Administering Surveys

To get more accurate and representative information about the organization’s employees, the team may want to ensure a few things:

• Ensure confidentiality

  Some survey characteristics which help increase honesty include making the surveys voluntary and administering them anonymously so that no employee names can be associated with responses. Provide a convenient place or multiple places to have employees turn in their surveys.

• Aim for widespread participation

  This could be helped by making participation convenient (e.g., adding the survey onto an existing meeting), having management encourage employee participation; limiting the survey length; and heavy marketing and frequent communication about when and how to complete the survey.

• Consider providing incentives

  This could increase willingness for participation and show management’s interest in the particular survey and upcoming program. Incentives can range from small monetary amounts, public recognition for participation, food/snacks, paid time to complete the survey, etc.

• Adhere to Ethics Guidelines

  The CDC Healthier Worksite Initiative includes ethics guidelines in the design, use, and analysis of health assessments from the Society of Prospective Medicine to both minimize potential harms from misuse and enhance the potential benefits of health assessment data.

Some workplaces may already conduct a periodic health assessment (e.g., physical measurement of height, weight, blood pressure, blood lipids or other biometricsThe measurement of physical characteristics such as height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood glucose, and aerobic fitness tests that can be taken at the worksite and used as part of a workplace health assessment to benchmark and evaluate changes in employee health status over time. ) and a Health Risk Appraisal (HRA)An assessment tool used to evaluate an individual’s health. An HRA could include a health survey or questionnaire (see Employee Health Survey); physical examination, or laboratory tests resulting in a profile of individual health risks often with accompanying advice or strategies to reduce the risks. which provides a self-report of health behaviors.

HRA’s provide information regarding health status, health behaviors, and use of preventive services. If information systems allow the preparation of a summary report of those findings from the health assessment and HRA, then this component of the workplace health assessment is already completed.

In many workplaces, the workplace health program vendor, occupational health nurse or wellness coordinator, can provide an aggregated summary of findings in a way that no individual can be identified.