The Business Case, Stated Honestly

Wellbeing programmes are usually justified with a return figure. Many of those figures do not withstand examination, and using them is a risk to the programme.

Costs that are real and measurable

Turnover. Replacement cost is substantial and calculable from your own data: recruitment, notice periods, ramp time, lost productivity, and the load on colleagues in between.

Absence. Recorded, costed, and attributable in part.

Presenteeism, meaning people present but working at reduced capacity. Real, and hard to measure without asking.

Overtime and contractor cover for gaps.

Recruitment difficulty where an employer's reputation is affected.

Errors and rework in roles where fatigue affects quality, which in some sectors is a safety matter rather than a cost one.

Figures to avoid quoting

Broad multiplier claims about return per unit spent, sourced from vendor material with no accessible methodology.

National-scale economic costs applied to your organisation by headcount, which assumes your workforce resembles the average in ways it probably does not.

Engagement-to-profit correlations presented as causation.

Any figure you cannot trace to a method you could describe. A finance director who checks one of these once will discount every subsequent number the programme produces.

The number worth building

Your own turnover cost, calculated properly, is usually enough.

Take voluntary departures over twelve months.

Cost each one: recruitment, onboarding, time to productivity, cover, and the manager time consumed.

Segment by team. The variation is where the argument lives — one team losing people at three times the rate of comparable teams is a specific, addressable finding.

Compare against the cost of the intervention, whether that is additional headcount, reduced targets, or a manager's time.

This is a defensible number because you built it and can show the working.

What to promise

Not a return figure. Promise a specific change in a specific condition, measured the same way afterwards.

"We will reduce the proportion of this team working beyond contracted hours from X to Y within two quarters, and re-measure."

That is checkable, which is uncomfortable and is what makes it credible.

The argument that does not need numbers

Two arguments stand on their own and are frequently stronger than the financial one.

Legal obligation. Employers in most jurisdictions have duties regarding workplace health, and in several, psychosocial risk is explicitly within scope. This is a compliance matter, not a benefit.

It is the condition of the work you designed. If the working conditions are producing harm, that is a decision the organisation made, and the case for changing it does not depend on the return.

Lead with the obligation and the specific finding, and use the financial argument as support rather than as the foundation.

Building the turnover figure

A defensible internal number, assembled once and reused.

Recruitment cost per hire: agency fees, advertising, and the internal hours consumed by screening and interviewing.

Onboarding cost: induction, training, and the time of the people delivering it.

Time to full productivity, expressed as a proportion of salary over the ramp period. This is usually the largest component and the most often omitted.

Cover during the vacancy: overtime, contractors, or the load absorbed by colleagues.

Knowledge loss, which is real and which you may choose to note qualitatively rather than cost.

Total it, and segment by role. A senior technical departure and an entry-level one differ by a large multiple, and averaging them weakens the argument.

Presenting it without overclaiming

Credibility is the scarce resource, and it is spent by the first unsupportable number.

Lead with your own data, not with published benchmarks.

Show the method rather than the conclusion.

Give ranges where the estimate is genuinely uncertain.

Separate realised from projected, explicitly.

Do not claim causation where you have correlation.

Invite the challenge. A number that survives a finance director's scrutiny once is trusted thereafter, and that is worth more than a larger number that does not.