How to Budget for Companies to Embark on a Healthy Living Lifestyle

Companies budgeting to encourage a healthy lifestyle can positively impact employees.

Creating a budget for your company to incorporate a healthy living lifestyle for its employees is feasible and can be done at little to no cost to the company. For a company, healthy living lifestyles is part of corporate wellness. As a return on investment, identifying cost savings can help to justify the investment made in one of your most valuable resources, your employees.

Instructions

1. Obtain benchmark data on corporate health promotion return on investments (ROI) to use as a guideline. Your company's financial officers often want to see how such programs will be justified.

2. Consider developing a healthy living lifestyle program that is budget-neutral. An effective way to introduce health promotion is to organize fitness during lunch walking sessions.

3. Review your company's mission and vision, financial position, as well as its short- and long-term goals. This can help you clearly explain how embarking on a healthy living lifestyle can support the company's goals.

4. Identify hidden funding sources. For example, establish a wellness committee and survey members to find out how much employees are willing to contribute, including additional work hours that would be used for an onsite class time.

5. 

   Budgeting helps ensure healthy program success.

   Prepare a budget for your wellness program. Although you are drafting a budget-neutral program, identifying where funds are allocated is a necessary step towards program success.

6. Decide on whether you will create a top-down health promotion budget or a zero-based wellness budget. Top-down budgets are based on specific dollar amounts which serve as the limit for operating your wellness program. Zero-based budgets are based on itemized lists of the healthy living features you want and the associated cost.

7. Organize your finances according to income and expenses. Knowing the actual money available is necessary in the planning process.

8. Create little or no cost ways to support your health program ideas. Research local shops and vendors that promote healthy living, such as a smoothie shop, and have them do an onsite nutrition session.

9. Document your ideas and progress as you move through the budget process. Keeping track of the information that you have gathered will help produce an effective program and one that is within budget.

Tips & Warnings

• On average it takes at least 18 months from embarking on a healthy living lifestyle promotion program before seeing results in your healthcare plan bottom line.

• Budget-neutral means initially spending more money but result in other savings such as reduce time off from work illness.

References

• CDC's LEAN Works!: Identify Program Budget
• The Wellness Councils of America: The Wellness Budget