Needs Assessment Email    

Imagine that you have recently been hired as a health promotion  specialist at a large company to coordinate their worksite wellness  program. You are the first person ever hired by this company in this  capacity. This position was created by the president of the company  because she recently read an article in a magazine that said worksite  wellness programs can boost profits. The company is doing well overall  financially, but the president has concerns that worker absenteeism,  health insurance costs, and employee morale are affecting profits. She  thinks a company wellness program can help address these issues. Your  supervisor is the director of human resources. He does not have a  background in health promotion and education or worksite wellness and is  relying on you to create their program from the ground up.
 

On  your first day of work, your supervisor asks, “so, what are you going to  do?” He would like an email from you by Thursday that outlines your  plan to get the program going. You know that the first thing to do is  create a needs assessment to determine where you should focus your time  and budget. You are worried that your supervisor might not support doing  a needs assessment first because he wants to see things move forward  quickly to get results. You decide to write him an email advocating that  you begin by conducting a needs assessment and outlining your plan for  conducting a needs assessment with employees.
 

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: Examine what a needs assessment is and why this is significant to the health promotion and program planning process. Select at least two of the needs assessment methods outlined in  chapter 4 of our textbook and explain how they would be used in the  needs assessment process. Summarize the advantages of using these methods and address any  potential disadvantages or concerns of such methods that your supervisor  might raise. Outline what data you intend to have at the end of the needs  assessment process and how you will use it to determine your program  goals.