Budget season is here, and if you’re in People & Culture, you already know what’s coming. The finance team wants to cut costs, leadership wants to grow revenue, and somehow the people budget is always the first cab off the rank for scrutiny. Here’s how to instigate a conversation that keeps strong teams together, especially as we unfurl the impact of AI.

First, change the narrative around “soft” spending

Culture initiatives, learning and development programs, and wellbeing benefits are often labelled as “nice to haves” when the spreadsheets come out. And when framed this way, removing them will cost more than agencies realise. When P&C investment gets slashed, the consequences don’t show up immediately. They show up six months later when your best people quietly start looking elsewhere, when new hires take twice as long to onboard, and when your remaining team is running on fumes trying to cover the gaps. Things feel different, the impact is almost subliminal. The case for people investment is strong if those initiatives are authentically linked to who you are as an agency – your values, the ethos and the vibe that makes your agency unique.

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Translate culture into currency

The most powerful thing a P&C professional can do in a budget conversation is connect people spending to business outcomes. Not necessarily in a vague, “our people are our greatest asset” way but in a specific, dollar-and-cents way.

Start with turnover. Work with Finance in draft stages of the budget to work out the average cost of replacing an employee at each level or band (which currently sits somewhere between 50% and 200% of their annual salary when you factor in recruitment fees, lost productivity, onboarding time and the institutional knowledge that walks out the door with them). If your agency loses just three mid-level people in a year, you’re potentially looking at a six-figure cost that never appears on any budget line because it’s absorbed invisibly across departments. When you can put that number in front of Finance, the conversation shifts. Suddenly the L&D program that costs $20K a year looks like a very reasonable retention strategy.

Explore which benefits and initiatives your team respond to the most, evaluate which of those align the most to the values you uphold as an agency and the values you’d like to see demonstrated in your team.

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Make the ROI case for each pillar

Different types of people investment need different framings, so it helps to build a mini business case for each one:

Learning & Development: Upskilling existing staff is significantly cheaper than hiring externally for new capabilities. If your agency is trying to build skills in a particular area, show the cost comparison between an internal L&D investment versus a new hire or a contractor. Bonus points if you’ve already got someone earmarked that is keen as mustard to develop professionally in that area or discipline, for budget season talks.

Wellbeing programs: Absenteeism and presenteeism (showing up but not functioning at full capacity) both have measurable costs. Agencies with structured wellbeing programs consistently report lower sick leave rates. If you can pull your agency’s sick leave data and benchmark it against industry averages, you’ve got a compelling data point.

Culture initiatives: These are trickier to quantify, but engagement scores and eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) have been shown to correlate with productivity and retention. If you’re running regular pulse surveys, use that data. If you’re not, that’s actually a great starting point for a low-cost, high-value P&C initiative.

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Reframe the risk

One of the most underused tactics in P&C budget conversations is risk framing. Finance teams are wired to think about risk, so use that to your advantage. Instead of asking for investment in a new initiative, present the risk of not investing. What’s the probability of losing a key person if development opportunities dry up? What happens to your upcoming pitch schedule if two people leave at once? What does it cost to run a recruitment process in a candidate-short market? When you frame people investment as risk mitigation rather than a discretionary spend, it lands very differently in a budget conversation.

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Finally, come to the table prepared

The agencies where P&C has a real seat at the budget table are the ones where the people function shows up with data, not just passion. Before your next budget meeting, pull together your turnover rate for the past 12 months, your average time-to-hire, your engagement scores and your training spend per head. Compare what you find against industry benchmarks where you can. Be honest about what works, what strengthens your team and what your notable, historical, investment outcomes in people have been.

Then build a simple one-pager that connects your proposed people investment to the business outcomes leadership cares about most: retention, productivity, revenue growth and risk reduction. You already know your people are worth investing in. Now it’s time to make sure everyone else in that budget meeting knows it too.