Why is this important?
This 1 page quick management survey is designed to be given to all senior managers to help you derive a clear consensus on what your executive decision-makers expect from your employee wellness program efforts.  This information is absolutely critical for use in program planning, budgeting and evaluation. Otherwise, wellness programs tend to remain primarily tactical, instead of strategically important, inadequately funded, receiving anemic levels of support and reach few employees/spouses.

This brief survey is important also because few executive teams have the patience to work through a consensus over these basic details about their employee wellness/well-being initiative. This brief survey is also important because it provides an opportunity to educate and broaden senior managers’ perception of what kinds of results the wellness initiative can potentially produce.

Another important aspect of using this kind of survey device is increased management “ownership” over the wellness initiative. An unfortunate trend in U.S. employee wellness efforts is what we call “vendorization”, where senior managers look at the wellness initiative as the health plan’s program or the wellness vendor’s program, rather than their own.  Clearly not a good thing for the long-term viability or effectiveness of the effort.

The narrative around the use of this survey device should be something like this…. ”We are conducting a brief survey of all senior managers (aka Executive Team) to determine their expectations and desires for our wellness program in order to improve the alignment and effectiveness of our employee wellness efforts.”

What can you do with this document?
Here’s what you could do with this document:

• Finalize the draft survey and add any additional questions you want senior managers to answer.
• Decide if you want to use an anonymous or non-anonymous survey process.
• Get permission and finalize your survey plan with your supervisor.
• Determine which senior managers you plan to include in the survey.
• Notify those senior managers of the upcoming survey and why it’s being done.
• Determine the date you are going to distribute the survey.
• Establish a desired return date for the completed surveys, such as a week after its distribution.
• Collect the completed surveys and resolve any discrepancy or incomplete answers if possible.
• Compile the answers to the survey and prioritize the goals, economic interests, behavioral targets and outcome importance.
• Use the data from the survey to help craft your program’s goals and objectives for the coming year(s).
• Develop a proposal for senior managers with the summary consensus and the plan to implement these new details and direction for your employee wellness initiative.
• Feed these findings and consensus back to the executive team at annual intervals such as budget time.
• Periodically, repeat this process to confirm your program’s direction and make any course corrections.

In summary, this 1 page survey can be used to develop a working consensus from senior management on your approach to employee wellness and can be used to justify an upgrade and retooling of your wellness program efforts.  This tool can help you move your wellness program to the next level.