The Workplace Wellness Program
Insights Report
2026
Insights drawn from 185 real conversations between HR and benefits leaders and a wellness technology provider, recorded during program evaluation, launch, and operation. The analysis reports what leaders raised, both favorable and unfavorable.
Executive Summary
The pattern that recurs most consistently across this dataset is a gap between the wellness program an organization buys and the one its employees actually use. Nearly every organization here is dealing with some version of it. Those replacing a vendor are already living inside it. Those buying for the first time are trying to avoid it. In both cases, the concern is rarely a specific missing feature — it's a program that exists on paper and goes largely unused.
That gap is the subject of most of this report. Two other patterns cut across it and are worth naming up front. First, the employees who would benefit most from a wellness program are often the hardest to reach, which tends to widen the gap rather than close it. Second, a separate set of findings concerns why some purchases stall before a program ever launches — integration, reporting, and security requirements function as conditions of purchase more often than as preferences, and any one of them can end a deal on its own.
The sections that follow examine this gap from several angles, with the data behind each.
Methodology
Most research on workplace wellness comes from surveys: a fixed set of questions sent to several hundred HR leaders, tallied against predefined categories. Survey respondents tend to answer the way they think they're expected to, which can flatten the specific, situational concerns that actually drive a decision.
This report takes a different approach. It draws on 185 real conversations between HR and benefits leaders and a wellness technology provider, recorded while those leaders were evaluating, launching, or running a program. No leader filled out a questionnaire. The findings reflect what these leaders raised on their own, about their actual program rather than a hypothetical one.
Part One: Programs That Stop Being Used
Section 1 0f 8
Program Adoption & Replacement Trends
These are not buyers casually comparing options. Every organization in this group arrived at an evaluation call because something in their current approach had broken down. Two-thirds already run a formal wellness program and are actively trying to replace it, typically describing it as outdated, inflexible, or no longer suited to a workforce that has grown or changed. The remaining third are formalizing a program for the first time, usually because a manual or spreaor spreadsheet-based process stopped scaling. This concern was raised by 34% of employers in the dataset.
That people on an evaluation call are unhappy with their current situation isn't itself the finding. What matters is what specifically they're unhappy about, which the next section covers. First, here is the shape of this group.
What they're replacing.
Amongst 70.9% organizations whose prior setup was clear enough to classify, the largest group was moving away from another standalone wellness platform, usually calling it outdated or too cumbersome to drive real use. Two roughly equal groups follow: organizations leaving a fully manual or spreadsheet process, and organizations whose tool was bundled into a carrier or broker relationship that got discontinued or restructured. That last category is often not a decision at all — it's a forced search triggered by a vendor discontinuing a product.
Standalone competitor platforms are the single most common thing being replaced — but manual processes and discontinued carrier tools together make up nearly as large a share.
Why they're leaving.
The most common reason for abandoning a prior tool was low engagement and outdated content, followed closely by the administrative burden of manual tracking. Both describe the same thing from different angles: a program that exists formally but has stopped working in practice. Reliability problems and platform rigidity follow as secondary concerns, with cost and reporting quality further down.
The report gets this right: engagement shouldn't be something you try to create after launch. It needs to be designed into the strategy from the start, based on the workforce you're trying to reach and the experience you want them to have.
Low engagement and manual tracking are two sides of the same problem: a program that exists on paper but isn't functioning in practice.
The top reason people leave — engagement — is the subject of the next section.
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Employee Engagement & Participation
Engagement and participation is the fourth-most-raised concern in the dataset, cited by 30% of leaders. What's more interesting than the frequency is the near-even split between two different kinds of people raising it.
Just over half describe a low-engagement problem they're already living inside. They usually arrive with numbers already in hand, and the numbers are often worse than expected — usage in the low single digits, for a program that's fully paid for.
The remainder haven't launched anything yet. Their concern is entirely forward-looking, usually tied to something specific about their own workforce: an older population, a dispersed or remote team, leadership that hasn't approved a budget.
Because the group that hasn't launched already expects this outcome, the problem can't be explained by launch execution alone — the fear arrives before the program does.
That near-even split matters.
If people who haven't launched already fear the exact outcome the launched group is living through, the problem can't be a launch mistake — you can't botch a rollout you haven't done. What usually gets treated as a rollout problem, fixable with a good kickoff and some reminders, looks more like something built into how these programs are designed. It follows a program through its whole life unless the underlying cause is addressed, and a good launch doesn't touch the underlying cause.
What drives the worry
The single most common driver is a prior bad experience — a tool that went dormant, with real usage in the low single digits. Difficulty reaching a remote or dispersed workforce follows closely. Smaller groups worry about paying for licenses no one uses, or about leadership that never fully bought in. A rarer, sharper concern shows up too: organisations that ran one good challenge and have no plan for keeping the momentum once it fades.
A past dead app and a hard-to-reach workforce are the two most common reasons leaders distrust their next program before it even starts.
What leaders ask for instead.
Team and social features come first by a wide margin, followed by automated, year-round communication. A dedicated launch event is common among first-time implementers specifically. Fresh, rotating content and manager- or champion-led promotion round things out.
The two most-requested fixes — social features and automated communication — are both about reducing ongoing admin effort, not just improving the launch moment.
A smaller, sharper group.
About one in ten aren't chasing "more engagement" in the abstract — they have a specific number, ranging from an 8% goal tied to staff bonuses to a 95% reach goal aimed at employees who have never touched a wellness activity. Several also asked for anonymous benchmark data from comparable organizations — the same request for peer data shows up again in the reporting section, pointed at dollars instead of participation.
Building engagement from the beginning is a critical finding. This is an interesting report and aligns with other research that shows interest in workplace wellness programs by employers continues to be high, but employee engagement low because it doesn't meet employees where they are at.
The broader point of this section is one of the report's central findings: engagement problems come less from weak launch execution than from engagement never having been designed into the program from the start.
Section 3 0f 8
Incentives, Rewards & Personalization
Incentives and rewards are the second-most-raised priority in the dataset, at 42% of employers. Underneath, this isn't really a separate topic from engagement — it's the same problem showing up in a different part of the program.
Most leaders here are trying to escape manual reward fulfillment: handwritten raffle entries, gift cards ordered and shipped one at a time. The specific reward is often beside the point. What they want is a platform that handles fulfillment at scale while still bending to their own budget and structure — the same administrative-burden complaint from Section 1, now showing up at the moment an employee is actually given something.
Gift cards and raffles dominate largely because they scale — a fixed prize per eligible employee isn't feasible at these workforce sizes.
Flat versus tiered structures.
Among leaders who gave enough detail to classify, a clear majority need a tiered or segmented structure — different point values or reward levels by department, region, or, for recently merged organizations, by each legacy entity's existing plan.
A majority need tiered structures, which foreshadows the reconciliation problem organizations face later during a merger or reorganization.
Behaviors weighted most.
Preventive care visits and Health Risk Assessment completion come up most, usually treated as the foundation the rest of the points structure is built on.
Preventive care and HRA completion outweigh every other behavior combined, suggesting most point systems are still built around a single clinical checkpoint rather than a broader set of habits.
Three sections in, the pattern holds: organizations here are generally moving away from programs that stopped being used, and it shows up even in how they hand out gift cards.
Part Two: A Complicating Factor
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Workplace Accessibility & Digital Equity
Everything so far has a fairly clean shape: organizations escaping broken programs for ones they expect to work better. This section complicates that shape, and it belongs in the report precisely because it doesn't fully support the rest of it.
Accessibility and digital equity was raised by 14% of leaders. The concern splits fairly evenly between two groups. The first is older or less tech-comfortable employees, for whom any new app is one more intimidating thing. The second, and the harder group, is frontline and deskless workers in manufacturing, construction, hospitality, and healthcare who don't have a company email or regular computer access to begin with — a launch email can't reach someone with no inbox.
There's a mismatch worth noting. The most cited barrier was digital literacy. But the most requested fix wasn't a literacy solution at all — it was multilingual, native-language content. Leaders are asking for the thing that helps the workforce they can already reach, while the deeper barrier sits with the workforce they can't.
That 18% Registration friction does not exist on its own. Say, in a manufacturing workforce, the employee filling out that form is also the one with low digital literacy, no computer access, and a language barrier. Every additional step cuts their participation disproportionately.
The recurring ask.
More than any single feature, this group wants the program to come to the employee rather than the other way around — integration into Slack or Teams instead of one more standalone app to download.
One notable request.
A smaller number of leaders asked for non-walking alternatives to step-based challenges, so employees with physical or sensory disabilities aren't quietly excluded.
This section doesn't resolve as neatly as the others, and that's a feature of the data, not a gap in the analysis. A wellness program's whole premise is that it reaches people, and the people who need it most are the ones the standard playbook misses.
Part Three: Why Purchases Stall Before They Begin
The sections so far are about programs that underperform once running. The next three are a different question: why some purchases never get that far, because something blocks the purchase itself. These aren't preferences a vendor can negotiate past — they're closer to fixed conditions of the sale.
Section 5 0f 8
Platform Integrations
Integration is a bigger story than any single device. It spans HR systems, single sign-on, existing benefits platforms, everyday communication tools, and custom APIs.
Setting wearable device integration aside, since it's discussed constantly on its own, 24% of leaders raised at least one other integration need. For a clear majority, it wasn't a nice-to-have — it was a formal requirement, often gated by IT security review, capable of delaying or killing a deal outright.
Two-thirds of the time, integration is a condition of the purchase rather than a feature a buyer would simply enjoy having.
Categories are not mutually exclusive. Benefits and carrier connections lead the list, ahead of HR systems and single sign-on.
The buyers worth watching are the ones the carrier displaced. They didn't choose to shop, which makes them the most decisive people in the market. They already know what failed — the search is just for someone who gets it.
The connection to Section 4 is worth naming directly: communication-tool integration isn't only an IT checkbox. For a deskless workforce with no company email, a Teams or Slack integration can be the only door into the program that exists.
Section 6 0f 8
Wellness Program ROI & Reporting
Reporting and ROI is the single most-raised priority in the entire dataset, at 44% of employers. But "we need reporting" turns out to be several different requests wearing one phrase.
The administrator wants proof of logins and participation. The CFO wants a dollar figure. The broker, managing a book of client accounts, wants a portfolio-wide view. Same word, at least three different requirements, and satisfying one doesn't necessarily satisfy the others.
Nearly every buyer wants basic participation data; only finance-driven stakeholders push for full ROI proof.
Peer benchmarking is the same request that showed up in Section 2, where leaders wanted a realistic sense of what a good participation number looks like. In both cases, leaders don't just want their own data — they want a way to judge whether that data is any good, which requires a comparison point outside their own organization.
Section 7 0f 8
Data Security & Compliance
Data security and compliance was raised by 15% of leaders. Employers split exactly in half between treating it as a formal, mandatory gate and raising it for general reassurance.
This even split is what actually predicts which deals will move slowly and which won't.
Who's asking.
For the large majority of this group, security is raised by the HR or benefits buyer themselves, usually citing an internal IT or legal team they expect to get involved eventually rather than someone already on the call. Only a small number bring in a dedicated technical or legal stakeholder directly during the sales process — typically a large enterprise or a government agency with its own security office.
Every one of those organizations also treats security as a formal, mandatory gate, which suggests bringing in a dedicated reviewer and treating the requirement as binding are the same underlying behavior, not two separate signals.
Beyond the certification name.
Once a conversation moves past simply naming HITRUST or SOC 2, more specific requirements surface: data residency, multi-tenant isolation, penetration testing history, encryption and key-management detail, and cyber insurance coverage. These more granular requests typically come from the same large organizations that bring in a dedicated technical reviewer.
Data residency is by far the most common specific ask, roughly double the next closest requirement — a global-workforce concern more than a general security one.
When security actually slows things down.
A small number of employers show a documented, specific impact on their deal or launch timeline — and in every case, the impact is a delay, not a lost deal. There's no evidence in this dataset of a deal being blocked entirely because of a failed security review — the cost is time, not the relationship.
Government and healthcare employers are far more likely to treat security as a binding requirement than education or financial services.
Part Four: Organizational Change and an Absence Worth Noting
Section 8 0f 8
Benefits Strategy During Organizational Change
The smallest category in this dataset, raised by 8% of leaders, is also where several earlier threads come together. These are organizations undergoing structural change: consolidating legacy programs, absorbing a newly acquired workforce, or managing a rebrand or leadership transition that stalls progress mid-stride.
The most common driver is consolidation, ahead of active merger integration. The most common resulting challenge is reconciling multiple point systems — the same tiered-structure complexity from Section 3, now multiplied across merged entities that each arrive with their own plan. Managing eligibility for a headcount changing faster than the program can track follows close behind.
Harmonizing point systems is the same structural complexity from Section 3, now playing out across merged organizations.
One finding is worth stating plainly. No leader in this group named migrating historical participation data as a strategic challenge, even when asked directly. Vendor positioning often assumes data migration is a major point of buyer anxiety; this dataset doesn't support that. Because this is an absence rather than a stated finding, it's the kind of result a fixed-response survey would be unlikely to surface, since a survey only reports on the categories it thought to include.
One exclusion for clarity: hiring freezes and downsizing were deliberately left out of this category. Those leaders were responding to budget pressure, not the work of integrating a program, and including them would have blurred a clean signal.
Conclusion
Across all eight sections, the same pattern recurs: a gap between the wellness program an organization pays for and the one its employees actually use.
The gap opens the moment a program stops being used, consistent with most organizations here arriving because their current approach had already failed rather than because they were exploring options. It isn't only a launch-execution problem, since organizations that haven't launched yet already fear it. It shows up inside reward structures, inside the org chart of a merged company, and inside any workforce the standard playbook doesn't reach. Before an organization can even address it, three requirements typically function as gates rather than preferences — integration, reporting, and security — and any one of them can end a purchase on its own.
None of this gets solved by a better app or a louder launch event alone. It gets solved, to the extent it can be, by treating engagement as something designed in from the start rather than chased after the fact. That's consistent with what leaders in these 185 conversations already describe — both the ones who've been through it, and the ones who haven't launched yet and are already bracing for it.
What stood out to me is that incentives are one of the biggest priorities, yet low engagement is still the top reason employers abandon a program. To me, that says the problem isn’t just giving people more incentives to participate. It’s making the program and the way we communicate it actually feel relevant, compelling, and worth engaging with in the first place.
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