Not necessarily in any order, but these are the big questions you’ve got to be asking your Workplace Wellbeing provider.
In order to get it funded, you need to convince your organisation of the benefit of having such a program and there are four (4) big benefits of having such a program.
You will find it easier to attract staff, keep them and get them turning up (especially in this post-pandemic era) and doing good work when they do turn up. What you should look as an overall benefit is that for every $1.00 that is spent on the wellbeing program there should be a $4.00 return (4:1 return).
If you would like any help to make the case to your executive, let us know, we have some templates that you can use to help win them over.
One of the major issues that people have once they decide to have a wellbeing program in the organisation is to upsell and get it approved either by the CEO, the board or the executive team.
“Cris you’ve had some experience at this, can you give us some examples of issues about people creating a business case to sell to these people?”
The big thing here is to not make the case generic, that is make your business case specific to your organisation.
What are the issues that are going on in your organisation that a Wellbeing program will resolve?
One organisation that I have worked with had a very high standard of quality, they were making health care products. The issue that their wellbeing program helped resolve was better quality work.
In another organisation it was sick days. People were taking a lot of sick days. The issue we were solving there was around less sick days.
At yet another there were a lot of complaints about the culture of the place. That wellbeing program was aimed at creating a positive workplace – that was how they made their business case.
The four (4) generic elements of your business case as we have said elsewhere are: traction, retention, low absenteeism and people being more present and doing the work. These are the big ones.
In your organisation, make it specific, show what it will return your organisation and remember you should be getting about 4:1 return for your company.
Whatever the generic reasons for introducing a wellbeing program – make sure you find specific examples of your workplace. And in the end, it has got to be about performance and about productivity. Get in touch if you need a hand.
You’ve put a lot of hard work into planning your wellbeing program – now it’s time to implement. Make the most of it by holding a launch – these can be annual. It’s a good excuse to bring everyone together, you’ll have the attention of senior management team and it’s one additional opportunity to reinforce your wellbeing message.
One of the things a lot of wellbeing programs fail to do (organisational ones) is they fail to take account of public initiatives.
One of the things we do and I think we do very well in our Wellbeing Program is we help you take advantage of what is going on in the public sphere. We are talking about things like: men’s health, Stress Down Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Day, Walk to Work Day.
There are so many of them. The important thing is that they are spread out over the year. This links nicely into our 12-month Wellbeing Calendar. For example, if we do have Stress Down Day or Stress Week or something similar, that is essentially where we put our stress management activities. This gives people the ability to look forward to different events that are linking into these public events that are going on anyway. We don’t want to re-create them, we want to go into some of these programs. All of the marketing, all of the flyers, a lot of the activities are already there in which they can participate in themselves outside of working hours to leverage and promote what we have put in place with our Wellbeing Program.
The other advantage of that is it helps you as an organisation to look like you’re on the ball with what is going on. It puts the wellbeing initiatives that you are running in a wider context and builds public awareness. It is a “free ride” as far as communication goes and it links the external.
When I was young, I was given a life insurance policy by my father. He was a migrant to Australia and worked hard to put aside some money each month to pay for it. When I turned 18, he pulled me aside one day and handed it over to me – including the responsibility for maintaining it. I cashed it in of course – I have no recollection of what I spent the money on but it’s all gone. I don’t regret that as much as the fact I never thanked him for his efforts.
It’s a sad but true axiom: people don’t value what they get too easily. Or to put it another way – the more people invest in something – the more highly they regard it. (see Cialdini’s “The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion”). We’ve noticed that ourselves when we’ve been approached to run events for charities for free. We’re happy to do it but we often find our service is relegated to the back of the queue and ‘paid’ services are prioritised. So we now ask for a small fee – even a donation to a good cause just to ensure that our service is scheduled and actually runs.
In your workplace program, you might have noticed that when you book, for example, a masseur, yoga practitioner, or exercise class that initial interest is high but on the day many people drop out. They know that if they came they would get a lot out of it but other more pressing issues take precedence. In some cases, it’s fair enough – but it can result in empty slots, wasted money, and a devaluing of your wellbeing program.
One solution is to charge for the session. Charging forces people to commit and raise the importance (and value) of your event in the minds of participants. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money – a co-payment as small as $5 will do. If there’s a philosophical objection to charging you can always donate the funds to a good cause or re-invest it in your organisation’s social club or wellbeing program. Another way to increase attendance is to ensure that everyone signs onto an attendance schedule that is posted in a public place. Both of these will help.
Co-payments also send an unconscious message to your staff – looking after your wellbeing does have a cost associated with it – be it money or time or effort. You might try to minimise it but like all good things – you get out of it what you put into it. Your wellbeing is important enough to put effort into. Just keep the co-payments small enough not to exclude anyone.