'The-Tonic Blog'

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Establishing the desired ROI for your Wellness Programme

As the New Year approaches you'll be looking to make sure that your wellness programme has paid dividends over the last 12-months and you'll want to be sure that what you have in place for the coming year is going to make a real, positive difference to your organisation.

So this month we've put together an article that will both help you look at the numbers you can work with to establish the desired ROI for your wellness programme and we've also included some results that it's hard to put a price on.

Calculating ROI of a Wellness Programme
At first glance, calculating an acceptable return on investment from a wellness programme would appear to be a fundamental requirement for getting the programme off the ground. If you intend to invest time and money into designing and delivering a programme, you’ll need to justify this investment by establishing precisely what you’ll get back in return for your efforts.

The only drawback is that quantifying the benefits of wellness programmes can be quite difficult. It’s a bit like spending money on advertising or marketing – you know that investment in these key areas of business brings in new revenue, but it can be hard to tell which elements of this budget are most successful. Similarly, when it comes to wellness, it may be clear that initiatives are contributing towards an improvement in your business success, but it may be difficult to isolate which ones are making the biggest contribution.

It can be fairly straightforward to establish the ROI for some initiatives. For example, if you know that you lose a specific number of staff days, and therefore a related financial amount in lost productivity or reduced profitability due to musculo-skeletal issues, you can introduce workstation assessments or manual handling education to reduce the risk of such injuries. You could consolidate this with physiotherapy, chiropractic or osteopathy interventions for when these injuries do arise. You will then be able to very accurately calculate the relationship between how much you spend on these initiatives and the reduction in the amount of money lost due to musculo-skeletal related absence issues.

For other interventions such as health screenings, wellness workshops, individual lifestyle coaching, and team activity sessions it can be more difficult to see a direct return for your money and you may have to look at the wider issues within the business, and take account of general trends over time.

These indicators can include tangible factors such as productivity, profitability, staff absence and staff turnover, but remember, when using these measurements to judge the success of a wellness programme you need to be sure of the statistics before the programme begins and at specific and agreed review points for as long as the initiatives are in place. You also need to be sure that you can extract the relevant information from the right people or departments when you need it, and always be aware of any other variables occurring in the business during the period of assessment.

Other factors that can be assessed to establish the value to the business of specific wellness interventions are results with staff surveys and customer satisfaction surveys. One of our clients did exactly this and discovered improvements in selected customer satisfaction ratings increasing from 8.3 to 9.1 in one area and 8.1 to 8.6 in another during a 12 month period during which staff were given access to one to one wellness coaching.

Less quantifiable returns on your wellness investment include increased staff engagement, culture change and renewed levels of motivation throughout the business and for every company that demands clear figures relating to the ROI for their wellness initiatives, there’s another company for whom the most important return they are looking for is the opportunity for staff to feel as though the business is proactive when it comes to looking after their health, wellness and life balance, and the chance to develop the perception that the business is a great place to work.

To assess the full ROI of your wellness initiatives you need to be clear in advance what you want to achieve with your programme:

Decide which financials you are able to measure and what would be an acceptable improvement in these figures

Understand every element – quantitative and qualitative – of what you would like your wellness programme to achieve for you, for your staff and for your business so that you can make informed decisions in the future

Choose your time frames carefully giving each initiative a chance to prove itself on all levels without running the risk of leaving initiatives in place that haven’t proved their worth to the business as a whole

Looking purely at financials can be limiting and sometimes, even if the financial return on investment of an initiative looks marginal, it’s worth maintaining if it helps foster an environment of positive, motivated, energetic people.

Considering financial returns alongside specific benefits to individuals within your company will ensure that you are able to develop the most effective range of wellness initiatives for the long-term.

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9 key questions you need to answer to guarantee a healthy 2013

New Year Wellness Resolutions: Don't reinvent the wheel

Many people we work with claim they'd like more energy and a better balance in their life. But are their actions and approaches consistent with these desires? Take for example how much time they devote to planning success in different areas of life. Do they give enough attention to what they say they want to achieve with their wellness?

Let's look first at how people achieve success in their professional roles. Broadly speaking, this is what individuals consider when faced with a project, task or challenge at work:

1. What do we want to achieve?

2. Why do we want to achieve this?

3. How long will it take?

4. Who needs to be involved?

5. How much will it cost?

6. What's the first action or initial sequence of actions?

7. Are we convinced we have made all necessary preparations prior to getting started? Have we asked, and answered, all key questions we need to?

8. When do we next review our progress? If you're working well you'll also consider what the likely outcomes will be at your next progress review and what your options will be at that point.

9. Are we convinced that we will succeed?

Answers to the above are usually arrived at through a combination of solo planning, team meetings and collaboration. Once you're satisfied with all your answers you will proceed and you will succeed.

Compare this with a typical thought process related to personal wellness and how we feel on a day-to-day basis:

In the middle of a busy day, there's a pause for thought. 'Gosh, suddenly I feel really tired. I should have gone to bed earlier last night. I shouldn't have had that extra glass of wine. I should drink less coffee. But I'd better have one now to perk me up. I should try to get to the gym later this week as well. And I must have an early night tonight. Right, back to this email…' And immediately, all good intentions are gone, as quickly as they arrived and nothing changes.

It's not surprising that results in some areas of life can be so much more dramatic and long-lasting than in others. We're busy and we have to make choices about where we allocate our mental resources.

But what if we did one simple thing and applied the systems that bring us success at work, and used them in other areas. Consider this approach to improved health and wellness. The starting point is the same,

'Gosh, suddenly I feel really tired.'

1. What do I want to achieve?

Better energy levels and more consistent focus and performance throughout the day.

2. Why do I want to achieve this?

Without it I don't feel I get the best out of myself and things can take longer and feel more challenging than they need to.

3. How long will it take?

Well I know where I could make improvements so I can address this right away. This should lead to me feeling better later today.

4. Who needs to be involved?

I need to slightly alter my food and evening routine - I'll need to let my partner know about this

5. How much will it cost?

Planning what I need to do might cost me a bit of time initially but I know that with more energy I'll become more efficient.

6. What's the first action or initial sequence of actions?

Sit down now to plan a slot in my diary where I can schedule exercise, think about my food routine, sort out my social calendar and work out a strategy for sticking to my plans. Get some water now and organise my afternoon break / snack.

7. Am I convinced I have made all necessary preparations prior to getting started? Have I asked, and answered, all key questions I need to?

Yes, for now. I've started a page on my notepad where I'm going to note any observations that I can review as we go and take the appropriate action when required.

8. When do I next review my progress? If you're working well you'll also consider what the likely outcomes will be at your next progress review and what your options will be at that point.

Today is Tuesday so I'll schedule a review point on Friday morning. If things are going well I can plan how to keep them on track. If there have been some issues I can schedule a longer spot over the weekend to figure out some new creative solutions.

9. Am I convinced that I will succeed?

I have no doubt

This process may seem a bit drawn out but it's pretty clear that with the deeper questioning there's a much higher chance of success. Remember too that the formality of a system like this soon becomes second nature and, just as you automatically implement success strategies at work, so you will begin to do so with your wellness success strategies.

So when it comes to feeling at your best, don't make things overly complicated and don't try to reinvent the wheel. Think about what systems work best for you in life and apply these approaches to exercise, healthy eating, good sleep and great life balance.

You'll be amazed at how quickly you can then begin enjoying the results.