Building Buy In: Value-Added

After you have identified the why, it’s crucial to identify the benefit or value the program can add to the organization. Managers are inundated with proposals and petitions for “nice-to-have” programs and products that employees are certain they need. If managers invested in every single “nice-to-have” notion, the organization would potentially be broke.

Managers want to see that any investment on their part – whether it’s a dollar investment or a time investment, etc. – will add benefit and value to the organization. There is some data that suggests that – following a tragedy – peer and crisis support programs reduce distress and return employees to “productive” and “functioning” more quickly. Although the data may be dated, there are more than enough qualitative reports demonstrating immediate intervention benefiting employees and the organization.

I attended a “lessons learned” symposium a few years back. The topic was Virginia Tech and the speaker was (then) Corporal of the Virginia State Police Department and the “incident commander” of the Virginia Tech shooting. After the presentation, I introduced myself as a crisis responder with our CISM team. I asked him if there was any crisis support following the shooting and he immediately replied, “no there wasn’t”. He then added that “neglecting” to provide crisis support was the one major mistake that happened at VA Tech. The Corporal shared that nearly 6 months to the day of the shooting, about half the VA Tech police department “walked off” the job and are now pursuing other professions.

Emphasize benefits and “value-added” to the organization

What is the cost of a life in your organization? What is the cost to the agency if one (or some) could no longer produce and perform at an acceptable level? A peer / crisis support program does not have to be presented and / or argued on “moral” grounds – as in – having this program is the “right” thing to do. To achieve “buy-in”, consider presenting numbers and demonstrating that these programs add value (and potential “cost-savings”) to the organization.