CWHP-P Reflection: Unit WHPP06

This module reinforced the power of using the data – measuring success and creating a dashboard to measure wellness. We know that “what gets measured gets done,” so if wellness is really a priority at my organization, its time we have the metrics and monitoring to show that it’s important and we are working on it. I also realized how easy it is to make a business case for the things we want when we have the data to show it. I.e. we want the gyms to be free for employees. They are currently $6/pay ($3/week). Its not much money, so we feel like why we can’t just offer them for free as a perk and resilience tool for staff. In fact, my boss asked our senior strategy team this year and we were turned down. Now that I pulled the numbers for musculoskeletal diagnoses (MSDs) – we are able to make such a stronger business case for the gyms. That the cost to the organization to make gyms free for employees is less than 1% of the amount we pay for disability claims for MSDs every year (and that doesn’t incl. the 250k annually we pay for physio). Paying for employees to have free access to the gym (~12k) would pay for itself by reducing short term disability by a modest one claim every two years (average cost per MSD claim = 25k).  It feels like a no brainer now, and I can’t wait to bring it back to our senior team.

While I had the best intentions to have my dashboard with ongoing monitoring in my tenure so far as Wellness Coordinator, there are several data points that other people have been monitoring, or things I didn’t go back and put the time in to follow since gathering our baseline data, so this unit was the exact nudge I needed to get my Sh*t together and put it alllllllll together in a dashboard. It’s a lot of work, and I hope it will be more of a shared dashboard in the future, but for now – it’s awesome to see it all in one place and see the power of measuring success. Also helps build the belief that we are making a difference, even if it’s a slow and emergent process. It will be a priority to maintain the dashboard and monitoring on an ongoing basis.