To be successful, your workplace health and wellbeing strategy will need the support of those around you.
This includes those who can influence the workplace environment such as business owners, managers, team leaders, human resources, and work health and safety representatives.
Your leadership team may be hesitant to commit to workplace health and wellbeing, and your role will be to get them on board.
When you’re trying to engage your leaders, it can help to:
- Recognise that each leader has different values and priorities - some are in full support of workplace health and wellbeing while others may need convincing.
- Speak their language - angle your pitch to appeal to their different values, needs or problems.
- Think about what’s in it for them - is it healthier employees, less injuries, a reaction to a recent workplace event or a desire to be an employer of choice?
- Build a business case - this could be presented in a presentation, proposal, email or business case.
Build a business case
Preparing a business case can help you gain leadership commitment and internal support for a workplace health and wellbeing strategy.
Senior leaders often want to understand how investments they make in their people will improve both employee outcomes and business objectives.
A business case will demonstrate a sound rationale for a workplace health and wellbeing program. The detail and format of the business case will depend on your workplace size, internal structures, and resourcing, but they all have some common elements.
Your business case should:
- outline why action is needed in your workplace, the context of your workforce, and the health and wellbeing needs that are of concern
- incorporate statistics that show the benefits of investing in healthy workplaces
- show how your health and wellbeing strategy aligns to your workplace’s goals
- identify the main reasons to invest
- request support for the program management cycle and resource allocation
- make recommendations for next steps.
We’ve developed a business case proposal template (DOCX, 569.7 KB) to help you prepare your business case and gain support from leadership and senior managers. It includes all the relevant statistics and facts related to workplace health and wellbeing.