# Workplace Surgery: Proving the ROI of wellbeing initiatives

- **Episode:** [136](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/136.md) (2024-10-15)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** wellbeing, roi, workplace-surgery
- **Time:** 36:13–41:33 (start 2173s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/136?t=2173](https://truthliesandwork.com/136?t=2173)

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[36:13] Leanne Elliott: Born ready, Al
[36:14] Al Elliott: Born ready, baby. Okay. I own a consulting firm with 8 full-time employees and Okay
[36:21] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[36:22] Al Elliott: Last year we introduced several wellbeing initiatives like flexible hours, mental health days, and a meditation app subscription. While I believe these are making a positive impact, I'm struggling to quantify their value. My finance team is pressing for evidence that these programs are worth the investment. I've noticed fewer sick days and people seem happier, but I can't translate this into concrete financial benefits. I want to continue supporting my team's wellbeing, but I need to justify the costs. Can I see an ROI on this, Leigh? You get asked that quite a lot, don't you?
[36:54] Leanne Elliott: Of course you can. Of course you can
[36:56] Al Elliott: Great. Question number 2
[36:57] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's yes. I think, I think this is the frustration and where we see things like wellness washing and, and, you know, some people pushing back against some of the, the wellbeing benefits that are being put in is because we can't really see the impact of them. Um, whereas really, if we're doing wellbeing properly, if we're approaching wellbeing from a— as an occupational psychologist would approach wellbeing, then evaluation is going to be baked into that from, from day one. Um, so yes, oopsie that we've not done that from day one, but don't worry, there are some things we can do to kind of roll back and look retrospectively what the impact is. Before I go on to that, first of all, I just want to say bravo to you. You said freelancers, right?
[37:37] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[37:37] Leanne Elliott: That's really cool. Good for you. I wish, I wish so many more organizations would would do that with freelancers. They get so much more engagement, so much more effort. Yeah, longer tenure. It would just be fabulous. And especially as we're moving towards more towards a gig economy, it's going to be a really important thing. Um, I'm not going to comment too much on the wellbeing initiatives you've put in place because I don't know enough detail about them and the quality of them and the science behind them. We all know that some wellbeing interventions are more impactful than others. But in terms of measuring that impact and measuring that ROI, think of any performance metric in your business that you report on. Any revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, absenteeism, presenteeism. Um, what else do you report on, Al?
[38:25] Al Elliott: Um, all the other isms
[38:27] Leanne Elliott: All the other isms. Any, any commercial or people-based metric in your business that you track, you should see an impact, a positive impact on that performance if you're investing in employee engagement and wellbeing. The reason I say employee engagement and wellbeing is the two are really closely correlated. So, if you have high levels of wellbeing, you're more likely to be engaged with your work. If you're more engaged with your work, you're more likely to have high levels of wellbeing. And it's that engagement that's really kind of the commercial backbone of people and culture. So, yeah, look back retrospectively through some metrics that you record anyway, that you'll have those data points 6 months ago, 12 months ago, and see if you can find any patterns. Of course, it's going to be— it's going to be correlation, not necessarily causation, but it should give you enough data points to take to your board and say, look, there has been some impact. There's a phenomenal book on well-being by Sheena Johnson and Kerry Cooper that talks very much about well-being through a commercial lens and, and measuring the impact and ROI. I will leave a link because it is a phenomenal resource course, if you are looking to do a lot of this yourself, if you're not in a position where you can engage an occupational psychologist to work with. Um, some really good, good advice in there. Um, but yeah, that's, that's kind of in a nutshell what, what you can do, um, and we should be doing. And evaluation, as I said, is, is probably one of the most, oh, like, over— overlooked aspects of consulting. Um, if you're working with a consultant and they're not telling you how they're going to measure the impact of their work, then they're probably not a very good consultant. Because even if, if, you know, I work with a client and go, right, 6 months' time, 12 months' time, we're going to measure the impact, and there hasn't been an impact, my immediate reaction isn't going to go, oh, they're not going to pay me again. My reaction is going to be, why? We should have seen— the science tells me we should have seen an impact. What variable has we not— have we not accounted for? What shift or change happened in the business for, for this to be the case? So yeah, any consultant with their salt is going to, going to have evaluation baked in from day one
[40:24] Al Elliott: Absolutely. And you say that you're a consulting firm. You haven't written what exactly what you consult in, but think about your own customers who have said, where do I see the ROI on this? And if there's something tough to prove, an ROI that's tough to prove for your own customers, you'll have definitely found a way to prove its worth or at least justify its expense
[40:42] Leanne Elliott: And you know what? It feeds into other— it actually feeds into other metrics. Look at ESGs, for example. Um, I think that, um, environmental, social, and governance goals, um, that have been set for businesses globally. Um, and I think that it fits in very nice with that S, the social, in terms of just being a responsible business and looking after the well-being of your team makes, makes sure you're a responsible business. Again, if you want to push back to your finance people, you're actually legally obligated in the UK to measure stress within the workplace and do about it if it is escalating. And that's under HSE compliance regulations. And also, was it Harry Cramer that said growth isn't always about, um, money value, it can be about quality? And I thought that was really nice. Growth, business growth can, can be about quality, and that's, that's really cool to remember, I think