From Employee Engagement to Business Value: Using Incentives to Drive Measurable Health Action

Healthcare costs continue to rise, employers continue to invest in health and wellness programs, and employees have access to more benefits and resources than ever before.

But for executive leaders, access is not the end goal. Employee action is.

A preventive screening only creates value when an employee completes it. A chronic-condition program only has an opportunity to improve outcomes when eligible employees participate. A wellness initiative cannot influence behavior if engagement fades after enrollment.

That distinction matters more in 2026 as employers face mounting pressure to control healthcare costs while demonstrating that the programs they fund are producing meaningful results.

Average employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $26,993 in 2025, according to KFF, up 6% from the prior year and 53% over the past decade.[1] Meanwhile, Business Group on Health reports that employers projected a 9% median healthcare cost increase for 2026 before plan design changes.[2]

With that level of investment at stake, organizations cannot afford to think about employee health engagement as simply a communications or HR challenge.

It is a business performance challenge.

And increasingly, the opportunity is to move from simply offering health programs to strategically influencing the employee actions that help those programs create value.

TL;DR: The Business Value Comes From the Action

Employers already invest heavily in healthcare, preventive benefits, wellness initiatives, chronic-condition management, mental health resources, and other programs designed to improve employee health.

The missing link is often participation.

Targeted incentives can help organizations close that gap by connecting meaningful rewards to specific employee actions—such as completing preventive screenings, participating in wellness initiatives, engaging with health programs, or reaching defined program milestones.

The key is to stop thinking about incentives as giveaways and start treating them as strategic tools for driving measurable action.

Rising Healthcare Costs Raise the Stakes

Healthcare has always been a significant employer expense. The current cost environment makes program effectiveness even more important.

KFF reports that average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance reached $9,325 for single coverage and $26,993 for family coverage in 2025.[1]

The outlook for 2026 adds further pressure. Business Group on Health reported that employers projected a median healthcare cost trend of 9% for 2026, which they expected to reduce to 7.6% through plan design changes. The organization also reported that, on a compounded basis, costs in 2026 were likely to be 62% higher than 2017 levels.[2]

For leadership teams, the implication is clear:

Controlling healthcare costs cannot be limited to negotiating premiums, changing plan design, or changing vendors. Organizations also need to examine whether employees are taking the actions that allow existing health investments to work.

Business Group on Health has similarly called for employers to scrutinize programs and vendors for value while placing greater emphasis on preventive care and chronic-condition management.

That makes employee participation an increasingly important part of the cost and value equation.

The Participation Gap Between Benefits and Business Value

Most organizations don't lack health programs.

They may already provide employees with access to:

• Preventive screenings
• Annual physicals
• Immunizations
• Chronic-condition management
• Mental health resources
• Employee assistance programs
• Wellness challenges
• Health assessments
• Telehealth
• Health navigation
• Nutrition programs
• Financial wellness resources

The problem is that availability does not guarantee utilization.

An organization can negotiate an excellent benefit, communicate it to employees, include it in enrollment materials, and make it easily accessible.

Employees still have to act.

That creates a simple but important business equation: Benefits Investment → Employee Participation → Potential Outcome

If participation breaks down in the middle, the organization may never realize the full value of the investment on the left.

This is why employee engagement deserves executive attention.

Communication Alone Doesn't Guarantee Action

Organizations spend significant time educating employees about benefits. That's necessary—but education alone does not always change behavior.

Employees may know that they should schedule a preventive screening and still postpone it.

They may understand the value of a wellness program and stop participating after a few weeks.

They may receive multiple reminders about a health assessment without completing it.

They may have access to chronic-condition resources without consistently using them.

The issue isn't necessarily awareness. Often, the issue is follow-through. Organizations therefore need to distinguish between several stages of engagement:

Awareness: Did the employee receive the message?

Interest: Did the employee understand the opportunity?

Participation: Did the employee begin the activity?

Completion: Did the employee take the desired action?

For organizations trying to connect health engagement with measurable business value, completion is often the most important stage.

Target the Behavior, Not Just the Program

One of the most important shifts organizations can make is moving from broad engagement goals to clearly defined employee behaviors.

"Improve wellness engagement" is difficult to measure.

"Increase completion of annual preventive screenings" is measurable.

"Get employees healthier" is broad.

"Increase participation in a diabetes-management program among eligible employees" creates a defined action and population.

The same framework can apply across many employee health initiatives:

• Complete an annual physical
• Receive a recommended screening
• Complete a health assessment
• Participate in a wellness challenge
• Attend a benefits education session
• Engage with a chronic-condition management program
• Complete a financial wellness course
• Use an available health navigation resource
• Reach a defined wellness milestone

This changes the question from: How do we get employees more engaged?

to: What specifically do we want employees to do?

That is a much stronger starting point for an incentive strategy.

Incentives Can Help Turn Intention Into Action

Once the desired behavior is clear, organizations can determine whether an incentive can help encourage employees to complete it.

The structure is straightforward: Complete the action → earn the reward.

For example:

Complete the preventive screening → receive the incentive.

Finish the health assessment → receive the incentive.

Participate in the wellness initiative → receive the incentive.

Reach the defined program milestone → receive the incentive.

The incentive gives employees an additional reason to move from awareness or intention to action.

But the distinction is important: The reward is not the business outcome. The completed behavior is.

That is what separates a strategic incentive program from a generic giveaway.

Targeted Incentives Create Greater Accountability

When incentives are distributed without a clearly defined objective, it can be difficult for leadership to understand what the spending accomplished.

Targeted incentives create a more accountable framework.

Before launching an initiative, organizations can define:

1. The business or program objective
2. The employee population
3. The behavior they want to encourage
4. The incentive attached to that behavior
5. The timeframe for completion
6. How participation will be measured
7. What success will look like

Instead of simply reporting: We distributed $50,000 in employee rewards.

A program owner can potentially report: We invested $50,000 to encourage completion of a defined health action among an eligible employee population, and participation increased from X to Y.

That is a fundamentally different conversation.

It gives executives greater visibility into what incentive spending was designed to accomplish.

Small, Timely Rewards Can Support Specific Actions

An effective incentive does not necessarily have to be large.

For many programs, the purpose of the reward is simply to provide enough additional motivation to encourage an employee to complete an action they might otherwise delay or ignore.

Timing matters as well. A reward delivered close to the desired behavior creates a clearer connection between the action and recognition. That makes digital incentives particularly useful for programs built around defined actions or milestones.

An employee completes the activity.

The achievement is verified.

The reward can be delivered digitally.

The program records the fulfillment.

This creates a much tighter connection between behavior, incentive, and measurement than a broad annual reward distributed regardless of individual action.

Choice Can Make the Incentive More Relevant

Targeting the right behavior is only part of the strategy. The reward itself also has to matter to the employee.

A workforce can span different generations, income levels, family structures, geographic regions, interests, and health priorities. A reward that motivates one employee may have little relevance to another.

Providing meaningful choice can help solve that problem.

Instead of attempting to select a single reward that appeals equally to everyone, organizations can allow employees to choose an option that fits their own needs and preferences.

That might include rewards related to:

• Groceries
• Pharmacy and health
• Dining
• Retail
• Wellness
• Entertainment
• Travel
• Everyday expenses

Choice allows organizations to maintain a consistent incentive structure while giving employees a more personalized reward experience.

Measurement Turns Incentives Into a Business Strategy

For executive leaders, perhaps the most important element is measurement.

The effectiveness of an incentive program should not be judged simply by how many rewards were distributed.

Organizations should consider metrics such as:

• Eligible population
• Participation rate
• Completion rate
• Incentive cost per completed action
• Change in participation over time
• Engagement by employee population
• Reward delivery and fulfillment
• Program budget versus actual spend
• Performance against established program goals

Depending on the initiative and available data, organizations may also evaluate whether increased participation correlates with broader outcomes over time.

This creates a much more useful executive conversation.

Instead of asking: Did employees like the incentive?

Leadership can ask: What behavior were we trying to influence, how much did we spend, and what happened?

That is the "so what?" that matters.

Healthcare Cost Control Is Increasingly About Value

The growing pressure on healthcare spending makes this discipline particularly important.

Business Group on Health reports that employers are facing increased utilization of obesity treatments, higher cancer prevalence, greater use of mental health and substance-use services, and growing chronic-condition management needs.

At the same time, employers remain committed to health and well-being. In its 2025 Employer Well-being Strategy Survey, Business Group on Health found that 93% of employers planned to either maintain or increase their investment in employee well-being.[3]

Those two trends create an important executive mandate: Continue supporting employee health—but demand greater clarity about what those investments accomplish.

The answer cannot simply be to spend more. Organizations need to make existing investments work harder. And employee participation is one of the variables organizations can influence.

From Engagement Strategy to Measurable Action

A strong incentive strategy therefore begins with the outcome—not the reward.

The sequence should look something like this:

What business challenge are we trying to address?

↓

What employee behavior can contribute to that objective?

↓

What is preventing employees from taking that action?

↓

Could an incentive help overcome that barrier?

↓

What reward would be meaningful to this population?

↓

How will we deliver it at the right moment?

↓

How will we measure what happened?

That approach makes incentives part of the engagement strategy rather than an isolated perk.

How GiftCard Partners Helps Organizations Build Targeted Incentive Strategies

Executing this type of program requires more than purchasing gift cards.

Organizations need to determine what behaviors they want to encourage, how rewards should be structured, which reward options fit the population, how incentives will be delivered, how the experience should be communicated, and how activity will be tracked.

GiftCard Partners helps organizations build incentive strategies around those objectives.

Through GiftCard Partners and the Engage2Reward™ Gift Card Ordering Platform, organizations can support targeted employee engagement and health initiatives with capabilities including:

• Digital gift card delivery via email or text
• Hundreds of gift card brand options
• The Engage2Reward™ Choice Card, providing recipients with broad reward choice
• Health and wellness-aligned gift card options
• Prepaid reward card options
• Campaign management
• Customized and personalized messaging
• Reporting and program visibility
• API capabilities for integrating incentives into existing platforms and workflows
• Scalable fulfillment for programs of different sizes and structures

The objective isn't simply to make reward distribution easier.

It's to help organizations connect incentive spending to the employee actions they are trying to drive.

That distinction matters. Because executives don't need another reward program. They need programs that support business objectives.

The Executive Opportunity: Turn Engagement Into an Operating Lever

Healthcare costs will not be solved by incentives alone.

Neither will employee engagement.

But organizations already invest substantial amounts in programs designed to improve employee health and manage healthcare risk. When participation is low, those investments may not reach their full potential.

Targeted incentives provide organizations with another lever.

They can help turn:

communication into participation,

participation into completed actions,

and completed actions into measurable program performance.

That is where employee engagement becomes more than an HR initiative. It becomes an operating strategy.

For executive leaders, the question is therefore not simply: Should we incentivize employees?

A better question is: Which employee actions matter to our business—and what would it be worth if more employees actually completed them?

Once that answer is clear, the role of incentives becomes much easier to evaluate.

Talk with GiftCard Partners about building a targeted incentive strategy that connects employee action, program investment, and measurable business outcomes.

Sources

1. KFF — 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey. Average annual employer-sponsored health insurance premiums reached $9,325 for single coverage and $26,993 for family coverage in 2025. Family premiums increased 6% year over year and 53% over the previous decade.
   2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey — KFF
2. Business Group on Health — 2026 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey. Employers projected a median healthcare cost trend increase of 9% for 2026 before plan design changes and 7.6% after those changes. Business Group on Health also reported that compounded healthcare costs in 2026 were likely to be 62% higher than 2017 levels.
   2026 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey — Business Group on Health
3. Business Group on Health — 2025 Employer Well-being Strategy Survey. Despite rising healthcare costs and other business pressures, 20% of surveyed employers planned to increase well-being investment and 73% planned to maintain it.
   2025 Employer Well-being Strategy Survey — Business Group on Health