Bottom Line Up Front Corporate Wellness Programs

Keeping the bottom line up front Bottom Line Up Front in Corporate Health Promotion Plan will help you get and sustain Upper Management support. A Bottom Line Up Front approach will also help you more realistically measure the impact of your Corporate Wellness Program.

The bottom line in Corporate Wellness Programs answer two primary questions:
• How will participant health be enhanced?
• What’s in it for Upper Management?

The ultimate bottom line: all roads should lead to readiness.
• Always be ready to communicate to leadership the ways that your Corporate Health Promotion Plan impacts readiness.
• Think like Upper Management: what Corporate Health Promotion Plan outcomes will be important from a Upper Management point of view?
• Develop line-centered language that communicates those outcomes.
• Ask members how they think a particular Corporate Health Promotion Plan enhances force readiness. This input is a valuable source of information.

Use the following steps as a Bottom Line Up Front approach to Corporate Wellness Programs.

Step 1: Think about the end of the Corporate Health Promotion Plan first and plan backwards.
• It has been said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
• Before planning or implementing any part of the Corporate Wellness Program, be able to answer the questions: how will participant health be enhanced? What’s in it for Upper Management?

Step 2: Establish concrete Corporate Health Promotion Plan outcomes.
• Establish up front what the Corporate Health Promotion Plan is working towards.
o By way of example: will members lose weight? Walk more steps? Decrease injuries? Move to another stage of change?
• Establish any processes or procedures that will be enhanced.
o By way of example: which pharmacy operations will become more efficient? How will record-keeping be streamlined?

Step 3: Determine what will be measured to show that Corporate Health Promotion Plan goals were met.
• Consider what data is really needed to show Corporate Health Promotion Plan effectiveness. Avoid the temptation to collect every possible piece of data. Choose a handful of important data points and stick to those.
• Think backwards when determining what data to collect – consider how easily follow-up data can be collected when a Corporate Health Promotion Plan ends. Getting follow-up data is often a challenge.
• Only collect data for health behaviors or indicators that the Corporate Health Promotion Plan actually affected.
o By way of example: if the main Corporate Health Promotion Plan goal is that members will walk more steps, then it may be better NOT to choose changes in cholesterol level as a Corporate Health Promotion Plan outcome (unless the Corporate Health Promotion Plan specifically addresses cholesterol).
• Avoid measuring outcomes that the Corporate Health Promotion Plan cannot (or did not) affect.

Step 4: Determine what Corporate Health Promotion Plan elements must be included to move members towards the Corporate Health Promotion Plan goals.
• The concrete Corporate Health Promotion Plan outcomes identified in Step 2 are the compass for keeping the Corporate Health Promotion Plan on track. All Corporate Health Promotion Plan elements should lead towards that ultimate goal.

Working backwards when planning and implementing Corporate Wellness Programs is really forward thinking. Keeping the bottom line up front is a smart approach to Corporate Wellness Programs.