How to measure a workplace health prevention program

A program can be described on four levels. Resources include the budget, teams and activated services. Deployment measures whether the program actually reaches the intended populations. Intermediate outcomes cover access, use, satisfaction or referrals. Final outcomes relate to the health, safety or organizational goals set at the outset.

This logic keeps you from attributing a complex change to the program too quickly. A drop in absenteeism may depend on the season, business activity, management, remote work or an epidemic. It calls for analysis, not an automatic conclusion.

Coverage

How many employees have been informed, are eligible and can technically access the service? Breaking the data down by site, contract type or working hours can reveal unequal access, provided anonymity is preserved.

Engagement

The activation rate, use of a first service, continuation of the journey or the drop-out rate help identify points of friction. A high rate does not prove a medical benefit, but a very low rate shows that the program is missing its operational goal.

Quality of experience

Satisfaction, understanding, time to access, ease of use and willingness to recommend shed direct light on the program. Qualitative feedback helps explain why an indicator changes.

Referral and coordination

In aggregate, you can track the number of people referred to a relevant service, the time before care begins, the use of benefits already paid for, or the reduction of duplicate providers. These measures are close to the value proposition of a coordination platform.

Collective outcomes

Depending on the context, these may be indicators of occupational risks, accidents, occupational diseases, absenteeism or aggregated health outcomes. Interpretation must account for the expected time frame and external factors.

France’s data protection authority, the CNIL, states clearly that an employer cannot know its employees’ health data, and that medical records are held by occupational health services.

Roles must be kept separate. The authorized professional or service handles the individual information needed for each person’s journey. The employer manages the contract, access, deployment and collective trends. This separation must be reflected in access rights, contracts and the interface.

Financial ROI compares monetized benefits with program costs. In occupational health, the assumptions can be fragile: the cost of an avoided absence, attributing a hospitalization, or long-term effects. It is more prudent to present several levels of outcomes: implementation, participation, experience, referral, collective outcomes, and then economic impact when the data and methodology allow it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offer a coordinated, systematic and comprehensive model for building a workplace health program. Its Worksite Health ScoreCard helps assess whether evidence-based interventions have been put in place. The tool first measures the quality of the practices deployed, before claiming to demonstrate any clinical or economic return.

A useful dashboard can fit on a single page: coverage, activation, journeys started, journeys completed, average time to access, satisfaction, use of existing services, referrals made, privacy incidents and key qualitative insights. Each indicator should state its definition, source, period and limits of interpretation.

MyTwin for employers is a platform that lets you choose modules, deploy a personalized journey, coordinate human expertise and measure aggregated results. Employers must not access individual medical information. To understand the user experience, see also MyTwin for patients and MyTwin Stories.