You’ve studied the problem; now it’s time to develop a plan. One of the most important steps is strategizing what changes you want to make and how you will create change to improve employee well-being. This involves prioritizing concerns and designing an effective action plan.

Prioritize a Concern 

Once your steering committee has identified key themes in the assessment relating to workplace stressors and well-being, it is time to prioritize which areas of concern you will address. (For those employing a multiple-committee design, department-based teams will be responsible for completing this step with periodic support from the steering committee.)

To gain momentum, consider prioritizing a concern that is both impactful and a relatively “easy win” for your first project. An easier win may include a project that is not likely to require major resources or time to implement and may be less controversial. In each improvement cycle, you may want to identify a longer-term project and a few short-term, “quick action” projects that can be implemented immediately with little effort. These short-term, quick actions will demonstrate ongoing results and visibility for your committee’s work. Through discussion, group your themes into those that are considered high, medium, and low priority. If there is a lack of consensus, consider taking a group vote on which concern to prioritize. Record the identified problems or concerns to return to later for possible future committee action.

Make an Action Plan

An action plan involves developing a concrete strategy for addressing your target problem; your action plan should outline goals, solutions, and the actions you will take to achieve these endpoints. An effective plan serves as a roadmap and a means of tracking your progress and communicating with your organization about your accomplishments. In other words, it lets people know the “who,” “how,” “why,” and “when” of your project. At the end of this section there is an example describing an action plan one company devised to respond to elevated levels of employee stress and work-family conflict. This example illustrates how this organization’s health and well-being committee used the three principles of Work Design for Health to identify the root causes of the problem in workplace conditions and to devise an action plan to address it.

Designing a successful strategy for addressing workplace change to improve worker well-being can be approached in many ways. However, it may be helpful to bear in mind the research-tested “key principles of effective action planning” described below.

Using a visual management tool like a Kaizen or Kanban workboard to display and track progress through the different action planning steps described below can be helpful. A visual management board is a tool that helps teams and organizations manage the continuous improvement process. Boards typically have columns representing different phases of the action process (for instance, “to do,” “doing,” and “done”) and team members track and visualize progress towards their project goals by writing action steps on sticky notes or notecards and moving them across the board as they are implemented and completed. Research has demonstrated that these boards are highly effective in enhancing participants’ awareness and ability to manage the action-planning process, and their use is associated with improved employee well-being outcomes.^17,22 Refer to the linked resources at the end of this section for specific templates and examples of visual management boards and other action planning resources.

Key Principles of Effective Action Planning

• Prioritize primary prevention, or the root causes of worker stress and poor health. This means addressing workplace conditions, policies, and practices that drive stressors rather than only treating their symptoms.³ Consult the three principles of Work Design for Health and Table 1 for detailed information and examples of key root causes to consider and promising practices to address them.
• Align your action plan with both employee needs and organizational goals. Your plans are more likely to succeed if they are tailored to “hot spots” in your needs assessment while also being framed in terms of organizational priorities, such as performance or reduced turnover, that will motivate leadership support.^23,24 Revisit the ways in which improving employee well-being can be good for business, (See linked resources on making a business case in Step 1). 
• The committee planning the action should contain employees and managers with hands-on experience with the problem. Those with local knowledge of the problem and its related context and work processes will likely have the most insight into causes and solutions. If these staff members are not already on your committee, consider inviting them to provide input and consultation in the action planning phase. 
• Integrate action plans with existing company norms, practices, and daily routines.^1,25,26 Tailoring the plan this way (whenever possible) makes the workplace change more relevant, acceptable, and readily adopted, boosting its effectiveness and long-term success.¹⁸ Moreover, drawing on existing tools and practices that are widely perceived as effective to shape your action plan will avoid duplicating efforts or reinventing the wheel and ensure greater sustainability of your initiative. For instance, if your organization already uses continual improvement processes to enhance performance (i.e., Six Sigma, Lean, or PDSA), consider adapting these processes to use in your own approach. 
  

Do a Root Cause Analysis 

If the problem you are trying to address has many different dimensions or is more complex, conducting a root cause analysis as a first step in the action planning process can be helpful. (A root cause analysis is a process for identifying all the underlying causes of a concern.) As the Work Design for Health approach highlights, solutions that address the root causes of a problem will be more impactful than those that only address the symptoms. The process involves breaking down a problem or concern into its key component parts and then exploring the causes of each element until you identify the root causes or drivers of the problem. Consider the three principles of Work Design for Health in identifying what conditions may serve as root causes. Remember that the results of your assessment (for example, survey results, feedback from focus groups, and informal conversations) may also help to inform and enrich your analysis of root causes. 

Not all root causes can be practically addressed once identified (for instance, large capital expenses to replace an existing piece of technology may not be feasible). You may have to prioritize which root cause or near-root causes you can more readily address in the present. Root causes that are likely to be overly complex or expensive to address may require a separate advocacy process, more long-term planning, and greater involvement by senior management. But the process of defining the problem clearly and identifying the root cause can be useful, even if it may take longer to address an underlying issue that is hard to remedy. In the meantime, the steering committee may identify helpful steps to explain the challenge and the possibility for future changes to employees. 

See the “Helpful Resources” section for linked resources describing how to use different visual tools to map out your root cause analysis, including “the Fishbone Diagram,” “the Five Why’s,” and “the Drilldown Technique.”

Identify Goals, Brainstorm Solutions

Once you have identified a primary or root cause of the problem, reformulate it into a goal that is specific and measurable so that you’ll know if your strategies to improve the problem are working and when the goal has been achieved. (An example of a specific, measurable goal is to increase by half the proportion of workers who say they feel supported and appreciated by their supervisor.) The facilitator or chair can lead the group in a brainstorming session about possible solutions to achieve your goal. Try not to jump immediately to a solution before considering alternatives that may be more effective in addressing the root cause identified. If there are several root causes that the group deems are equally important to address, you may need to identify several solutions. Finally, consider whether your solutions may inadvertently create disparities between different groups of workers (for instance, across social backgrounds, departments, shifts, etc.) either in access to a new resource or in your solutions’ health and well-being effects. If you suspect your plan may create disparities, now is the time to adjust your solution to ensure more equitable outcomes for different groups of employees.

Define your actions: What? When? Who? How?

Once you have identified a set of solutions, you’ll need to identify concrete action steps to implement the solution, a timeline, who will be responsible for carrying out specific action steps, and the resources you’ll need to implement it. Consider identifying criteria for evaluating steps in your plan so you will know when actions and solutions have been achieved and whether the initiative has worked as intended. Check your plan with relevant senior-level managers for any necessary authorizations or to request needed resources.

See the “Helpful Resources” section for linked resources describing different action planning templates you might want to consider as you develop your goals, solutions, and action steps. 

Communicate Your Plan

Once completed, communicate your action plan to the broader workforce (or your department, if using a department-based approach), including a narrative about why you chose the goals and solutions you did and the intended impact. Also, explain what employees can expect regarding how the plan will be carried out, the timing, and how they may be asked to participate. Communication at this stage is important to enhance staff awareness and receptiveness to the change, and it also provides an opportunity to receive feedback and respond to potential staff concerns. 

Step 3 Checklist

Ask yourself whether you have accomplished the following:

• Prioritized areas of concern starting with an impactful, “easy win” issue.
• Developed an action plan that outlines goals, solutions, and actionable steps.
• Solicited support and buy-in from frontline employees and supervisors.
• Considered using a visual management board to track your progress.
• Identified criteria for evaluating completion of goals in your action plan to confirm the initiative is effective.
• Designated roles and responsibilities for carrying out specific action steps.
• Communicated the action plan to staff, including a narrative about goals and intended impact.

Step 3: Helpful Resources

Action Planning Templates

• The Government of South Australia, Healthy Workplaces, provides an action plan template to document your strategies, time frame, resources and measures of success.
• CPH-NEW offers a template for documenting your well-being objectives, intervention tasks, and task status.

Visual Management Boards

• Kanban Board Template – A visual management tool from the website, Project Manager, that enables you to track workflow (with columns for “to do,” “doing,” “done”) as you implement and complete action projects. 
• Kaizen Report Template – A visual management tool from Continuous Improvement Toolkit (KIT) that documents and summarizes continuous improvement activities in your action project to share improvements across an organization.

Root Cause Analysis

• Root Cause Analysis Guide – CPH-NEW provides resources to identify root causes of a health and well-being concern including a guide to conducting different types of root cause analyses, including fillable templates. 
• The Five Whys – a simple type of Root Cause Analysis. This slideshow from Continuous Improvement Toolkit (KIT), provides an overview of how to perform The Five Whys to understand the root causes of the identified problem.

Other Action Planning Resources

• Action plan with your assessment tool results from Thrive at Work – This part of the assessment tool guides you through the process of identifying your focus, developing a well-being strategy, and planning specific actions based on your assessment results.
• What Is the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle (PDCA) – A project planning resource from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) that consists of a four-step model for instituting change. Explore the “Resources” tab for other useful continuous improvement project planning tools.
• Quality Improvement Essentials Toolkit – Provides tools to help you launch a quality improvement project and manage performance improvement; includes a cause-and-effect diagram, failure modes and effects analysis, run charts and control charts, and a Plan-Do-Study-Act worksheet.
• Intervention Design and Analysis Scorecard (IDEAS) – A seven-step tool from The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW) that guides a collaborative process for identifying root causes of a specific health-related concern and designing appropriate changes in workplaces.