Once you have developed your health and wellbeing strategy and implemented the activities and done the activities you planned, it is time to review and evaluate them. This requires you to go back to the KPIs you created and to check the records you kept regarding your activities. Your physical health and wellbeing are not fixed. They change when factors appear, and it fluctuates over time even without anything directly affecting it. You should not completely stop working on yourself once your planned activities are done. Your health and wellbeing are things that you need to continuously develop.
When you performed the activities planned in your health and wellbeing strategy, it is expected that you recorded the date and time you did the activity. Recording this information is necessary to check if you met the KPIs you developed. As discussed, you can record your progress in your calendar or in a specific log, such as a sleep diary. The progress depends on what your activity is and what KPI you designed to measure it. Once you have recorded your progress, check them against your KPIs.
- Did you meet the KPIs? If you met the KPIs within the timeframe you set, that means you were able to set realistic goals according to your abilities. You can also check how your overall progress looks. Is it linear, improving every time you do the activity, or does it peak in the middle and slowly go down as you lose motivation?
- Did you fail to meet the KPIs? Record any factors that might have negatively affected your performance. Circumstances in your work and personal life may have prevented you from accomplishing the activity you planned. Maybe you had to put in more hours at work, so you were not able to cook healthy meals, or the noise level at home made it difficult for you to practise mindfulness.
- Did you surpass or exceed the KPIs? If you surpassed your KPIs or progressed through them quickly, note if there were any changes that allowed you to do so, such as using better equipment or obtaining better quality fruit and vegetables.
Fitness trackers
Have you ever wondered how effective fitness trackers are? Watch the following video to learn more about how fitness trackers keep track of so many things and their limitations.
After watching the video answer the following question
Scenario
Gary set a two-week plan to start swimming every morning. His objective was to improve his overall fitness. He set two KPIs. Firstly, to lose two kilos and secondly to increase from two laps on day one to five laps per day at the end of the two weeks. He monitored his progress and was happy to find he had lost two kilos and met his first KPI. However, he did not meet his second KPI to be fit enough to swim five laps each session. He noted the start times and laps swam for each day and realised that on more than half the days he swam he was starting the activity half an hour later than planned. He was arriving at the pool tired from the additional workload and unable to physically complete the five laps.
Scenario
Toni is at the end of her personal health and wellbeing strategy. Her key objective was to reduce her stress levels at work. She used resources from Headspace to establish a daily routine of practising mindfulness before work and started volunteering one evening a week with a local food bank. She is very satisfied with the results of her strategy. Firstly, the mindfulness activities mean that she is starting work with an awareness of what work factors are likely to cause her stress and what she can do to minimise the impact. Secondly, volunteering means she has established connections outside her immediate family and work.
As you progress through your health and wellbeing strategy, there may also have been changes that affected your performance at work. Just as you monitor the KPIs you created, you should also check whether you are meeting the KPIs for your job. Since you began your health and wellbeing strategy, note any new circumstances that have affected your work requirements. You can do this by checking your work performance.
Decrease in number of hours worked
If you notice that your work performance has not been up to standard since you began your planned activities, consider the reasons why. Have you been putting in fewer hours at work to focus more on your activities? There is nothing wrong with this provided that you have informed and gotten the approval of your manager and any other relevant personnel about the changes to your schedule. However, it becomes an issue if you are coming in to work late or taking absences frequently.
While putting in fewer hours at work can negatively affect your work requirements, it may provide good results in your strategy. Less time working and more time for physical and mental health activities can make you healthier and happier. However, remember that everything must be balanced. Time must not be concentrated on just one activity.
Decrease in quality of work
If the quality of your work has decreased significantly, the issue may have something to do with your productivity. Lacking motivation can cause you to put in less effort resulting in outputs that are not up to the organisation’s standards. If you notice that your productivity has been dropping since you began your strategy, you need to consider the reasons why.
Have you been feeling even more tired and stressed? If your activity is exercising, maybe you are overexerting yourself and not leaving enough energy for work. Or if you have been trying to eat more nutritious food, maybe the calories you consume do not provide you with enough energy.
While you may be lacking the motivation to work, you may instead be more motivated to do activities related to your strategy. If you just started volunteering somewhere or just joined a new sports team, these may seem more exciting in comparison with your job. Of course, you cannot control the way you feel, but you can channel your motivation towards work and eliminate distractions. If you put in more effort into activities unrelated to work, try to find ways to motivate yourself to work.
Improvement in work performance
However, your work performance may have improved ever since you started your health and wellbeing strategy. In that case, it is a sign that your planned activities were effective and enhanced your ability to work. For example, practising mindfulness may have helped reduce the stress you feel, which in turn helps you concentrate better on your tasks. This means that your strategy has been effective and that the amount of time you allocate towards all your activities and tasks is sufficient and appropriate.
Ideally, your work performance should be enhanced as a result of your health and wellbeing strategy. If not, consider making changes to your strategy. No matter what outcome it has on your work performance, be sure to record it.
Other factors and circumstances
Next, you must note how other, uncontrollable factors affect your health and wellbeing strategy. There may be unexpected changes to your circumstances from external factors. For example, good weather conditions may allow you to do more activities outdoors, or emergencies may cause you to put your strategy on hold indefinitely. Note these and see if their effects on your strategy were positive or negative.
While there are factors affecting the strategy that you cannot control or manage, you must still take note of these to help you plan how you will update your current strategy for long-term implementation. You must also consider the effects of your work and your strategy on each other to understand how well you are balancing them.
If you are able to effectively balance your activities, you do not need to change much about your current situation. But if you notice that you are finding it difficult to do certain activities due to circumstances from work, personal life, and even forces outside your control, you may need to make significant adjustments in order to resolve these issues.
Scenario
Gary was determined to reach his KPI of swimming five laps each session at the swimming pool. In his attempts to meet his KPI he started to spend more time at the pool. This meant he was not at work to direct his kitchen staff and the head chef. The staff are not happy with this situation and speak with Gary. He realised that his motivation to achieve his KPI was interfering with his responsibilities at work and that he would need to revisit his strategy to find a balance that would allow him to improve his work performance at the same time as improving his physical health.
Scenario
Toni believes her work performance has improved since she started her health and wellbeing strategy. The mindfulness activities have helped reduce her stress and raise her motivation to be at work. She is now sharing her strategy and the Headspace tools with her colleagues at work. However, she has now started an online training course in meditation on the same evening she has been volunteering. This competing demand on her time means she will have to change the volunteering to the weekend in order to meet her work responsibilities.
Like all things, your health and wellbeing are not fixed or static. Many factors can affect them, and they can even fluctuate over time without anything directly influencing them. Since your health and wellbeing are irreplaceable assets in your life, you need to continuously develop them. Completing your strategy is only the first step.
Adjusting the KPIs
If you notice early on that you immediately surpass the KPIs you set, consider adjusting them to have higher targets. It is possible that during the planning stages, you underestimated your abilities and set the bar too low. This may have resulted in your KPIs being too easy to achieve. You can also adjust the desired outcome if you need to. Alternatively, you may need to adjust your KPIs if it becomes obvious they have been set too high or circumstances change. For example, you set a KPI to jog every weekday for one hour, however, you have also started an online class on Fridays which prevents you from jogging on that day.
Addressing issues during implementation
Did you encounter any issues while doing the activities? You can usually identify these easily if you were not able to meet your KPIs. Consider what type of issues are present. Did you lack the resources, such as time, to do the activity? Or did you lose motivation as the strategy continued? Think of methods you can use to eliminate these issues or to at least minimise their effects. There may also be new circumstances in your work or personal life. If these changes are major, you can check if these have negatively impacted your activities in any way. For example, you may have gotten a new job that has a heavier workload. In that case, you must edit your strategy to make room for your additional work responsibilities
Areas of improvement in the strategy
Even if you met your KPIs and did not encounter any issues during the implementation of your strategy, think of ways you can further improve. For example, getting better equipment may help you achieve your goals more easily. Or, if you have been doing a hobby alone, you can join a group in order to connect with others and get advice from more experienced people about your hobby.
Long-term implementation
Improving your health and wellbeing does not stop even when you have finished implementing your strategy. If your strategy has been effective and has had positive results, you can adjust the timeframe to continue it for long-term implementation. You should also update the activities you plan to do. You can continue to do the same activities, but at more advanced levels, such as doing more exercises for longer periods of time or add new activities you want to try. Ideally, your initial activities should have improved your health and wellbeing, so your updated strategy should also have new KPIs.
You should also consider if you achieved the final, desired outcome you set. Were the activities you planned effective and did they give you the result you wanted? Is the result something noticeable? For example, if you wanted to become stronger and did strengthening exercises, are you now able to carry heavier weights? Or maybe the outcome you wanted was to stop feeling sleepy at work, so you tried to get more sleep at night. After your strategy, you should be able to feel and see the impact your activities had on your physical health and mental wellbeing.
If you were not able to achieve your desired outcome, do not feel bad. Your health and wellbeing are not static, so you can continue to improve them. This means you should further develop the strategy you created and continue to implement the activities for longer timeframes.
Key points
- Keeping track of your progress lets you know if you are meeting your KPIs and if you need to adjust them.
- Your personal health and wellbeing strategy may affect your work and personal life, and these changes should ideally be positive.
- Changes in your personal life and in the workplace can affect your progress on your health and wellbeing strategy.
- Your health and wellbeing strategy is something that you should be continuously developing.
- Evaluate whether you achieved the original objective you set before updating your health and wellbeing strategy for long-term implementation.
The final activity for this topic is a set of questions that will help you prepare for your formal assessment. Read the following scenario and answer the questions.
Scenario
Sam recently moved to Brisbane from Malaysia without her family to take on a contract to train the staff at the Green Leaf Café in hospitality, WHS and customer service. Let us look at Sam’s physical and mental wellbeing.
- Physical: Sam is overweight and suffers from a lower back problem from years of lifting boxes incorrectly. She finds it difficult to motivate herself to exercise after work. She knows she needs to lose weight and practice safe manual handling. She is allergic to chlorine so swimming in public facilities is unsuitable. Her lower back means she should not do weight training in the gym excepts under the guidance of a fitness trainer.
- Mental: Sam’s accent is sometimes difficult to understand and has prevented Sam from communicating properly with the staff which causes her stress. Sam enrolled in a language class which has allowed her to make new friends at work. Staff also invite Sam to go out after work. Sam often spends entire nights hanging out with them, which results in getting home late. Sam does not know how to say no without offending her new friends. Sam is often tired and distracted at work which means that her staff training sessions are ill-prepared, the information is not always current, and she is regularly cancelling practice opportunities and coaching with staff members because she is too tired to concentrate.
