ROI vs VOI, or how to implement a successful health & wellbeing strategy
An enthusiastic and motivated leader may sit at his/her desk and dream up the ideal healthy workplace, push it through as much as possible, and then wonder why other do not support it, or why it fails after a short while. In many ways, the process of developing a healthy workplace is as critical to its success as the content. There are probably as many paths to a healthy workplace strategy as there are organisations, as stated in the WHO Healthy Workplace Framework and Model. However, there are some general principles that are important to include in the process.
We heard about 10-step models to create a healthy workplace. Here is the one I’ve been using in the past few years, highly inspired by what I learned during my Corporate and Workplace Wellness studies at the RMIT in Melbourne back in 2011. I was quite amazed to see that the theory and models from almost 10 years ago are still valid and accurate today:
- Ensure strategic imperative and management support
- Conduct a need, data and risks analysis including the use of a robust Health Risk Assessment
- Define financial mapping (budget)
- Have a clear vision and communicate it
- Establish the priorities
- Design a road map and a program
- Deploy communication and engagement strategy
- Implement the program
- Measure and evaluate the outcome
- Revise and update the program
On top of these, we can also mention the below success factors that most effective Health & Wellbeing programs have:
Vision closely linked to the overall strategy
Built upon a clear and consistent definition of wellbeing
Owned by functions, with champions network to maximise impact
Supported by consistent communication that emphasizes the organisation commitment to employee’s wellbeing and that encourages employee participation
We can’t talk Health & Wellbeing in the corporate world without talking about Return on Investment (ROI), especially as one of the biggest ongoing debates surrounding the industry is whether corporate Health & Wellbeing programs “work.”
A recent Australian study on mental health training program for managers proposed there was a return of about 10:1 when this was done right. So here is one clue that helps us answer our previous question, yes H&W programs do work and reduce productivity loss. If yes, then how much shall we invest to ensure we get a return on our investment? This is another question that keep being asked around at Corporate Health and Wellbeing summits, conferences, and experts’ events.
Dr Ron Goetzel, Senior Scientist and Director of the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies (IHPS) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and widely published expert in ROI, recommended investing about$150 per employee per year for an expected $450 annual ROI per employee.
Here is another clue that also help answer our previous question whether corporate H&W programs do work. In 2019, a study was published by the Illinois Workplace Wellness study claiming to find zero benefits from a corporate wellness program after its first year of implementation. So, this time, the answer is no, corporate H&W program do NOT work as there are not return on investment.
However, it was noted from that study that researchers found two exceptions to the claim of finding “zero benefits”: employees who joined the wellness program did become likelier to be screened for health issues, and also expressed that they thought their employer put a high priority on employee health and wellbeing. These two exceptions are both crucial factors of a successful wellbeing program.
This study helps us remember that numbers can’t always capture the benefits of an employee wellbeing program. When evaluating the success of a wellbeing program, we should not only take ROI into consideration but VOI (value on investment) as well. ROI highlights financial outcome, such as absenteeism/presenteeism rates, short term disability, while VOI highlights quality of life and productivity outcomes, such as attraction/retention of talents, employee engagement, improved performance, and corporate social responsibility.
Another way to look at this is to use the Basic Equation for Wellbeing. This equation should always be used for any program, strategy, or even health initiatives to be successful. Professor Cary Cooper and Dr. Ian Hesketh are the owners of this equation you can find in their 2019 book Wellbeing at Work, how to design, implement and evaluate an effective strategy.
RESILIENCE plays a key role in all we do, both inside and outside of work. How enhancing one’s own personal resilience can really make dealing with everyday life a much easier challenge. Even though there is no conclusive body of knowledge suggesting an exact route to resilience’s improvement, it is critical to include some forms of resilience training within an effective H&W program, to empower employees to cope with everyday life and bounce back from major traumatic events.
LEADERSHIP is the most closely related association with wellbeing say Cooper and Hesketh. Without doubt, the relationship employees have with their immediate line manager is the one that can impact most on their wellbeing, positively or negatively. Appropriate leadership is vital to both happiness and success and is key to the business and the values of the organisation.
ENVIRONMENT is both physical and psychological, how employees are made to feel within this organisation. This explains how important it is for employees to feel their employer put a high priority on their health and wellbeing, as stated above. Maya Angelou, an author, poet and civil rights activist summarises this perfectly well: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’.
This basic equation is key for overall organisation wellbeing, because if any of the three elements are near to zero, the wellbeing expected outcome is close to zero as well, and there will be no ROI and no VOI either.
No matter how fabulous, innovative, and attractive your Health & Wellbeing program is, if you don’t take into consideration individual resilience, leadership behaviour and the organisation’s environment, you won’t reach overall wellbeing.
“Vision without action is a daydream,
Action without vision is a nightmare”
Japanese Proverb
