How can you enlist the enthusiastic participation of senior executives and managers? How about your employee health champions? What do they each know so far? What gaps in their awareness do you need to address? You could handle all this in your HR department, but it makes more sense to bring other people in now, ideally from every organizational level. By establishing, supporting, and maintaining a Worksite Wellness Committee, you’ll provide opportunities for leadership, management, and staff to:

• Foster collaboration
• Establish robust cross-level/department lines of communication
• Create your new culture of health!

This is information you’ll need to assess the success of any programs you implement and establish a baseline to determine ROI. Then you’ll take the pulse of your organization. Any successful health initiatives start with getting feedback from your people. Use surveys and focus groups to get a clearer view of demographics and learn what employees expect. Take care to include a representative sample of your people across generational, racial, sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) lines to gauge a realistic idea of what wellness represents to the whole organization. After you’ve carefully listened, communicate the things you learned to your employees and the steps you intend to take to begin creating a culture of health in the workplace. Throughout any survey process, INSURE CONFIDENTIALITY.

The most effective wellness programs measure success in two ways: Return on Investment (ROI) and Value on Investment (VOI). These are the only ways to ensure that your health initiatives bear fruit. Because as Peter Drucker also famously quipped, “Only what gets measured gets managed.” What do you measure currently? What else could you measure?