Small banner image showing marketing materials put together for various clients' health and wellbeing projects Large banner image showing marketing materials put together for various clients' health and wellbeing projects

Dec 2020

How do you set a budget for Health and Wellbeing? And where will you find the money…?

Author: John Tarrant

These two tricky questions are top of mind for many HR professionals in these ‘non business-as-usual times’. Some are saying, “Frankly, I don’t know where to start”, don’t worry, help is at hand.

The starting point for setting your budget is a Strategic Health and Wellbeing Audit. This is the vital step in the design and implementation of a joined-up strategy. It will provide an independent assessment of what is currently in place, set the foundations to build a proactive and sustainable strategy and ensures a benchmark to prove both impact and ROI.

The Audit will help you understand:

  • What is currently in place to support employees’ Health and Wellbeing.
  • What is the total cost to the business (lost days, cost of temps or locums, medical costs)? The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reports that on average in one year a company loses 4.1 working days per employee, based on the current average salary statistics, the cost is £508 per worker.
  • How this compares to best practice and a roadmap on how to improve.
  • How your employees feel about Health and Wellbeing now, and what they want going forward.
  • The business case to support Health and Wellbeing, showing clear return on investment within 12 months.

And the last bit is key. The money you need to implement a truly effective and sustainable Health and Wellbeing strategy is already being spent and/or wasted in your business right now. You don’t need to find the budget, it’s already there.

Our proven process ensures that you are able to truly see the problems and understand them in context. Typically, this has meant a 25% reduction in absence and a 40% reduction in healthcare trust and private medical insurance spend, along with reduced general insurance premiums through mitigation of risk. One DNA client has saved around £600,000, whilst others are on target for similar amounts.

Every £1 invested in Health and Wellbeing will see between £3 and £7 back within 18 months, net of all investment.

More importantly, these clients now have a cohesive plan and are legally compliant, which wasn’t necessarily the case before. In terms of impact, with DNA’s help, they have fundamentally changed their approach to physical and mental health, absence overall and essential health interventions for staff.

The ability to change people’s lives for the better, both at work and at home, has to be something worth investing in.

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