are any barriers to participation in the program or to participation in physical exercise during the workday.

As workers are the ones participating in the program, it’s valuable to give them a chance to offer feedback on the physical exercise program.

Choosing an Assessment Method

Decide on your evaluation 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 depend on the time and funding available and what you want to measure.

Deciding How to Do the Evaluation

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 assessment (e.g., with members of the Company Wellness Program Committee) before sending it out to staff members. The employee Company Wellness Program Committee may also wish to evaluate the initiative’s planning process.

Doing the Assessment

• 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 easy-to-be aware of results with senior staff and employees.
• Assessment results can be used to improve the current physical exercise program and/or to foster new initiatives in future.