Measuring Wellness Program Success: An Evolving Concept
It’s certainly understandable that employers want to measure the success of their wellness programs. The big question is how to do that – and the answer to that continues to evolve. The survey used to collect data for the M3 Wellness Trend Report, indicates that employers are looking beyond the narrow metric of return on investment (ROI) to gauge the impact of their wellness programs. This actually reflects the growing movement to understand the value of their investment rather than just the ostensible ROI.
The Bigger (and Better) Picture: Value On Investment (VOI)
The emerging concept of VOI encourages employers to look beyond medical-cost based ROI to formulate a broader – and more accurate – understanding of their wellness program’s value. The VOI of a wellness program encompasses the intangible factors that can contribute to an organization’s overall performance. For example, more and more employers are considering how their wellness program increases productivity, reduces disability claims and sick days, and improves employee job satisfaction and morale as well as employee recruitment and retention.
VOI: Establish Your Metrics Early On
Employers who want to shift to a VOI framework for measuring the success of their program need to establish their VOI metrics on the front end. That means carefully answering questions like these: Why are we offering a wellness program? What’s important to the success of our organization, and how can our wellness program contribute to that?
To discuss how to increase VOI of your wellness programs offerings, contact M3’s Wellness Consultant, Tyler Stuntebeck.
