In our previous lessons, we showed you the history and fundamentals of launching a corporate wellness program.
However, let’s take a step back….
Before you can begin your corporate wellness programs, you need to figure out how to finance them. Everything requires some sort of financial commitment. Even policy changes may require a small financial commitment from the company, especially if these policy changes come with a need for brochures, technology development or educational materials.
These corporations want to make money, which is why they are working with a corporate wellness coach in the first place. But they also don’t want to spend money. Your goal will be to propose programs and find the right amount of funding to achieve the maximum benefit for the company and receive the greatest amount of interest by those that need to approve your budget.
Finding Money Can be a Challenge Until You Know How
There is no denying that your corporate wellness programs are going to bring in more revenue for the company over the next several years. The value of corporate wellness has been proven time and time again.
However, you will need to show the company how they will benefit monetarily from the programs implemented.
That is why it is very important that when you create a budget that you show to a company, you take time to make sure that your proposals make the absolute most cost/benefit sense and try your best to look for the least expensive options that produce the best results.
Types of Funding
There are three ways that your programs are likely to be funded. The company may use either a top-down budget, or a bottom-up budget. Each of these represents their own unique challenges.
Top-Down Budget
The top-down budget is the most common type of budget you will be faced with as a corporate wellness coach. The top-down budget is when the coach is given a finite dollar amount from which they can draw to plan the employee wellness programs.
Rarely is this as large a budget as you need to fund all the projects you believe will help the organization. This type of budget forces you to think about what programs are most important, what can be cut, whether there is a less expensive alternative that will provide similar results but not necessarily the most desired results, etc.
Top-down budgets can be difficult to work with because you know that you are limited in the amount of money you can work with. Rarely do companies provide enough of a budget to allow freedom for all the wellness programs you’d like to initiate.
Working with a top-down budget requires more planning on your part than anywhere else. There is little you can do with this type of budget other than try your best to ensure that you are making the best decisions for the company and worry about justifying a greater budget once you have seen returns.
Bottom-Up Budget
Bottom-up budgets are the opposite. The company has not promised you any money, but they plan on approving of your wellness proposals on a case-by-case basis.
This option allows for far more freedom. You know that any program that benefits the company and the employees may be improved, and that allows you to work without quite as many constraints.
However, this approach leads to other problems as well:
- Budgeting Psychology – The more money you ask for, the more the company is going to be expecting tangible results. Every time you ask for more money, the company will want to look and make sure that you are using your money wisely. If they don’t see the changes they are expecting to see, your budget will be declined. Having all the money approved up front reduces scrutiny by the business.
- Fixed Budgets – There is also the chance that you are on a fixed budget, yet unaware of the dollar amount. When you work with a known budget it is easier to make sure that all the programs you choose are within your budgetary constraints. Using bottom-up budgeting, you may be on a budget that you are unaware of, set behind the scenes by the company. Then, if you choose a more expensive program because you thought it was justified, you may have trouble putting any other programs in place no matter how much they would benefit the organization.
- Constant Questioning – Justification of your budget is always going to play a role, but the significant scrutiny that will arise every time you ask for funding can lead to excess stress and difficulty as you try to move your projects forward.
- Poor Decision Making – Even when you have the support of the organization, you may still find that some executives think they know more about wellness than you. The result is that even with your data, you may have trouble convincing them to fund a project that you know the company needs in favor of a program that the company needs less. When budget control is in the hands of the company, they can turn down proposals for more serious needs if they subjectively believe they are not as important to address.
In many ways a bottom-up approach allows for more freedom, but the work involved in receiving that funding is going to be considerable and may get in the way of creating the programs you know will be the most effective.
Variable Budget
The final type of budget is the most preferred but least common. That is the variable budget, where you are given a fixed number to start out with and told that you can get additional funding upon approval by the company. That allows you to allocate your dollars to the projects that you know are the most necessary first, and then justify the remaining funding with the company afterward for the programs that are important but not as crucial.
All these budgets represent their own challenges. For all of them, especially for the latter two, you are going to need to justify your budget extremely well if you hope to receive funding for the programs you think matter most.
Types of Expenses
Another aspect of your budget to plan is how the expenses are to be calculated every month. There are two types of expenses that you will need to account for in your monthly budget.
Fixed Expenses
Fixed expenses, like rent, are costs that are unlikely to change over the course of the program. For example, if you need to lease a space to host fitness workshops, that cost is a fixed cost, because it is unlikely to change on any given money. Fixed expenses are the easiest expenses to budget.
Variable Expenses
Variable expenses are much more difficult. As a corporate wellness coach, you are going to need to make sure that variable expenses are properly accounted for and explained when you create your budget.
Variable expenses include expenses that are directly related to the number of participants. For example, if you tell employees that they can meet with a chiropractor once a week on the company dollar, the number of employees that choose to go to that chiropractor can vary. You will need to make sure that the budget accounts for the number of people that take advantage of the service.
How to Justify and Validate Your Budget
One of the most important tasks you will need to undertake as a corporate wellness coach is justifying your budget. While there is ample evidence of the success of corporate wellness programs, the results are never immediate, which is why employers are so hesitant to distribute dollars to an investment without any immediate results.
Part of planning your program needs to be dedicated to how you are going to justify it when you are creating your budget. If your program cannot stand up to scrutiny, you may want to consider another option, even if you are convinced of the success of that program.
Short Term and Long-Term Results
One of the strongest things you can do as a corporate wellness coach is to try to create or plan programs that have short term benefits. Companies listen to money. If the money is telling them investments are worth their time, they are more likely to trust in your expertise.
As a result, it’s a good idea to integrate short term results programs into your campaign. Things like company-wide flu shots, for example, will already produce measurable results for the company within a few months. You can use those returns to justify the costs of other programs that you are planning to complete.
It’s always a good idea to have short term solutions interspersed throughout the programs you create, even if they are not going to produce the same level of results as the longer-term programs. Companies will always respond positively when they can see the results of your work in front of them, and you need them on your side if you hope to continue doing your work.
Data Sharing
Another way to justify you budget is to constantly share your data with the company. Numbers are an important part of proving that you are providing effective programs. Using your data, you can show the company exactly what their programs have been able to achieve, allowing them to see first had the wellness changes that are being made.
This is not just about what the company makes/saves. This is also about showing the company that your wellness programs are benefitting the employees as people. Using your data, you can show the company how the money they are providing is helping their employee’s wellness, and it can be inferred that their wellness is going to help their profits.
Strong Promises About Improvements
Before you go about justifying your programs, make sure that the company understands how long it will be before some of the results will start rolling in on the longer-term programs, and make sure that they give you a promise to give you that time.
You will find as a corporate wellness coach that some companies expect results right away. By encouraging them to give you time to make your programs work when you draft the proposal, you reduce the chances that they will be breathing down your neck as you try your best to get the programs to work. Showing them the results, they can expect and how long it will be before those results will take place, as well as getting them to promise to provide you with that necessary time will go a long way towards helping you maintain financial support.
Work With Your Committee
As a corporate wellness coach, you and your committee are partners in deciding what programs are best for the company. Your committee is going to have executives, managers, and other partners of standing within the company.
If you can convince them that a program is worth completing (or even better, the program is one of their ideas), then you can use your wellness committee to pitch the program for you. Having executives on your side because they worked with you on creating the program can greatly increase your ability to get the budget.
Finding Free Costs and Favors
Companies are also going to be far more likely to stomach some of your costs if you can show them that not all the funding will come out of their pockets. There are often hidden sources of funding that you can use to help the company save money.
For example, call the health insurance carrier of the company. Sometimes they offer services that you can receive for free. The services save the health insurance carrier money over time, so they are often more than willing to lend some of their own funding to help you create your services. There are also often organizations that you can find for grants or support, and discounts you can get from some of your suppliers if you promise to utilize their programs. You may even find that employees are willing to dedicate a little bit of their own salaries if the programs sound enjoyable or beneficial. The larger the company, the more just $1.00 per month from each paycheck can go a long way toward vastly improving wellness in the office.
You may also find that you are in touch with wellness research organizations and labs. Often these labs are running trial programs for research that are funded through government and investor grants. Perhaps you can use the company you are working with as test subjects.
There are quite a few sources of funding available, and by hedging some of the costs with these alternate sources of financing, many companies are more willing to provide their own dollars to fund your wellness budget.
Plan Everything
Part of getting your wellness budget approved as a corporate wellness coach depends on your ability to be accurate with your numbers. In some ways it is better to overshoot your estimates than undershoot them. As a result, make sure you plan every aspect of your wellness campaigns.
For example, if you are going to integrate a fitness center into the company, you will no doubt include the cost of buying the equipment. But what about maintaining the equipment? Corporate wellness coaches that overlook these little details are going to find it harder to justify their budgets later.
Make Sure the Company Understands the Value They Are Receiving
Finally, as you create your budget, make sure you are constantly reminding the company about what they are going to receive for their investment. Show them how much the budget is going to cost per employee, and what they can expect companywide by the time the programs are completed.
It is too easy for these companies to look at the bulk cost of participation and balk at the investment. But in the end, when they see how little investment it is per employee and how much it has the potential to bring back, it becomes much easier to turn them around.
Finding Funding – Companies and Wellness
When you work with a company, it is clear they have some investment in the idea of corporate wellness. Research has long since recognized its benefits, and simply the act of working with the company proves that they agree that a wellness program is worth their time and investment.
The key is to make sure they stay motivated, and the best way to do that is to justify where their money is going and continue to remind them about what the results are of your efforts. That is what will keep them interested in continuing to fund the programs and achieve the benefits they set out to achieve.
Creating a Self-Funded Program
In addition to budgeting, some experts believe that you should investigate creating a self-funded program.
When companies get very large, they have a mixture of healthy and unhealthy individuals. Those that are of higher risk drive the price of insurance up, and those of lower risk drive the price of insurance down, and what is left is the cost of that insurance to the company – where the less risk employees subsidize the at-risk employees by paying more.
One option is to eliminate that subsidy. Remember that wellness itself is not about forcing people to be at the pinnacle of health. Wellness is about simply being involved in your own health. It is about doing your best to make sure that you are living as healthy a lifestyle as possible. The obese cannot be expected to maintain the weight of the thin, but at least they can be exercising in a way that improves their own health relative to what it was before.
So, what some experts propose is the idea that employees that are not actively engaged in wellness pay more than those that are not. That change in benefits acts as a motivator to keep up with wellness activities. Those wellness activities will then lead to fewer health claims which will lead to more healthcare savings for the company which in turn can be used to fund programs.
Another option is to contact the health insurance company itself and find out if/what they are willing to subsidize. Some insurance companies are willing to cover some of the costs of some programs if they believe it will save them additional money in the long run. They may also be willing to immediately give discounts to companies that are engaging in wellness programs, simply because they know that the company is dedicated to wellness. Those discounts can be invested in wellness programs to make sure they receive proper funding.
When you are creating your budget, explore these options as well. They may be met by a lot of resistance, but if they pass, they can be a great way to continue funding your wellness program without having to ask for too much from the company.
Timeline for Budget Planning
You should expect your budget to be scrutinized yearly. Every budget should come with a 12-month plan that breaks down the costs in a way that is understandable for those looking for budget approval. Ideally, your budget should match exactly how much you expect to need over the course of the next 12 months.
You should already include where you are planning on getting some of the extra funding (if any). You should also make sure you have already contacted the companies you plan on working with if approved to see about costs and discounts. Everything should be prepared.
Your main goal is to stick to the budget. Once they approve of the budget, it will be hard for you to ask for anything extra unless they see returns. Also, if there are initial costs that are going to be much greater than the follow up costs each year, make sure you include that too. Companies may be more likely to agree to a larger initial investment if they have some assurance that the costs will go down on subsequent years.
Make sure you have allocated exactly where those costs will go. Allocating will help you justify why each cost is non-negotiable so that the company cannot try to cut the funding they provide to the program.
Follow Up Years
As a coach, you understand that wellness is not a onetime plan. Every year you will need to draft a new budget for the following year, and each year you will need to justify that budget with those in charge of financing. You can help improve your chances of getting that budget approved in three ways:
- Show Results
The best way to get your budget approved is to show that your programs are working. This is one of the main reasons to integrate smaller and quicker programs into your plan all throughout the year, even if they don’t bring back the sizeable returns of the other programs. Results speak for themselves, and the more you can show the company you have accomplished, the more confident they will be that your efforts are going to lead them to further profit.
- Create a Wellness Culture
Companies are going to have a hard time cutting any of your programs if all of their employees show dedication to their wellness. The more they are clearly supporting you, the more you can use that energy to show how helpful your programs have become, even if they haven’t shown demonstrably significant results. Figure out a way to use that as you explain your budget, because the damaging effects of cutting the wellness programs could cause more loss for the company than approving your budget.
- Prepare in Advance
You will have a much easier time getting your budget approved for follow up years if you prepare for those years in advance and show knowledge about how much the programs you are going to use will cost over the next 5 or so years. If you can convince the company that the budgets you have over the next five years are worthwhile, then you will have an easier time justifying each year’s budget regardless of how measurable the results are.
Adding on to the Budget
As a corporate wellness coach, you will find that no budget is perfect. It is difficult to account for everything that may arise, and possible that turnover and other factors can lead to new health risks that need to be addressed differently than they were before. You should do your best to make your numbers as accurate as possible based on what you know, but there is no way you can account for the effects of time.
Dr. Joseph A. Leutzinger offers these strategies as ways you can increase your budget if necessary.
Strategy 1: Addressing “Hot Issues”
Many companies have public health risks that are associated with specific points in time. Take advantage of those risks by creating programs that address them early, and make sure they are addressed every year. If the company acknowledges these problems, and they are successfully reduced by your programs, the company will trust your judgment more on subsequent issues. In addition, if you are able to save the company money by using a budget, they already used to address a program more effectively, you will find that the money saved can be used on other programs.
Strategy 2: Centralizing Programs
Another strategy Dr. Leutzinger suggests is the idea of fixing disorganized programs that are already in place. Some wellness programs, like flu shots, have been commonplace in a variety of companies for years. However, the way the company manages these programs may be inefficient.
If you take the budget they already had and make the program more efficient, you can often keep the money that you save and use it for other projects that may also be deserving.
Strategy 3: Spreading Out Programs to Groups Already in Place
Sometimes you can create some extra budgetary room by increasing the company’s involvement in the program. By using related departments that may already have an indirect association with some of your programs (HR, Safety, etc.), you can reduce your own responsibility while increasing exposure to the program and saving budget on things like organization, marketing, etc.
The key with all these strategies is to use pathways to get the job done that make your job easier and lower costs, allowing you to save money on some programs so that you can put money towards other programs. The more cost savings tips you introduce, the more money you have for other projects, which in turn will create greater measurable results that will encourage the company to trust your instinct and provide you with greater funding when necessary.
Preparing the Budget to Launch Your Wellness Programs
As a corporate wellness coach, you will find that how you handle the budget is sometimes as important as the programs itself. The budget can be a motivation tool, a bargaining tactic, and the number one place where you will be challenged on your program ideas.
As you prepare the finances corporate wellness program, your most important tasks are trying to be as accurate and as cost effective as possible. By ensuring that your budget is as well planned and justifiable as possible, you will have an easier time putting your programs in place and helping them achieve the success they deserve. Do your best to get your wellness committee and executives behind your strategies and your ability to find the funding you need should be at your fingertips.
Click here to start your training to become a Certified Corporate Wellness Coach.
