See the previous lesson on corporate wellness and employee health incentive programs here. Once you have collected data on the employees in the company it is time to start preparing your purposes and goals. Goals are how you measure whether your program is working. Goals are how you decide whether you are on the right path.
Your objectives as a corporate wellness coach must be met if you are going to ultimately be satisfied with your outcome. Also, creating purposes and goals help to show the company that you have ideas for obtainable solutions that will help them achieve their goal of better labor.
Creating purposes and goals allows you to achieve the following objectives:
- To create realistic goals that you can focus on achieving
- To communicate your intentions to employees and executives
- To show your progress to employees and executives
- To develop a company-wide understanding of what you are trying to achieve
Setting goals and objectives gives you the opportunity to set parameters for yourself and others about what equals true success with your wellness program.
Performing your duties as a corporate wellness coach hinges on your ability to create real, obtainable purposes and goals.
Starting the Process
Before you start creating your objectives, you need to complete your research. Use your research to create a scaled list of all the possible health risks and the benefits of targeting them with your services. Include in that list not only the risk, but also the results from your employee interest survey, and use your knowledge of corporate wellness to come up with the perceived benefit of targeting those specific health issues.
That will help you communicate why you are creating your specific goals, making it easier for you to receive approval from the senior executives. Communication of your objectives is a crucial step when it comes to getting executive and employee assistance and support.
Start With the Mission Statement
Your first step is to create a mission statement. Your mission statement should be in line with the goals of the program. It is also advised that your mission statement be in line with the company’s overall mission statement regarding their workplace. For example:
Company Mission Statement: To be innovators in the field of robotics research.
Wellness Mission Statement: Achieving company-wide wellness to support innovative thinking and processes.
By relating your corporate wellness mission statement to the mission statement of the company, you show both the company’s executives and employees that the wellness programs you will be instituting are designed to support the company’s overall vision.
Mission statements are a useful way to attract positive attention to your program’s intentions and keep the focus on what will benefit the company. Everything you do as a corporate wellness coach should relate back to the company as best as possible.
Creating Objectives from Your Data
Once you have completed your mission statement it is time for you to create objectives. As a corporate wellness coach, you will use objectives to decide the overarching goals that you hope to achieve.
Objectives are broad goals. In many ways they are your “ultimate” goal without getting into the specifics of each goal. You should use objectives to show your clients what your goal is to achieve by the time you are ready to call your wellness program a success.
Objectives need to be broad. These are not the details of each program. These are not going to necessarily be exact measurable results. Objectives are what you plan on bringing into the company before you list what it will take to get there.
Your corporate wellness objectives should be directly derived from your data. Once you have collected your data, look at the health issues in the workplace. What stands out the most? What looks like they are going to be the most important risks to target?
How to Create Objectives and Purposes
You will find as a corporate wellness coach that your objectives are – or should be – at the heart of all your programs. Ask yourself what you truly plan on bringing to the company. See if there is anything in the data that stands out as something that needs to be targeted and use your objectives to show what those items are.
Remember to be broad. You will worry about the details of each objective later. Let’s use an example to show how to create objectives.
Let’s say you take the health risk assessments and employee interest survey, and you find that the biggest problems within the workplace are the following:
- Obesity
- Poor Nutrition
- Smoking
- General Illness (colds, flu, etc.)
- Workplace Stress
You can then set up objectives for each of these. Note that you may have many objectives for a single issue depending on what you find out about that issue. The examples below represent just a small number of the number of objectives you can set for the company.
- Obesity
Objective 1: The workplace will keep staff educated about proper eating habits.
Objective 2: The workplace will create physical fitness programs that are easily accessible. Objective 3: The workplace will reduce the number of employees that are considered “overweight.”
- Poor Nutrition
Objective 1: The workplace will change the cafeteria food to be in line with proper nutritional guidelines in the USDA RDA’s.
Objective 2: The workplace will encourage healthier eating amongst all staff. - Smoking
Objective 1: The workplace will become a smoke free workplace. Objective 2: Reduce smoking habits in employees. - General Illness (colds, flu, etc.)
Objective 1: The workplace will ensure that proper care is taken to reduce illness among employees.
Objective 2: The workplace will make sure employees to take sick days or work remotely when they are feeling ill.
Objective 3: The workplace will teach executives the value of allowing employees to stay home when sick.
- Workplace Stress
Objective 1: The workplace will create an environment that is more encouraging and supportive.
Objective 2: The workplace will decrease the number of employees that visit the site psychologist with health issues.
Objective 3: The workplace will teach proper communication techniques to employees and management.
What you should note about all these examples is that they are very broad. Again, as a corporate wellness coach, your objectives are not going to be specific examples of what you are going to do to achieve those goals. Those will be created later. Your objectives are going to be broader statements about the results of what those goals are going to accomplish.
Your objectives will also differ greatly from the examples above, based on what you have learned with your surveys and questionnaires. All your objectives should be based on the data, because only the data will tell you what objectives are most likely to produce results.
Note that objectives should be a little specific, in that you shouldn’t have an objective as broad as “Company will be healthier.” Your objectives should be the baseline from which you will create your more specific goals and should show the executives where their company should expect improvement overall.
Creating Goals
Once you have successfully completed creating your objectives, you will need to give them goals.
Goals are specific, measurable targets that your programs will be designed to reach. Here is where all your knowledge as a corporate wellness coach will need to come into play.
Your goals will need to be optimistic, but also realistic. They must be achievable based on what you know about the program, and should be designed to make a considerable difference, both in the lives of the individuals you are trying to support, as well as the company you are trying to help.
Goals should include dates, because goals are going to be used to evaluate the success of your program. Corporate wellness coaches need to work hard to reach these goals, because they are at the core of whether you are using the right methods.
In a way, you should have two types of goals.
- Final Goals – This should be the most specific end goal and should relate directly back to the objective. Essentially your final goal should be the objective restated with measurable numbers instead of the same broad quality.
- Incremental Goals – These goals are the ones that you try to reach over time as you progress to your goal. For example, you cannot expect to reduce smoking by a large percentage in a few months. These things take time. So, you set dates and achievable goals incrementally, and re-evaluate each step of the way.
The SMART System
As a corporate wellness coach, your goals should be modeled after the SMART system of goal setting (17). The SMART system stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
Every goal you make must follow each of the above criteria. Proper goal setting is one of the tricks that you will use as a corporate wellness coach to make sure that you can both verify your results and ensure they are exactly what you have set out to achieve.
- Specific
Remember that your objectives are where you set out a broader type of goal. Your action steps/incremental goals need to be more specific to show the employer exactly what you expect to achieve. Your objective may be “The workplace will create an environment that is more encouraging and supportive.” So, your specific goal needs to be something like “Will set up mediation system between management and employees.” That will show what your specific next step is under the overall objective to achieve better wellness within the organization.
- Measurable
Your objectives are your broader statements. Your goals must be measurable. As a corporate wellness coach, you need to be able to show progress for others to be confident that you are doing the work you have set out to do. Your goals need to be able to reflect this. Measurable goals will have numbers or percentages that indicate how much change has been made, such as “Company will see a 15% reduction in smoke breaks.” Then, as your plan progresses, you will be able to use your research skills to show that you have been able to achieve that goal.
- Attainable
Your goals need to be something that the company and its employees can look forward to. It must be optimistic and show that real progress can be made. The goal itself should bring hope. As a corporate wellness coach, you need to make sure that in some ways you are aiming for the stars – showing that with enough hard work, the company can improve its overall wellness profile. The attainable aspect of your goal will prove that. So rather than “Staff will see a 1% increase in gym memberships” which is an “easy” goal that doesn’t inspire much hope, your goal will be “Staff will see a 15% increase in gym memberships” which helps to show real progress.
- Realistic
At the same time your goals must be realistic. As a corporate wellness coach, you need to be able to set goals that you can realistically achieve with enough hard work. Goals that are nearly impossible will only serve to discourage staff on their own progress, and cause management to think you are not capable of the promises you have made. This is where your own knowledge will come into play. Think of what you can realistically achieve given what’s in front of you and create goals to reflect it.
- Timely
Your goals need to have specific dates, during which you will measure your progress. Those dates should also be as soon as realistically possible while still providing you with plenty of time to achieve it. Most corporate wellness coaches choose goals that are six months out, because that is enough time to see some noticeable changes after the projects are in place. However, anywhere from 3 months to one year should be acceptable.
Supply a date to every goal. Because they are all measurable, that date is when you check to see that your programs have been working as expected. Then you can evaluate and see what may have gone wrong, or whether everything is according to plan. Under each objective should be goals that progress towards your goal, with dates used to make them distinct from each other.
Other Notes on Goals
In addition to the SMART system, you should also remember that sometimes goals are going to be to simply put the program in place. For example, adding healthier food to the cafeteria is a goal, even if it doesn’t have any statistics. It is still measurable, because whether it is in place is a measurement.
Also, make sure that you communicate your goals with the company’s wellness committee and make sure that all of you agree over whether the goals are worthwhile. As a corporate wellness coach, you will need to be in constant contact about your intentions to gain the support, and your purposes/objectives/goals play a large role in that.
Putting the SMART System into Action – Goal Samples
With that in mind, here are some examples of the types of goals you should have, based on your listed objective.
Objective: To maintain a smoke free workplace.
- Goal 1: Close smoking lounge by November 2023
- Goal 2: Create enforced no smoking rule within 20 feet of doors and windows by March 2024
- Goal 3: Supply quit smoking pamphlets and classes to help reduce smoking in the workplace by July 2012
- Goal 4: Reduce smoking habits of employees 30% by October 2024
- Goal 5: Reduce smoking habits of employees by 50% by June 2024
Objective: To maintain a disease-free workplace.
- Goal 1: Institute hand washing policy by November 2023.
- Goal 2: Organize department head meeting to discuss site-wide observations of common illness prompting or requiring advanced care by November 2024.
- Goal 3: Reduce usage of sick days by 3% by June, 20224.
- Goal 4: Reduce usage of sick days by 5% by November 2024.
- Goal 5: Reduce usage of sick days by 7% by June 2024.
Objective: Provide access to healthier food options.
- Goal 1: Replace all vending machines with healthier food alternatives by November 2023
- Goal 2: Start monthly classes on healthy eating taught by nutritionist Jane Doe by January 2023.
- Goal 3: Obtain list of nearby eating options with healthiest available choices by March 2023.
- Goal 4: Provide weekly sessions with nutritionist Jane Doe to discuss employee questions by March 2023.
As a corporate wellness coach, you will have your own choices when it comes to what you want to bring to the company. Everything you want to add and everything you plan to achieve should have its own measurable goal.
Creating a Spreadsheet
As a corporate wellness coach, you may want to organize your action plan further. Some wellness coaches create spreadsheets with specific details of timeline, personnel, materials, etc. Spreadsheets turn your objectives and goals into a useable worksheet that organizes everything you need and can be used as a reference for not only you, but everyone on your wellness committee.
As a corporate wellness coach, it is up to you how you want to organize your goals and create your objectives, but the key is to make sure that you have a concrete plan that shows your goals with your entire wellness program using the SMART system of objective planning.
Rating the Priority and Cost
Your next step as a corporate wellness coach is to rate your objectives and goals in terms of all the factors that affect the success of its outcome.
Factors include:
Priority – Make sure your action plan is organized by perceived priority based on what you expect the company needs most. Priority should consider the benefits of the program combined with how easy it will be to reach the benefits. Remember that a major change that you can complete in a matter of months may be more valuable than an even greater change that will take 5 years to implement.
- Costs – You should also be taking the time to organize your objectives by their cost. The amount of money it takes to utilize one of your programs as a corporate wellness coach will vary. The costs play a role in garnering support. Costs will give you a greater budget to work with and a better estimate of what can and will get done.
- Participation – Programs should never single out specific employees and their problems. Programs should benefit the entire company. Even things like non-smoking campaigns will need to include all employees regardless of whether they smoke. So, your goals need to include the work it will take to affect all employees, not just the ones at risk. All your programs need to be comprehensive.
Always remember that as a corporate wellness coach, your goals are not just the areas that you, yourself need to target, but also how you will gain support from anyone on your wellness committee or in upper management. You need these goals to communicate your thoughts and themes well to gain the most backing from those in power.
Goals and Plan Can be Re-evaluated
Throughout all your wellness programming you are going to be evaluating and re-evaluating their success. You are going to check your progress at every milestone and ensure that you are always on target to reach your goals.
It’s important as a corporate wellness coach that you do not get stuck on only your own goals and plans. At any given point during the evaluation process, you may find that your goals are not what you expected them to be. This can be good or bad:
- You may find that you have fallen behind on your goals and need to re-evaluate your expectations.
- You may find that you are way ahead of your goals and can alter the expectations to provide even greater benefit to the company.
- You may find that you are right on path as expected, but there are changes you think you can make that will improve your ability to reach your objectives.
When you prepare your purposes and goals as a corporate wellness coach, you should also be prepared to change your goals when something comes up. These are your action steps for the next several years, but not necessarily the path you need to take when new information arises. Let yourself be a little flexible with these goals every time you re-evaluate your progress, because at any point you may find that what you expected to occur has shifted, or that something new has developed that can lead you to greater results.
Don’t forget to also continue to use your wellness committee. It is their purpose as well to see if the goals, mission statements, and priorities continue to be in step with the company’s vision. They will be able to provide you with thoughts from each of their departments and what they see that might be preventing the success of a program.
Final Thoughts on Purposes and Goals
The data you collected when you started to understand employee needs was the first step towards creating your purposes and goals for your wellness programs. The data is used to make sure that your programs are going to truly benefit the company, and help you identify the areas that need the most attention.
Your purposes and goals, then, are the heart of your programs. It is everything you hope to accomplish, all written down on simple pieces of paper. Your objectives and goals are going to be where you aim your programs and how you measure success. They are your next steps for the next several years.
Take the time to make sure that you have created the right purposes and goals for the company you are working with. The goals you create are going to set your short- and long-term path and are an important part of whether you can successfully create a workplace with a focus on wellness.
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