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Michael Booth writes in CFO Magazine that wellness programs may be unsuccessful if they fail to determine the program's benchmarks, goals, and vision.

“While you can’t place a dollar value on personal well-being, there are documented costs associated with absenteeism, insurance claims, and turnover from employee disengagement and burnout. A properly designed and implemented wellness programs addresses and reduces many of these high-cost line items for corporations and therefore may yield a positive ROI.”

“Once you get the right metrics in place, research shows that there is a bottom-line benefit to be gained from properly implementing a wellness culture. In the study Workplace Wellness Programs Can Generate Savings conducted by professors at Harvard University, the cost/benefits ratio showed the savings from health promotion programs are much greater than their cost. Medical cost savings averaged $3.27 per dollar invested, and absenteeism savings averaged $2.73 per dollar invested.”

“And companies that focus on implementing preventative wellness programs can save as much as $4.50 for every dollar invested. Such was true in a case study of the health management program at Citibank. Furthermore, companies that were identified in a Towers Watson study as ‘highly effective' in rolling out wellness programs are saving up to $1,600 per employee per year in health-care costs.”

The article offers a few guidelines that every organization should follow when creating a wellness program.