Many people have asked me how they can get their company to pay for the Designing Your Life (DYL) workshop fee. Having been a talent executive for over 25 years, I can tell you it’s actually pretty easy once you share the benefits with your manager and HR. Here are three areas to address:
1. Career Development
Every organization is focused on engaging and retaining their best talent.
Companies want you to be engaged, and one of the top drivers of engagement is career development. DYL will give you the tools to design the work you want to do, help you set career goals and create three “Odyssey Plans” that explore potential paths for your future. Career is an essential part of life design. In fact, Google saw this connection and brought the DYL program in house to complement their career and professional development initiatives.
2. Wellness
The other big priority in today’s organizations is wellness. Many of our jobs are sedentary. Obesity is on the rise. Workplace stress and long hours plague workers. So, companies are responding by giving employees “wellness benefits” to help them stay healthy and productive. For example, LinkedIn gives employees a wellness budget they can use for gym memberships, yoga, meditation, and you guessed it, Designing Your Life workshops.
Don’t hesitate to sell DYL as an investment in your well-being. Look at our agenda. We talk about energy, balance, happiness, and the meaning of work and life for you, and incorporate mindful moments of meditation and reflection, practices that have been proven to decrease stress and increase self-knowledge.
3. Diversity
Every organization is committed to providing an inclusive workplace where differences are valued. It can be isolating and draining to be in a non-dominant group. To provide support, many companies will reimburse women and minorities for participating in a professional association, network, or workshop that helps them address the challenges of being in a minority position. A DYL participant shared that she, “…learned so much from the community of women in this program. I got great ideas, lessons from real world experience, and most of all empathy for my issues so I could get unstuck and move forward.”
We’re hearing more and more participants tell us that their companies are paying their workshop fees. It’s important to ask for the investment in you. If you don’t ask, you can’t get a “Yes!”
