The impact of an employee wellbeing programme on return on investment in terms of absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning

Abstract

Employee wellbeing programmes are adding value to corporate businesses in South Africa (Keet, 2009:iv). This value is mainly described in the sense of return on investment. Return on investment is viewed as the ratio in terms of the programme profits with regards to the invested capital in the programme (Cascio, 2000:127). The focus of this study was to determine the impact of an employee wellbeing programme on return on investment in terms of absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning within a South African context. A research gap exists in current South African research to understand the impact of employee wellbeing programmes on return on investment in terms of absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning (Keet, 2009:26). This study attempted to theoretically contextualise and conceptualise employee wellbeing programmes with specific emphasis on return on investment in corporate businesses, as well as absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning in the workplace. An employee wellbeing programme was investigated to determine the impact on return on investment in terms of absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning. Quantitative data was collected through making use of indexes from employees who have made use of an employee wellbeing programme for a specific corporate client in South Africa. The indexes were set up to collect data on absenteeism and employee psychosocial functioning. Valuable conclusions emanated from the findings of this research study. A reduction of 32.08% in absenteeism was recorded for respondents who were absent after employee wellbeing programme interventions were introduced. A further valuable finding that emanated of this research study was that an improvement of 6.92% within the post-employee psychosocial functioning scores occurred after employee wellbeing programme interventions were introduced to the respondents. The study was also concluded with some useful and relevant recommendations from the information collected on how to determine the impact of employee wellbeing programmes on return on investment. One of the recommendations drawn from the findings of this research study was that future research studies on return on investment should be conducted over a minimum period of three years to derive even more accurate results. Another recommendation was that employers and employee wellbeing programme service providers should ensure that employee psychosocial functioning is measured as a standard indicator within employee wellbeing programmes across South Africa.