Healthy Arizona Worksites

Program Design

The success of your worksite wellness program will depend on many things such as the type of organization, your workforce diversity, resources, and leadership support.

Program design provides an opportunity to plan a worksite wellness program and position it within your organization’s overall mission. This increases the potential that program objectives, such as improving employee health and productivity and reducing medical care expenses for the employer and employee, will be realized.

This page is designed to help you plan your program. It is organized into four broad categories of program design activities:

Plan the Program
Conduct a Needs Assessment
Implement the Program
Evaluate the Program


Follow the steps below to design your worksite wellness program.

Plan the Program

  1. Secure support of top managers/officer. Management support is critical to the implementation of policy and environmental changes in your worksite.
  2. Identify an inside advocate to act as coordinator. The coordinator should be committed to promoting proper nutrition, physical activity, and a tobacco-free lifestyle.
  3. Form a wellness committee. The worksite wellness committee establishes continuity, motivation, and broad ownership of employee wellness initiatives. The committee should:
  • Include 4 - 10 members from different work areas within the organization.
  • Meet monthly until your worksite wellness program has been established, and then at least quarterly thereafter.

Conduct a Needs Assessment

  1. Complete the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment. The results of your assessment will assist you in identifying the existing environmental and policy supports at your worksite that encourage healthy lifestyles. The Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment will also recommend ways in which your worksite can more effectively support employee health and wellness activities via policy and/or environmental changes.
  2. Survey employees. "Bottom-up" support is just as critical to the success of your program as is "top-down" support. Ask employees what they're interested in, and what needs they have. See Appendix 1 of the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment Resource Guide for a sample employee survey.

Implement the Program

  1. Recommend changes. Use the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment result along with the employee interest survey results to recommend and prioritize policy and environmental changes. See Appendix 2 of the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment Resource Guide for sample prioritization table.
  2. Implement changes. Put your recommendations into action and determine how you will evaluate whether or not they are successful. Evaluation methods should be considered before implementing an activity or program. See Appendix 3 of the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment Resource Guide for a sample action plan.

Evaluate the Program(s)

  1. Evaluate your program and make any necessary modifications. After you've implemented several changes and allowed for sufficient time for them to have an effect, evaluate them. Evaluation will help you track the progress of your objectives and provide valuable feedback on your program's strengths and areas for improvement. See Appendix 4 of the Healthy Arizona Worksites Assessment Resource Guide for evaluation ideas.