For your post, craft an email to your supervisor describing your strategy for how you will do a needs assessment in the next six weeks. Your post should be written as a formal email that you would actually send to a supervisor. In your email you should:

Dear ,

            Good afternoon, In order for me to start to implement a new wellness program for your company I have developed a needs assessment that will help me determine where we need to focus our time and budget. Although this will take a little time I am certain that it will save us time and money in the long run as well as identify the needs and issues we need to focus on. In case you are not fully aware of what a needs assessment is I would like to explain. A needs assessment is a process that identifies, analyzes, and prioritizes the needs of the focused on population. It is significant to the health promotion program planning process because it, (McKenzie, Neiger, & Thackeray, 2012,p. 73), “provides objective data to define important health problems, sets priorities for program implementation, and establishes a baseline for evaluating program impact.”

Here are two of the needs assessment I have in mind:

1)    Single-Step or Cross-sectional Surveys: Utilizes written questionnaires, interviews, and surveys. This assessment focuses on:

      Selecting measures that have been designed to anticipate response problems and clearly reflect program outcomes.

      Conducting a pilot study with the priority population

      Predict and correct any unreliable sources

      Employ quality-control procedures to identify problems

      Use measures and employ many methods

       Use randomly assigned control groups to control the possibilities of a bias in the self-reports.

2)    Focus Groups: (McKenzie, Neiger, & Thackeray, 2012, p. 83), “Focus groups are used to obtain information about the feelings, opinions, perceptions, insights, beliefs, misconceptions, attitudes, and receptivity of a group of people concerning an idea or issue.”

      Develop a randomized group

      Determine a group leader that will obtain the anonymous responses from group members

      Have a well developed set of questions to ask the group

            Both of these methods will help us to determine the needs of the company and also identify weaknesses and strengths so that we can further implement an effective wellness program. They will ensure that we see positive results. The few concerns we need to take into consideration are if your employees are willing to partake in these methods and if so, will they feel as though they are not at any disadvantage by partaking in it.

 By utilizing these methods I intend to have the data needed afterwards so that I can move forward with developing an effective wellness plan for your company. I should be able to identify the needs of the employees as well as the company, the weaknesses, the strengths, and what kind of programs will be most effective if implemented. My goal here is to develop the most effective wellness plan I can so I can reassure you that your work will not go without improvement.