The resignations you avoid.
The burnout you catch early.
The conflicts you resolve before they escalate.
Much of the value that employee benefits, and HR teams in general, bring is preventative. So when the time comes to show that tangible value to business leadership, it can be a challenge.
To shift the narrative when presenting to a C-Suite, including a CFO, we must reframe our investments. Cost-saving benefits are not "perks" but strategic tools for risk mitigation and cost containment. Here's how to elevate your strategy—and your reputation—from reactive to proactive.
The financial impact of HR’s "quiet wins"
In finance, value is loud—a closed deal or a shipped product. In HR, value is quiet—the absence of noise. These "quiet wins" are the backbone of stability but are hard to measure without a strategy. Early intervention prevents costs that can quickly spiral.
For example, untreated depression raises health costs by 149%. Without timely mental health support, everyday stress can escalate into costly claims, absenteeism, or disability. Cost-saving benefits act as a firewall, preventing higher costs like productivity loss and turnover expenses.
High turnover not only drains budgets but also disrupts morale and institutional knowledge. Benefits that support employees, such as child care, stress management, or navigating health challenges, help retain talent and foster stability. These aren’t soft metrics; they’re measurable, controllable costs through proactive investment.
What cost-saving benefits actually look like
To make this concept concrete for your CFO, you need to move beyond generalities. You need to point to specific interventions that yield measurable returns. Here is what cost-saving benefits look like in practice within mental health.
Fast access to support with measurable ROI
What it is: A mental health solution that connects employees to care in days, not weeks, while using data to match them with the right provider.
What it prevents: Escalating medical claims, extended leaves of absence (LOA), and presenteeism (employees working but not productive).
What HR can track: Proven reductions in time-to-appointment, measurable improvements in functional recovery scores, and a verifiable return on investment through cost savings and increased productivity.
Proactive manager training
What it is: Equipping managers to spot the early signs of burnout and giving them the language to have supportive conversations.
What it prevents: Regrettable attrition and team instability. People often leave managers, not companies. A supported manager retains their team.
What HR can track: Retention rates by manager and "manager effectiveness" scores from engagement surveys.
Early LOA identification and support
What it is: A system to identify teams or roles with high rates of unplanned leave and intervening with targeted support before a leave request is filed.
What it prevents: The operational disruption of unplanned absences and the cost of temporary backfills.
What HR can track: Year-over-year trends in unplanned LOA incidence and duration.
Why traditional ROI metrics undervalue HR’s impact
The challenge with proving HR’s value isn't that the value doesn't exist. It is that they are often judged on lagging indicators.
Attrition is a lagging metric. By the time you measure it, the employee is already gone. The cost has already been incurred. If you only report on what has already happened, you will always be seen as reactive.
To prove you are a strategic partner, you need to introduce the concept of a CFO-ready HR Value Scorecard. This approach moves the conversation from "what happened?" to "what are we preventing?"
A strong scorecard connects four elements:
- Business outcomes: The high-level goals the C-suite cares about (e.g., operational continuity, customer retention).
- Leading indicators: The early warning signals that predict those outcomes (e.g., unplanned absence trends, employee thriving scores).
- Interventions: The specific cost-saving benefits or programs you are deploying to move the needle.
- ROI hypothesis: What you expect to happen as a result.
Speaking a CFO's language
You have the data. You have the right programs. Now you need the right language.
When presenting to finance, drop the HR jargon. Avoid talking about "engagement" or "happiness" in isolation. Instead, use the language of the C-suite: risk mitigation, trend control, and workforce stability.
- Instead of: "We need this mental health tool because our people are stressed."
- Try: "We are seeing a correlation between high stress levels and unplanned leaves in our sales division. This represents a significant operational risk. By investing in earlier access to care, we aim to mitigate this risk and protect revenue continuity."
- Instead of: "We want to improve our benefits package to be competitive."
- Try: "To address rising healthcare costs, we need to invest in solutions that drive meaningful results. An enhanced EAP offers proven ROI by improving employee wellbeing, reducing absenteeism, and lowering overall healthcare spend through early intervention and preventative care."
Three tips to help you re-position HR for its cost-saving benefits:
- Identify the business priority: Ask your finance partner what top three risks the CEO is worried about this year.
- Map benefits to risks: Draw a direct line between your cost-saving benefits and those risks. (e.g., Mental health support maps to productivity and retention).
- Propose with a hypothesis: Never ask for budget without stating what you expect to change. "We expect this investment to reduce [risk metric] by [X]%."
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