Employee Wellness Programs and Your Bottom Line

Employee wellness has traditionally been discussed as an HR or benefits initiative.

For business leaders, that framing is too narrow.

Healthcare is a significant organizational investment, and its cost continues to rise. In 2025, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $26,993, a 6% increase in a single year. For employers funding their own health plans, the connection is even more direct: the organization is ultimately paying for the healthcare its employees use.

That changes the executive-level question.

It isn't simply: What health and wellness programs do we offer?

It's: Are those investments driving the employee behaviors and outcomes we need?

Because offering a benefit doesn't create value by itself. Employees have to act.

Employee Health Behavior Is a Business Issue

Organizations invest heavily in health plans, preventive care, wellness programs, chronic-condition resources, mental health benefits, and other programs designed to support a healthier workforce.

But access doesn't guarantee participation.

An employee can have access to a preventive screening and never schedule it.

A wellness initiative can be available and go largely unused.

An employer can repeatedly communicate an important health action without employees completing it.

That's where the economics of employee engagement become important.

When employees take appropriate preventive and proactive health actions, employers have a greater opportunity to get value from the programs they're already funding.

When employees don't act, the organization may continue paying for the infrastructure without realizing its full potential.

For executives, employee healthcare behavior isn't simply a participation metric. It can become a financial imperative.

Healthcare Costs Are Already Demanding Executive Attention

Employer-sponsored healthcare isn't getting cheaper.

According to KFF's 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey, average annual premiums reached $9,325 for single coverage and $26,993 for family coverage. Family premiums have risen 26% in five years and 53% in ten years.

And a large portion of employers have an especially direct financial stake in healthcare utilization.

KFF reports that 67% of covered workers are enrolled in self-funded health plans, including 80% of covered workers at larger employers. Under self-funding, employers pay employee healthcare claims directly rather than transferring that entire risk to an insurance carrier.

For those organizations, healthier employee decisions can become healthier business decisions. The challenge is influencing those decisions.

The Problem Isn't Always the Benefit. It's the Action Gap.

Employers can spend significant time and money building a strong benefits portfolio and still struggle with utilization.

The organization sends the email.

Employees receive the reminder.

The benefit is available.

The program is funded.

But the employee doesn't complete the action.

That's the action gap: the distance between making a health resource available and getting an employee to actually use it.

Closing that gap matters because the objective of a wellness or benefits strategy isn't simply to make programs available. It's to produce meaningful outcomes.

That could mean encouraging employees to:

• complete recommended preventive screenings;
• attend annual wellness visits;
• participate in health assessments;
• engage with chronic-condition programs;
• complete wellness initiatives;
• participate in mental or financial wellbeing programs; or
• take other measurable actions aligned with the organization's health strategy.

The specific behavior will vary by organization.

The principle doesn't: The value of a program depends on what employees ultimately do.

Better Employee Wellbeing Can Influence Business Performance

The business case extends beyond healthcare claims.

Employee health and wellbeing can influence several areas executives already monitor.

Gallup's 2026 research identifies employee wellbeing as a predictor of absenteeism, performance, healthcare utilization, engagement, and turnover. Gallup also estimates that burnout-related turnover and lost productivity cost organizations globally $322 billion annually.

That means health and wellbeing shouldn't exist in an organizational silo.

They intersect with:

Productivity. Employees' physical and mental wellbeing can influence their ability to perform consistently.

Absenteeism. Poor health and wellbeing can translate into missed work and reduced organizational capacity.

Retention. Wellbeing can affect whether employees remain productive contributors or eventually leave.

Healthcare utilization. Employee health decisions influence when and how healthcare resources are used.

Benefits ROI. Programs that employees don't use cannot deliver the same value as programs that successfully drive participation and completed actions.

Viewed this way, employee wellness isn't simply an employee experience investment. It's part of business performance.

Don't Automatically Add Another Program

When participation is low, the instinct can be to add something new.

Another wellness initiative.

Another communications campaign.

Another vendor.

Another benefit.

But organizations should first ask a more financially disciplined question: Are we getting enough value from what we're already paying for?

The answer may not require another major benefits investment. It may require improving employee participation in existing programs. That's an important distinction.

Instead of continually expanding the benefits portfolio, organizations can identify the existing health actions with the greatest strategic value and focus on increasing completion of those actions.

In other words: Make your existing investment work harder.

Communication Alone Doesn't Guarantee Action

Employees aren't necessarily ignoring health programs because they don't care.

They're busy.

An important benefits message competes with work deadlines, personal responsibilities, financial concerns, family needs, and dozens of other communications.

Another email may increase awareness. It doesn't necessarily change behavior.

That's why organizations should distinguish between communicating an action and motivating an action.

Education tells an employee why something matters. A targeted incentive can give that employee a compelling reason to follow through.

When designed strategically, incentives can be connected to specific behaviors rather than offered as generic perks.

For example, an organization could reward completion of a preventive screening, participation in a wellness initiative, completion of an assessment, or another measurable health action.

That distinction matters.

The reward isn't the outcome. The employee behavior is the outcome.

The incentive is simply a tool for helping produce it.

Target Incentives Where Action Creates Value

An effective incentive strategy doesn't mean rewarding everything. It means identifying where employee action matters most.

Executives and benefits leaders can begin by asking:

Which employee behaviors have the greatest potential health or business impact?

Where are participation and completion currently falling short?

What would improved participation mean for employees and the organization?

Can the desired action be clearly measured?

Is the incentive meaningful enough to compel action without overspending?

This shifts incentives away from being perceived as another employee perk and toward being used as a strategic behavior-change tool.

And that distinction becomes particularly important when budgets are under scrutiny.

Measure Completed Actions, Not Just Communications

Executives don't need another dashboard filled with activity metrics that don't connect to results.

Email sends aren't outcomes.

Email opens aren't outcomes.

Even initial enrollment isn't necessarily an outcome.

The more meaningful question is: Did employees do what the program was designed to get them to do?

Depending on the initiative, organizations may evaluate:

• participation rates;
• completed health actions;
• preventive-care participation;
• program completion;
• sustained engagement;
• incentive cost per completed action; and
• changes in utilization or other relevant program outcomes over time.

Those measurements create a stronger line between program investment and organizational value.

They also give benefits and HR leaders a better way to communicate with Finance and executive leadership.

Instead of: "We ran a wellness campaign."

The conversation becomes: "Here's the behavior we needed to influence, here's the participation we achieved, here's what we invested, and here's the result."

That's a fundamentally stronger business conversation.

Where GiftCard Partners Fits

For more than two decades, GiftCard Partners has helped organizations use incentives to engage people and encourage action.

In healthcare and employee wellness, our role isn't simply to help organizations distribute rewards.

It's to help turn an incentive strategy into employee action.

GiftCard Partners can work with organizations to build targeted reward programs around the behaviors they want to encourage—from preventive health and wellness participation to benefits engagement and other measurable employee actions.

Programs can incorporate digital and physical rewards, meaningful recipient choice, health-aligned reward options, customized communications, and the ability to track reward activity.

But the technology and reward itself come second.

The strategy starts with three questions:

What employee action are you trying to drive?

Why does that action matter to your organization?

What will compel employees to complete it?

From there, GiftCard Partners can help translate that objective into an incentive approach designed around the workforce, the desired behavior, and the organization's goals.

From Wellness Program to Business Strategy

Employee wellness shouldn't be measured by how many programs an organization offers. And success shouldn't be defined simply by how many communications were sent.

The more important question is whether employees are taking the actions those investments were designed to encourage.

As healthcare costs continue to rise, organizations have a strong reason to look harder at the connection between employee behavior, health outcomes, healthcare utilization, and business performance.

Start with the investments already being made.

Identify the employee actions that matter.

Find the participation gaps.

Create a compelling reason for employees to act.

Measure what happens next.

Because when employee wellness programs produce measurable action, they can become more than an employee benefit.

They can become a lever for healthier employees, stronger utilization of existing investments, and better business outcomes.

Ready to Make Your Wellness Investment Work Harder?

If you're looking for ways to increase employee participation in preventive care, wellness initiatives, or other important health actions, talk with GiftCard Partners about building a targeted incentive strategy around the outcomes that matter to your organization.