Many businesses struggle with high insurance premiums, retaining employees, increasing morale or helping their staff stay healthy. To combat these problems, companies are increasingly turning to employee wellness programs. A wellness program is designed to improve the overall health of your staff, ensuring that they are better suited to perform at their best. Before you start a program, you will need to write a proposal to convince your managers that it is needed and that it will have positive effects on the bottom line.

Write a short proposal summary that gives a basic overview of the problem, the proposed wellness program and the expected results. Use your most compelling facts or anecdotes to catch and retain the attention of readers. Keep your summary at one to three paragraphs, and choose your words carefully; often, the summary is the deciding factor on whether a proposal moves forward or is rejected.

Start the body of the proposal with a statement of the problem. Expand on the problem your company has with employees who are not in the best of health, giving specific examples to back up your claim: insurance claims, low employee morale, lack of motivation or a high number of sick days.

Describe your proposed wellness program. Let the reviewers know exactly how you propose to carry out the plan. Talk about the time that would be required, how you will announce the program, what areas of health and wellness the program will address, what rewards will be offered and how you will motivate employees to join. Give an expected schedule, lay out contest ideas and explain how you will record the data for each employee who participates.

Explain how a wellness program would benefit employees. Include specific objectives that you hope to achieve, such as fewer sick days or higher employee satisfaction. Cite research that supports your reasons, using exact numbers wherever possible; you can also use case studies from other companies to demonstrate the positive effects of healthy employees.

Lay out the financial requirements of the plan. Make a line-item analysis of the budget for your wellness program, including the time of company employees, the cost of hiring a coach or medical professional and the amount of money you will need for rewards or program costs. Consider gym memberships, adding facilities for health reasons, or hiring a counselor to work with employees on addressing emotional issues that impede their work.

Show how you will evaluate the plan at regular intervals to make sure it is having a positive impact on the company. Lay out strategies that might include polling employees, monitoring a change in sick days, or checking on the impact on sales and profits. You might also mention factors that are less easily quantifiable, like morale and general office atmosphere.