Your Wellness Initiative Has a Story—Is Anyone Telling It?

Evaluation is one of the most critical, yet overlooked, elements of a successful workplace wellness strategy. Often, it's mistaken for research or seen as an optional step rather than a vital tool for learning and improvement. Some fear evaluation will expose weaknesses. Others blame lack of time, limited budgets, or disorganized initiatives for skipping it altogether. Evaluation doesn't have to be complicated to be meaningful. Here’s another way to look at it: Evaluation is really about telling a story, and every wellness initiative has a story to tell.

When evaluation is thought of as storytelling—not just spreadsheets, charts, and data—it becomes more relatable, useful, and engaging. It helps us understand:

• How the wellness journey began
• What’s been successful
• What's been tried along the way
• Areas of opportunity and growth.

In other words, evaluation is more than proving success to demonstrate value. It’s also about understanding progress and change over time.

How to Start Creating the Story

Evaluation starts in the planning stage, so the best practice is to build it into the development of your wellness strategy from the beginning. Your wellness story begins by understanding your initiative’s primary purpose and intended goal(s). Consider these questions:

1. Why does your wellness story matter?
2. What is the mission and vision driving your wellness strategy?
3. What goals are you aiming to achieve?
4. What outcomes will help you measure and share the story that matters most?

How to Start Telling the Story

Choosing your evaluation method is an important step in telling your story. There are many aspects aspects you can choose to evaluate, and it all depends on the outcomes you hope to measure and how they align with your overall strategy. Factors such as company size and available resources should also be considered as you explore how best to tell your wellness story. You can collect data on participation, satisfaction, biometric measures, productivity, medical claims, culture, performance, engagement, and personal health goals, to name a few. These data points form a foundation for your story, but collecting data is only one part of the storytelling process.  

How to Start Listening to the Story

As your wellness story continues to evolve, one of the most valuable aspects of evaluation is taking time to listen to what the data is telling you. Ongoing analysis and interpretation, through a variety of evaluation methods methods, help uncover trends, insights, and opportunities for growth. One way to prioritize this is by establishing regular review cycles, such as monthly, quarterly, or annually. Consistent reflection allows you to review process improvement efforts, discuss short-term impacts, and realign long-term outcomes with your strategic goals as needed. This ensures you’re consistently listening to the story being told.

The next step is communicating what you’ve learned in a simple, informative, and effective way to all invested parties. Benchmark 7 of the 7 Benchmarks: A Framework for a Well Workplace encourages these questions to be considered when communicating your findings:

• What level of detail does each audience expect?
• What is your organization’s standard method of reporting?
• Are you allowing time for feedback?
• How will you use the insights you’ve gathered to grow and evolve your wellness strategy?

Evaluation helps you understand the impact of your efforts, identify opportunities to learn and grow, and celebrate your successes—because every wellness initiative has a story to tell.

To learn more about building evaluation into your wellness strategy, explore the 7 7 Benchmarks toolkits toolkits, specifically Benchmark 7: Benchmark 7: Conduct Evaluation, Communicate, Celebrate, and Iterate.

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  Ashton DeMoss

  Wellness Content and Information Specialist

  IFEBP

  As a Wellness Content and Information Specialist at the Wellness Alliance, Ashton is passionate about supporting employee well-being and advancing workplace wellness initiatives. With over 12 years of experience as a certified health coach, Ashton has worked extensively in the worksite wellness sector, empowering individuals and organizations to prioritize health and create sustainable wellness strategies. Outside of work, she enjoys group exercise classes and participating in a monthly book club to nurture both her physical and mental well-being.