What’s the ROI of Investing in Employee Wellbeing Training?
Wellbeing training rarely appears as a single figure on a P&L, which makes it one of the easiest budget lines to question and one of the hardest to defend. That's changing. Psychosocial safety is now a legal WHS obligation in every Australian state and territory, and the cost of leaving it unmanaged is becoming harder to ignore.
This is a return you bank before you spend a dollar on delivery. Every resignation avoided, sick day not taken and claim not lodged is a return on investment, and the numbers add up faster than most budget holders expect.
What is the ROI of employee wellbeing training?
The ROI of employee wellbeing training is typically measured by comparing the cost of the program against reductions in turnover, absenteeism and workers' compensation claims, plus gains in productivity and engagement. Research consistently finds a positive return: PwC's Australian study for beyondblue found businesses see an average return of $2.30 for every $1 invested in effective workplace mental health initiatives, rising to $5.70 in higher-risk industries like mining. For most Australian employers, the clearest and fastest-to-quantify return comes from avoided cost: fewer resignations, fewer sick days and fewer psychological injury claims.
The cost of doing nothing
Before you can make the case for investing, it helps to know what inaction is already costing. These are the numbers that tend to be invisible on a budget spreadsheet but very visible on a P&L over a full year.
Turnover
Replacing an employee typically costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary once recruitment, onboarding and lost productivity are factored in, according to SHRM research. For a $65,000 role, that's $32,500 to $130,000 per departure. Psychological safety is a proven lever here: McKinsey Health Institute research links strong psychological safety to a 27% reduction in turnover, and Gallup estimates 42% of voluntary turnover is preventable.
Absenteeism
Unplanned absence costs Australian businesses an estimated $33 billion a year, according to Direct Health Solutions' (now Sedgwick) Absence Management Survey. The average direct cost of absence per employee reached $4,025 in 2023, up from $3,395 the year before.
Psychological injury claims
This is where the cost of inaction becomes hardest to ignore. Safe Work Australia data shows the median compensation for a serious mental health claim was $67,400 in 2022–23, more than four times the $16,300 median across all serious claims, with workers off for a median 35.7 weeks compared to 7.4 weeks. In NSW, the average cost of a single psychological injury claim rose from $146,000 in 2019–20 to $288,542 in 2024–25, even though these claims make up just 12% of the state's total workers compensation claims, a small share of claims driving an outsized share of scheme cost. Safe Work Australia separately estimates poor psychosocial safety climate costs Australian employers around $6 billion a year.
The business case for wellbeing training
Set against those costs, the return side of the ledger looks like this:
Productivity: McKinsey Health Institute research found employees with high wellbeing and longer tenure show 12–30% higher output than newer, less engaged workers.
Engagement: Employees who feel genuinely supported by their employer's wellbeing efforts are three times more likely to be fully engaged at work. Disengagement is expensive: Gallup puts the global cost of low engagement at roughly US$10 trillion in lost productivity each year.
Claims reduction: A meta-evaluation of workplace health promotion programs published in the American Journal of Health Promotion found average reductions of around 25% in sick leave, health costs, and workers' compensation and disability costs.
How to calculate ROI on wellbeing training
Cost of the program: delivery, facilitator time, and the value of staff hours out of role.
Avoided cost: apply your organisation's current turnover, absenteeism and claims figures against the reduction rates cited above.
Productivity gain: an estimate based on the engagement or output improvements most relevant to your workforce.
ROI = (avoided cost + productivity gain − program cost) ÷ program cost
The bottom line
The cost of not investing in employee wellbeing training isn't hypothetical. It's already reflected in your turnover, absenteeism and claims data. The question for HR leaders isn't really whether wellbeing training pays for itself. It's whether you can afford to keep measuring it as a cost instead of a return.
This is the same thinking behind Be Buoyant: Better Learning's psychosocial safety and resilience program, built to give organisations a practical, defensible way to act on this business case rather than just make it.
Contact Better Learning for practical workplace wellbeing tools and frameworks.
