What is a corporate wellbeing programme?

An employer-funded service combining mental, physical, financial and social health support for staff. MEM Academy pairs coach-led corporate fitness sessions with a self-serve wellbeing curriculum and ESG/SROI reporting so the spend is provable at year-end.

How much does it cost?

Programmes start at a fixed per-seat monthly fee. A 100-person pilot typically lands between £6 and £14 per seat per month depending on coach hours, on-site cadence and reporting depth.

How quickly can we launch?

Two to four weeks from contract — Week 1 diagnostic, Week 2 design, Week 3 launch comms, Week 4 first sessions delivered. First board report at end of Q1.

What ESG evidence do we get back?

A quarterly board-ready report with workforce KPIs (absence, wellbeing score, participation) plus a verified SROI figure showing social value per £1 spent — suitable for the Social-S section of your annual report.

03 — Objection Handling

Audience: AEs and Account Managers Use: Pattern library. Don't memorise verbatim — internalise the structure: acknowledge → reframe → evidence → close.

1. "It's too expensive."

Acknowledge: "I get it — wellbeing budgets are tight and the market is full of cheaper-looking options." Reframe: "The comparison isn't us vs a £5k workshop — it's us vs the cost of doing nothing. CIPD pegs turnover at ~£30k per frontline manager; one prevented exit pays for the engagement." Evidence: Show Sprint 5 §07 SROI model. Typical Row 1 ratio. Close: "What's the budget you're working with — and is the constraint the total, or the cost per head?"

2. "We already have an EAP."

Acknowledge: "Most clients we work with do." Reframe: "EAPs are reactive and individual — someone in crisis calls a number. We're proactive and population-level — we build manager capability so fewer people reach crisis in the first place. They complement, they don't replace." Evidence: EAP utilisation rates typically 4-8%; our cohort engagement is 70%+. Close: "What's your current EAP utilisation? And what's it telling you about what's not being caught early enough?"

3. "Can you just deliver the workshop without the coaching?"

Acknowledge: "It's the most common ask, and I want to be straight with you." Reframe: "Workshops alone don't change behaviour. We've tried it. Six weeks later participants remember the model but haven't applied it. Coaching is what makes the workshop pay back." Evidence: Sprint 5 §03 anti-patterns. Our own data on standalone workshop drop-off. Close: "If budget is the constraint, we can run a smaller cohort properly rather than a bigger cohort badly. Worth exploring?"

4. "Our managers don't have time for fortnightly coaching."

Acknowledge: "It's a real constraint." Reframe: "45 minutes a fortnight is less than the time spent dealing with the consequences of conversations not had. We schedule around their calendar, not the other way around." Evidence: Average manager spends ~5 hours/week on people issues per Gallup; we ask for ~1.5 hours over a fortnight. Close: "Would it help if I shared how we work with [similar org] to fit coaching into shift patterns?"

5. "How do we know it actually works?"

Acknowledge: "Right question — most wellbeing spend is unmeasured." Reframe: "We measure three things: engagement (did they show up?), behaviour (did they do anything different?), and modelled impact (what did that change save?). All three sit on a dashboard you see live, not in a PDF at the end." Evidence: Sprint 5 §04 dashboard spec. Sprint 5 §07 audit trail. Close: "Would a 15-minute dashboard demo before scoping help your decision?"

6. "Can you guarantee the SROI ratio?"

Acknowledge: "I won't guarantee an outcome ratio — anyone who does is selling you something they can't deliver." Reframe: "What we guarantee is the delivery quality — attendance thresholds, coaching utilisation, response rates. Those are in the SoW. The SROI is calculated transparently from your cohort's actual engagement, with the working shown." Evidence: Sprint 5 §07 confidence factor; Sprint 6 §07 SoW commitments. Close: "Is there a specific risk you're trying to manage? That'll help me shape what we commit to."

7. "We need this rolled out across all sites in 4 weeks."

Acknowledge: "I understand the urgency." Reframe: "Our onboarding is 4 weeks before the engagement starts — that's what makes Week 1 land. Compressing it means coach matching gets sloppy, exec sponsor email gets generic, attendance drops. You'd get a worse outcome to hit a date." Evidence: Sprint 3 §01 onboarding playbook. Close: "Can we phase it — start with cohort A in 8 weeks, then B and C in waves? Same date for full coverage, much higher quality."

8. "Procurement is going to take 6 months."

Acknowledge: "That's normal for orgs your size." Reframe: "Two things help: one, we can run a paid pilot under a simple SoW while procurement runs in parallel. Two, we're already on [framework, e.g. CCS DPS for L&D] — that can shortcut the process if it applies." Evidence: Framework memberships list, prior pilot SoW examples. Close: "Who in procurement should I be talking to in parallel, so we're not duplicating effort?"

9. "Our line managers want to see who attended."

Acknowledge: "It's a reasonable instinct from a line management point of view." Reframe: "We don't share individual attendance with managers — and that's a feature, not a constraint. The moment participants think their manager is checking, the candour drops, the pulses lie, and your data becomes worthless. Aggregate attendance goes to the HR sponsor; managers get the pocket card and the Week 11 debrief." Evidence: Sprint 5 §04 anonymisation rules; Sprint 1 §03 manager pocket card. Close: "Would walking your CPO through that logic make this easier to sign off?"

10. "We had a bad experience with [competitor]. How are you different?"

Acknowledge: "What specifically didn't work?" — listen, don't rush to differentiate. Reframe (after they answer): "Two of the three things you mentioned are exactly what our model is built to fix: [restate using their language]." Evidence: Walk through the specific Sprint 1-5 asset that addresses each pain point. Close: "What would you need to see in a proposal to trust this would be different?"

11. "Can you white-label it / let us deliver it internally?"

Acknowledge: "Asked a lot — and the honest answer is no." Reframe: "Our model relies on independent coaches participants can disclose to without career risk. The moment delivery is internal, candour drops. It's the same reason organisations don't run their own EAPs." Evidence: — Close: "If the goal is internal capability long-term, our Week 11 manager debrief is the transfer mechanism. Want me to walk you through it?"

12. "We just want one workshop to tick the ESG box."

Acknowledge: "Honest answer — we're not the right provider for that." Reframe: "A tick-box workshop won't show up in your SROI data and won't change anything. If that's the ask, [refer competitor] does it well and cheaper. If you'd be open to a smaller cohort doing it properly so your ESG report has substance, that's our conversation." Evidence: ICP §01 disqualify list. Close: "Which version of this is closer to what your board actually wants?"

When to walk away mid-objection

If, after one full acknowledge → reframe → evidence → close cycle, the buyer is still:

Insisting on individual manager visibility
Demanding SROI guarantees
Demanding sub-floor pricing (§04)
Compressing onboarding below 4 weeks

…stop selling. Say: "I don't think we're going to align on this one. Let me suggest [referral]. If anything changes, my door is open." Walking earns more long-term deals than bending.