Measuring what matters: Evaluating your worker well-being program
Worker well-being approaches advance well-being by integrating and expanding workplace safety through using strategies to support mental health, manage chronic disease, and reduce unhealthy stress. This guide is a compilation of practical resources to help you implement and sustain a safer, healthier, and more productive workplace.
Getting started
Before you begin measuring the impact and outcomes of your program, it’s essential to understand if your current policies, strategies, and systems support your initiatives. Many businesses already track helpful information like absence data or training records. Documenting this data helps ensure your worker wellbeing program is effective and allows you to align your efforts with what’s best for your workers. Here are a few key performance indicators to consider when evaluating your implementation process:
HR metrics: Tracking indicators like turnover and training completion offers information on workforce stability and participation. Track data using existing payroll/HR systems or a basic spreadsheet.
Employee communication and engagement: Effective communication ensures your workers know and feel connected to your business initiatives. Monitor participation in safety meetings and well-being activities or collect feedback through surveys and check-ins.
Physical and organizational environment: Your environment shapes safety and well-being, both physically and psychologically. Conducting walkthroughs and looking at workspace conditions can provide valuable insight.
Leadership involvement: Leadership buy-in is a driving force in your program’s success and can be tracked through leadership participation in wellbeing-related initiatives and communication frequency with employees.
Ongoing appraisals and improvements
Ongoing or outcome evaluations focus on whether the initiatives you’re introducing are improving health, safety, and well-being. Establishing a clear baseline before implementation can be helpful if you want to measure meaningful changes over time. The free tools in this section are designed to capture real outcomes like changes in organizational climate or workplace stressors. They offer an easy and accessible way to show the value of your investments so you can adjust your strategies as needed.
NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ)
- Length: 287 items
- Focuses on strategic planning, workplace support and culture, physical environment and safety climate, mental and emotional health, social determinants of health
- Designed to generate comprehensive insights into worker well-being for program planning
Harvard Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing Thriving from Work Questionnaire
- Length: Short-form (eight items) and long-form (30 items) questionnaires
- Focuses on psychological and emotional well-being, social well-being at work, job design, experience at work, work-life balance, physical and emotional well-being
- Flexible design provides accessible data on how work influences overall worker well-being
Guarding Minds at Work-Psychological Health and Safety Survey
- Length: 15 to 20 minutes
- Focuses on psychosocial factors, psychological hazards, indicators of workplace inclusion, organizational review, stress
- Customizable modules to focus on specific psychosocial factors in different environments
Example: Well-being dashboard
A dashboard, like this example, can help organize and manage health and safety efforts. Not everything needs to be tracked all at once. The sorting of initiatives by focus area allows for easy identification of gaps and monitoring of progress and helps to make informed decisions about where to focus your attention next. Selecting one or two key areas and improving over time is an effective approach to managing worker well-being programs.
Summary
Properly evaluating your worker well-being efforts is necessary for understanding what is working and what still needs to be done. By combining processes and ongoing evaluations, small businesses can make informed decisions while building a culture that values health, safety, and well-being.
To learn more about how to prevent injuries by promoting health, an approach known as TWH, visit saif.com/TWH.
Total Worker Health® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Participation by SAIF does not imply endorsement by HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.