How to make a strong business case for wellbeing

Speaking at the SHW Live North conference in Manchester earlier this week, British Safety Council’s head of wellbeing, Marcus Herbert, shared some valuable insights on how to plug this gap and make a bulletproof case for the development and adoption of a wellbeing strategy.

The vast majority – 90% – of people who have attended British Safety Council’s Keep Thriving Wellbeing Strategy Workshops so far agreed that the free, three-hour workshops had “enhanced their understanding of what a good wellbeing strategy looks like”, Herbert told delegates at the event in Manchester on 24 January.

However, there are awareness gaps in how to successfully make the business case for implementing workplace wellbeing strategies to decision-makers.

Identifying who those decision-makers are and what motivates them is key to making a strong business case for wellbeing, said Herbert. For instance, if the people who make the decisions are based in the Human Resources department, they may have very different motivations to decision-makers who reside within the Finance or Operations divisions of a company.

Marcus Herbert, head of wellbeing at British Safety Council. Photograph: British Safety Council

Once the decision-makers have been identified, the wellbeing strategy must be clearly defined. When it comes to designing a wellbeing strategy, it must be based on the specific needs of the organisation and tailored towards helping it meet its objectives. Herbert’s advice is to “think of the obstacles you might face” when implementing a wellbeing strategy and be prepared to demonstrate how they might be overcome.

“There are lots of ways to evidence the success of a wellbeing programme,” he said.

While around 70% of larger companies already have workplace wellbeing strategies in place, this figure falls to just under one-third for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). British Safety Council’s Keep Thriving campaign aims to help more SMEs improve the wellbeing of their workers, both within and outside of the workplace.

For more information on the campaign, and to sign up for one of our free Keep Thriving workshops, visit: britsafe.org/campaigns-and-policy/keep-thriving-campaign