In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, “wellbeing” has transcended its traditional confines of gym memberships and biometric screenings. Senior HR leaders are now tasked with architecting holistic benefits ecosystems that address not only physical health, but mental resilience, financial security, and even life-management stressors. The complexity of balancing the needs of employees against the financial and logistical realities of the business creates a branching tree of potentialities, where no single answer reigns supreme.
This truth was well understood by speaker and audience alike during a recent Connex HR community panel. There, we had an opportunity to sit down with and learn from some of Connex’s sharpest minds, including Deanna Allison (Dir. of Benefits, Wellbeing & Financial Programs at Bread Financial), Rhonda Hall (CHRO at Providence Health & Services), Corey Gilchrist (VP of Total Rewards & HRIS at Shamrock Foods), and Janocqua Shaw (Director of Benefits at The Save Mart Companies). Together, the four shared how they’re rethinking wellbeing strategy, programming, and enablement across their organizations.
Defining & Demonstrating Holistic ROI
It’s one thing to launch a new program, another to quantify its impact, and another still to communicate that value to senior leaders holding the purse strings. That said, there are some strategies HR and Benefits leaders can use to increase their likelihood of success. “I’m always basing every program off of a specific claim that I’m trying to reduce – either frequency or cost – so that if I implement a partner targeting it, the program pays for itself,” explained Gilchrist. By basing each initiative on the targeted reduction of a concrete metric – such as MSK claims, absenteeism, or turnover costs – leaders can create a stable and effective ROI framework for evaluating progress at every step.
It's important to remember though that strong metrics only tell part of the story. As Allison reminded her peers, “Utilization for the sake of utilization isn’t necessarily [enough]. You want the right utilization for your population’s needs.” Any data captured needs to be contextualized – sometimes that means ensuring the needle is moving in the areas that need it most, and other times it means folding in other “softer” indications of improvement. Qualitative returns are still returns, and it’s hard to overstate the importance of positive employee sentiment and organizational culture in an increasingly volatile world.
Cultivating Trust
Speaking of culture, the foundational role of “trust” was a consistent motif throughout the discussion. “If you don’t get trust, you have nothing to build on,” explained Allison. At Bread Financial, they purposely separate their wellness engagement team from traditional HR functions. These specialists cannot “write people up” or influence merit increases, reinforcing the narrative that they are impartial advocates looking out for what’s best for employees.
Hall echoed Allison’s emphasis on credibility: “Our role is truly about how do we establish trust? It’s through consistency, confidentiality, and delivering on what we said we would do.” It was from that frame of mind that Hall championed her organization’s “You Said It, We Did It” communication series, which directly links previous employee survey feedback to visible change within the organization. By reinforcing trust and fueling ongoing engagement, employers can lean into humanity’s social nature and more easily create a groundswell of support for their wellbeing and benefit initiatives.
Segmenting & Personalizing for Maximum Reach
However, credibility will surely be eroded if employees don’t see themselves and their needs reflected in their available programming. The strategic segmentation of your workforce by shift, role, union status, or demographic profile enables you to tailor both content and delivery. For example, Hall highlighted the often-overlooked experiences of nightshift and weekend teams, noting that launching programs with these groups first signals genuine inclusion: “When we start a program on the dayshift, and then we take it to the nightshift, [the latter] feel like they’re getting leftovers.” By flipping that model, they can more easily demonstrate respect and garner buy-in with a population that too often feels ignored.
Similarly, Shaw underscored the importance of addressing difficult employee realities that tend to go unnoticed: “We’ve had people who were homeless, living in their cars, but still showing up to work.” By ensuring their benefits spoke to the full spectrum of employee needs – including, and especially, financial wellbeing – her organization elevated employees and workforce productivity simultaneously. By thoughtfully expanding the scope of programs to help those in unique life situations, employers signal to employees that their lived experiences are seen and respected. When inclusion is baked into the foundation of your strategy, engagement stops being an uphill battle and starts becoming the norm.
Leveraging Non-Traditional Programs
Modern problems require modern solutions, and it can often pay to think outside the box. For example, Gilchrist shared how they’ve used Marketplace Chaplains to help address employees’ mental, social, and emotional wellbeing. The program places professionals – chaplains by trade, but secular in their approach to employee enablement – throughout his organization’s facilities. Each dons a bright pink vest to be easily found and is ready to discuss stressors ranging from family conflict to mental health concerns. The program has been wildly successful, growing from 5,000 conversations in Year 1 to 46,000 conversations in 2024 – three of which helped prevent suicides.
Financial wellness is another fertile ground for unconventional vendors. Allison’s team partners with BrightPlan, whose AI-driven virtual assistant offers personalized debt-repayment strategies, backdoor Roth advice, and spending insights – all overseen by certified financial planners to prevent errors. “Our people are loving that they can get a quick answer without feeling silly asking someone,” she observed.
Using AI as a Strategic Enabler
Artificial Intelligence provides employers with multiple opportunities to streamline their wellbeing strategies, especially for those trying to personalize program delivery. AI chatbots and virtual assistants within benefits platforms can steer associates toward making better decisions. As Gilchrist noted, bots within insurance portals can prompt employees with questions about desired provider locations, specialties, genders, and more, before delivering targeted recommendations. The same principles can be applied during benefit selection to bring attention to less utilized programs.
Not only can AI aid employees in navigating program access, but it can help HR and benefit teams better understand what employees really want. Take survey responses, for example. Artificial intelligence can swiftly synthesize unstructured feedback, which Hall found was “an absolute game changer” when analyzing the 21,000+ employee engagement survey responses they received.
Forging Ahead
To truly drive lasting impact, senior HR leaders must treat wellbeing not as a static initiative, but as a dynamic, evolving strategy that adapts to new realities as they emerge. The leaders we spoke with made it clear that the most successful approaches are rooted in listening, grounded in trust, and designed for real life, not idealized scenarios. Whether it’s partnering with chaplains to support emotional health, using AI to uncover patterns in engagement data, or launching a financial wellness tool that meets employees where they are, the goal remains the same: create a system that serves the whole person.
As the expectations of the workforce continue to expand beyond traditional health benefits, HR leaders must rise to the occasion with creativity, empathy, and precision. The future of work will demand programs that are personalized yet scalable, tech-enabled yet deeply human. By aligning strategy with purpose, and innovation with inclusion, senior leaders have the opportunity to not only improve employee wellbeing but to reshape it as a true driver of culture, connection, and business performance.
Connex membership is an excellent avenue to uncover how your peers are reinventing wellbeing, be that through our exclusive online community, library of content, and/or calendar of live and virtual events. To learn more about becoming a member, CLICK HERE.
