Develop Mission Statement, Goals and Objectives and Design Program

It is important to think about what you hope to accomplish and who will do what, when and how, regardless of the size of the business. A program mission statement, like an organizational mission statement, briefly lists the overarching values that drive the venture and the ultimate goals or accomplishments that the project will strive to achieve. For example, if a company’s mission is to be “the best” or “among the best” in a particular field, then the mission statement for the health promotion program might read, in part: “Recognizing that employees perform their best when they are healthy and that optimal employee performance is necessary for the company to be a leader in its field, the health promotion program aims to improve employee health and well-being.”

Goals are statements of broad, long-term accomplishments expected from the program. Each goal has one or more objectives established to ensure that the goal will be successfully accomplished. Ideally, objectives should be clear, time-limited and stated in such a way that it is easy to determine whether or not they have been achieved.

Examples are:

• Reduce the number of employees who smoke from 30 percent to 25 percent by the end of the next fiscal year.
• Reduce the overall use of sick leave by at least two percent from the previous year, after the first full year of program operation.
• Improve employees’ satisfaction with the company, as measured by employee satisfaction surveys conducted before and after the first full year of program operation. Increase the average score by at least 10 percent.

Action steps are statements of expected short-term accomplishments related to one or more program goals. Like objectives, they should be written in such a way that program planners can readily determine if they have been met. For example, action steps that might fall under the first objective statement listed above are: work with health plan to add smoking cessation benefits (including no-cost cessation counseling and pharmaceuticals) at plan renewal time and participate in the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke-Out this November. For each action step, a list of more detailed steps should be developed. At this point, the planning committee may wish to obtain the commitment of specific individuals or departments to carry out certain tasks.

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