Measuring what matters: Proving the ROI of wellbeing programmes
If you are responsible for people, culture or performance, you probably feel the cost of poor wellbeing long before you see it in a spreadsheet.
The data backs that feeling up.
Recent UK analysis suggests that poor mental health costs employers around £51 billion a year, with presenteeism (people struggling on while unwell) the biggest contributor.
HSE figures show that tens of millions of working days are lost each year to work-related ill health and injury, with stress, depression and anxiety dominating the picture.
The good news? Multiple reviews now estimate that for every £1 invested in workplace mental health and wellbeing, employers see an average return of around £4–£5 in productivity, reduced absence and lower turnover.
This article sits inside Health and wellbeing in the corporate world: The Human Leader playbook and focuses on a practical question:
How do you measure what matters so you can prove, not just hope, that your wellbeing programmes are working?
A quick invitation before we dive in
If you are trying to connect wellbeing decisions to numbers your board will respect, you do not have to do that alone.
The Human Leader Workshop is designed to sit inside your wellbeing and leadership strategy, giving managers practical tools and giving you a clear, measurable intervention to include in your ROI story.
1. Why “show me the ROI” is a fair question
For years, wellbeing has sometimes been sold on heart and hope alone. That is shifting.
With poor mental health costing UK employers around £51 billion a year, and millions of days lost to work-related stress, depression and anxiety, leaders are right to ask:
“What difference are our programmes actually making?”
“Where should we invest next?”
“How do we know this is working for our people, not just in theory?”
At the same time, investors, regulators and bodies like WHO are increasingly clear: mental health at work is a material business issue, not just a nice-to-have.
That is why we treat measurement as a thread through this whole cluster, especially in:
Wellbeing as a business strategy: Embedding health into leadership
From policy to practice: Bringing ISO 45003 to life in your culture
This article gives you a simple, human framework for measuring ROI, without turning people into spreadsheets.
2. Start with the cost of doing nothing
Before you prove the value of wellbeing programmes, show the cost of inaction.
Use three basic buckets:
Absence
Days lost to stress, depression, anxiety and musculoskeletal issues.
HSE data is a useful benchmark: tens of millions of days lost nationally, with mental health a major driver.
Presenteeism
People at work but functioning below capacity due to stress or poor health.
Deloitte’s analysis suggests this is the largest single cost in poor mental health, significantly outweighing absence alone.
Turnover and performance risks
Turnover in key roles, “regretted leavers”, early retirements on health grounds.
Error rates, near misses, customer complaints linked to fatigue and overload.
Even simple estimates based on your own data, backed by national figures, quickly show that you are already spending money on mental health – just in unplanned ways.
We set this context more fully in Wellbeing as a business strategy: Embedding health into leadership.
3. What counts as ROI in wellbeing?
Traditional ROI looks like:
“We spent X, we saved or gained Y.”
For wellbeing, it helps to widen that slightly and measure three layers:
People outcomes – how people feel and function.
Process outcomes – how work is done.
Performance outcomes – what that does to your numbers.
3.1 People outcomes
These are direct signals from your workforce:
Stress and burnout scores in engagement surveys.
Psychological safety scores at team level.
Self-rated wellbeing, energy and sense of connection.
Across this cluster, we repeatedly return to psychological safety, especially in Trust as your competitive edge: The science of psychological safety and Psychological safety in meetings: From silent screens to real dialogue, because it is such a powerful predictor of both wellbeing and performance.
3.2 Process outcomes
These track how work is actually happening:
Meeting load, focus time, hybrid patterns – see Hybrid teams without burnout: Designing sustainable work rhythms.
Uptake and usage of tools like breathwork and somatic resets – see Breathe, reset, reconnect: Short breathwork practices for work and Qi Gong in the boardroom: Ancient practice for modern resilience.
Participation in peer support, coaching and Human Leader-style workshops.
These “behavioural” metrics show whether your programmes are becoming part of daily life, not just one-off events.
3.3 Performance outcomes
Finally, you link these to:
Reduced absence and turnover in pilot groups.
Improved engagement and retention scores.
Enhanced productivity indicators (where you can measure them honestly).
Global and UK analyses suggest that when organisations take a structured, proactive approach to workplace mental health, they tend to see average returns of £4–£5 per £1 invested, with even higher ROI for preventative, whole-organisation programmes.
Your goal is not to mirror those exact numbers, but to show a clear line from investment → behaviour change → healthier, more sustainable performance.
Turn Human Leader into a measurable pilot
If you want a wellbeing intervention that clearly connects to leadership behaviour, hybrid life and nervous-system skills, The Human Leader Workshop is a strong candidate for a measurable pilot.
You can track:
Pre/post psychological safety and burnout scores in participating teams.
Changes in meeting quality, hybrid rhythms and check-in practices.
Absence and turnover trends over the following 6–12 months.
That gives you a very concrete “before and after” story, not just another wellbeing activity.
4. A simple framework: 6 steps to measuring ROI
Here is a practical sequence you can use for any wellbeing programme – especially Human Leader-style initiatives.
Step 1: Define the problem in business language
Avoid vague goals like “improve wellbeing”. Instead, write:
“Reduce stress-related absence in X function by 15% over 12 months.”
“Improve psychological safety scores in Y teams by 10 points.”
“Cut regretted turnover in Z roles by 20%.”
Anchor these in your wider strategy, as in Wellbeing as a business strategy: Embedding health into leadership and Human-centred leadership in the age of AI.
Step 2: Choose your indicators
Pick 3–5 metrics, mixing people, process and performance:
People: burnout scores, loneliness / connection, psychological safety.
Process: hybrid rhythm changes, use of breathwork and Qi Gong resets, frequency of one-to-ones.
Performance: absence, turnover, key quality or productivity measures.
This keeps things focused and avoids overwhelming yourself with data.
Step 3: Establish a baseline
Before you roll anything out:
Capture current data for your chosen metrics.
If possible, identify a comparison group not yet exposed to the programme.
This is where you quietly answer the question: “What happens if we do nothing?”
Step 4: Implement a clearly defined intervention
For example, a Human Leader pilot might combine:
The Human Leader Workshop for managers.
Follow-up sessions using Leading with nervous system awareness: Somatic skills for modern managers.
Somatic tools from Breath, movement and focus: A somatic toolkit for corporate wellbeing champions.
Hybrid design tweaks from Rehumanising the workplace for hybrid teams.
Because you know exactly what is in the “package”, you can tell a clearer story about what is driving any changes.
Step 5: Measure at sensible intervals
Avoid “we did a workshop and checked a week later”.
Instead:
Re-measure survey metrics at 3, 6 and 12 months.
Track absence and turnover over at least one full annual cycle.
Capture simple stories: “We changed X and this happened.”
This longer view is especially important for culture-based programmes like Human Leader, which aim to shift behaviour, not just mood.
Step 6: Tell a human and financial story
Finally, bring it all together:
“We invested £X in these programmes in Y teams.”
“In 12 months, we saw a Z% drop in stress-related absence and a Q-point rise in psychological safety, compared to the baseline and comparison group.”
“That translates to £A saved or value created, plus qualitative benefits like better decision-making and fewer escalations.”
Link this back to your duty of care and ISO 45003 obligations through From policy to practice: Bringing ISO 45003 to life in your culture.
5. Common pitfalls – and how to avoid them
Pitfall 1: Counting only what is easy
If you focus only on sick days, you miss:
Presenteeism, which often costs more than absence.
The “near misses” you avoided through calmer, more present leadership.
Balance hard numbers with good-quality qualitative data.
Pitfall 2: Treating wellbeing as separate from leadership
If your wellbeing programmes sit over here and your leadership framework sits over there, you will struggle to prove sustained impact.
That is why so many articles in this cluster – from Trust as your competitive edge: The science of psychological safety to HR and L&D as human leaders: Equipping culture shapers for the future of work – explicitly tie wellbeing to how leaders behave.
Pitfall 3: Forgetting the nervous system
Some programmes focus heavily on policies and posters but ignore the body.
When people’s nervous systems are stuck in fight, flight or freeze, they:
Communicate poorly.
Make narrow, threat-driven decisions.
Burn out faster.
Somatic tools from Breathe, reset, reconnect: Short breathwork practices for work and Qi Gong in the boardroom: Ancient practice for modern resilience give you low-cost, measurable ways to support regulation.
FAQs: Measuring what matters
1. Can you really measure ROI on something as complex as mental health?
Not perfectly – but you can measure it well enough to guide decisions. By focusing on clear objectives, a small set of metrics and defined interventions, you can see patterns over time and make a credible case for what is working.
2. How long before we see a return on wellbeing investment?
Some things shift quickly (for example, psychological safety scores and uptake of new practices). Harder outcomes like absence, turnover and performance usually take 6–12 months to show clearer trends. The key is to treat this as a strategic, long-term investment, not a quick campaign.
3. What should we do if the first pilot doesn’t show dramatic ROI?
Use it as data, not failure. Ask: Did we aim at the right problem? Were leaders supported enough to change behaviour? Did we measure the right things? Sometimes the first run simply reveals where to refine your approach. That is still progress.
4. How does measuring ROI help with ISO 45003 and duty of care?
It shows that you are not only identifying psychosocial risks, but actively testing and improving ways to reduce them. That strengthens your duty-of-care story and helps you prioritise interventions that genuinely protect people.
5. How do we stop wellbeing ROI from becoming cold and transactional?
By holding both truths at once: people deserve care because they are people, and your organisation functions better when they are well. Numbers help secure resources and focus efforts; the human stories remind you why you are doing this at all.
Make your next wellbeing step measurable and meaningful
Measuring the ROI of wellbeing programmes is not about putting a price on people. It is about:
Seeing clearly where pain and cost already live.
Investing wisely in changes that support both humans and performance.
Giving your board, your HR team and your leaders a shared language for what works.
If you would like a flagship intervention that is deeply human and easy to measure, I would be honoured to support you through The Human Leader Workshop – and to help you weave it into the wider Human Leader playbook.
Together, we can move beyond vague “wellbeing awareness” towards measurable, embodied leadership that truly supports your people and your business.
I look forward to connecting with you in my next post.
Until then, be well and keep shining.
Peter. :)
