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While many professionals look to the numbers for answers, for wellness programs “measuring results with credible data is a laudable goal, but it’s an incredibly tricky endeavor,” writes Nick Otto in Employee Benefit News.

The article states: “Trying to consolidate wellness program data into something that has meaning to C-suite executives is worthwhile yet ambitious, says Cathy Kenworthy, president and CEO of Interactive Health, a workplace wellness vendor. ‘We have the blessing of a tremendous amount of data and we’re able to see what we believe are some enduring and substantial pieces of what we think preventive care is all about.'”

According to Mike Thompson, a principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers, employers should ask themselves:

• What are we offering?
• How many eligible participants are actually participating in the programs?
• Are they completing the programs?

Indeed, when looking at long-term results, “not all the data employers are evaluating is top of the line, Interactive Health’s Kenworthy cautions. ‘I’d be enormously skeptical of general averages and things like that,' she says.”

“What these programs are built to do is improve the odds of success and improve the odds of how a population can get from point A to point B. ‘I think it’s incredibly important to look for data that’s authentic,' she says. ‘This is not pixie dust, this is not everybody is going to get better. This is trying to improve the odds that a portion of the population, more of the population … makes progress compared to those that don’t.'”

Workplace wellness, says Kenworthy, is “something that actually has a larger purpose … to impact the culture of an organization and the cost trajectory of an organization.”

The piece states: “When employers think about wellness program data, they should start with the end in mind, she adds. ‘Start from the beginning by identifying what success is and how you [will] measure that. If you mean for a successful wellness challenge to be the number steps taken, great. If not, then why would you start with that as the measure you use?' she says.”