We Don’t Estimate ROI. We Model It.
Employers considering an onsite wellness program deserve more than a rule-of-thumb multiplier. Before we recommend a program, COR Wellness builds a company-specific financial model using your workforce data, your current health plan performance, and recognized third-party benchmarking research. This ensures the return we project is grounded in your numbers, not industry averages alone.
This is the same analysis behind every proposal we bring to a self-insured employer, and it’s the foundation for the ongoing reporting we provide once a program is live.
The Five Areas Where Wellness Programs Create Financial Return
Our model evaluates opportunity across five cost categories that respond to onsite chiropractic care, coaching, and program management. Each category is sized individually for your organization, then rolled up into a single opportunity figure specific to your workforce.
The Five Cost Categories
1
Health & Pharmacy Claims: Reduced utilization and healthier claims trends over time.
2
Workplace Injury & Workers’ Compensation: Fewer musculoskeletal injuries, lower premium exposure, faster case resolution.
3
Absenteeism: Fewer unplanned absences and reduced PTO utilization tied to pain, fatigue, and chronic health issues.
4
Recruiting & Retention: Lower voluntary turnover and reduced cost-per-hire when employees feel supported at work.
5
Productivity: The largest and most often overlooked category, which is the compounding value of a healthier, more present workforce.
Built From Your Data, Benchmarked Against the Market
We start with your organization’s actual profile: headcount, workforce composition (onsite vs. remote, salaried vs. shift), age distribution, health plan structure and cost, workers’ compensation experience, turnover, and absenteeism data. Where you don’t have a data point readily available, we apply established third-party benchmarks, drawing on sources such as national health-cost benchmarking research, Harvard Business Review’s published research on employee health and productivity, and industry-standard turnover and workers’ compensation cost studies so every projection is defensible, not speculative.
This produces a Total Opportunity figure: the full financial exposure across all five categories if nothing changes.
Two Layers of Return: Opportunity vs. Realistic Capture
A common mistake in wellness ROI claims is presenting total opportunity as if it’s guaranteed savings. We don’t do that.
Our model separates the total opportunity your organization has from the realistic value COR Wellness is likely to capture, based on engagement levels, the mix of high-confidence (“hard”) versus directional (“soft”) savings, and your program’s phase-in timeline. This is what separates a credible ROI projection from a sales projection, and it’s why our numbers hold up under HR and finance scrutiny.
Engagement Builds Over Time — So Does Return
Wellness ROI isn’t a light switch. Our model reflects a realistic engagement ramp: return in the first year of a program is meaningfully lower than in year two, as trust builds, participation grows, and coaching relationships mature. We typically model and report against a 24-month horizon, giving you both a near-term return figure and a fuller picture of long-term impact expressed as a return multiple (return generated per dollar invested) alongside the net dollar impact to your bottom line.
We Track Outcomes, Not Just Projections
The ROI model doesn’t stop at a proposal. Once a program is live, we track real employee health journeys. These consist of individualized coaching and care plans with defined milestones, quarterly check-ins, and formal six-month re-evaluations. This way, program impact can be measured against real behavior change, not just projected savings. This is also where your HIPAA-compliant reporting comes in: aggregate, de-identified progress data rolls up into the same reporting framework used to validate your ROI over time.
Learn more: Wellness Program Management →
Learn more: HIPAA-Compliant Health Reporting →
What You Get
For employers evaluating a program, our Total Health ROI Assessment delivers:
- A company-specific two-year opportunity and return projection
- A category-by-category breakdown of where savings are expected to come from
- A realistic, phased engagement and capture timeline
- A benchmark comparison against your industry and workforce profile
This becomes the foundation for your program design and the baseline we report against once your program is underway.