From wellbeing to activation: Closing the gap between benefits and action

Every benefit you buy assumes the right people will use it. Navigate makes sure they do. Here’s how we’re taking wellbeing further, and what workforce health activation means for 2027.

To hear the full conversation and see the updates in action, watch the webinar on-demand.

Key takeaways

• Workforce health activation is the next chapter of workplace wellbeing. It helps employees recognize a health need, find the right benefit or resource, and take action before risk becomes a costly claim.

• The biggest opportunity sits with the movable middle: employees who are unaware of a need, not yet ready to act, or stuck on follow-through.

• Navigate Wellbeing Solutions, a workforce health activation platform, personalizes each employee’s next step using readiness to change, biometrics, and claims data.

• Two new capabilities complete the picture for 2027. The Health Dashboard covers preventive and condition-specific care. Segmentation gives each population the right experience within one employer strategy.

• Navigate clients have seen broker-validated results, including a 34% lower three-year PEPM trend among participants at a large hospital system and a 79% reduction in workers’ comp costs among coaching participants at a county employer.

When you add a diabetes program, an MSK solution, or an EAP, you’re betting that the right people will find it, recognize they need it, and use it.

Most of the time, no one checks that bet until renewal. The employee whose A1c is creeping up never hears about the diabetes program. The warehouse worker with chronic back pain pushes through another shift. The struggling manager hasn’t made the call, even though the EAP is free, confidential, and one call away. Employers report that, on average, just 12% of eligible employees use their EAP in a given year.

The benefit was there. The connection wasn’t.

The stakes keep rising. The average family health plan now costs $28,303 a year, according to KFF, and employers cover nearly three-quarters of it. According to Mercer, employers expect benefit costs to rise 8.2% in 2027, the steepest jump since 2003. Yet success is still too often measured by what’s available: the plan is in place, the vendors are live, the benefits guide went out.

Availability isn’t impact.

See how Navigate is closing that gap. Watch the What’s Next from Navigate replay →

Meet the Movable Middle

Claims data is essential. It shows where care happened and where costs built up. But claims show only what has already happened. By the time a risk becomes a claim, the moment to change its course has often passed.

The biggest opportunity comes before the claim, with the people whose health can still change direction. We call them the movable middle:

• Unaware: they need to understand. Support exists, but they don’t recognize the need. The employee whose A1c is creeping up doesn’t know their risk is rising.

• Not ready: they need to build readiness. They understand the need but aren’t ready to act. The warehouse worker knows his back needs attention, but missing a shift feels riskier.

• Stuck: they need a connection to action. They know what to do but need help following through. The manager knows she’s struggling but hasn’t made the call.

Each person needs a different first step. A generic reminder won’t move all three, and neither will another point solution. To move them, you need to know where each person is and what will help them take the next step.

Claims show what happened. Activation changes what happens next.

Short on time? Get the key takeaways from Navigate's What’s Next in a five-minute read. Download the AI session summary →

Wellbeing Built the Foundation

For years, workplace wellbeing has been how employers show up for their people: challenges, incentives, coaching, mental wellbeing support, and a culture that says health matters here. That work matters. Wellbeing is often where employees first engage, connect with colleagues, and build trust in their employer's support.

But wellbeing has often been measured the same way as benefits: by sign-ups, points earned, and engagement rates. Complete a biometric screening, and you earn the premium incentive. Too often, the trigger stops there. The results arrive, the points post, and nothing connects an elevated A1c to coaching, a care gap to a reminder, or a risk to the right benefit.

Wellbeing has always been at the heart of Navigate, and it still is. What has changed is what we ask it to do.

Activation Is the Next Chapter

Wellbeing isn’t the finish line. It’s the front door. It’s where people come in, and where we can guide them to the care, benefits, and clinical support that change health, risk, and cost.

What is workforce health activation? Workforce health activation is an approach to employee health and wellbeing that measures whether people use their benefits, not just whether benefits are available. It focuses on the movable middle and guides each person to a personalized next step.

Navigate’s Culture, Care, and Clinical framework connects the strategy to the people it serves. 

Culture connects people to purpose, shared values, and one another. 

Care guides each person to the right benefit, resource, or support at the right time. 

Clinical turns health insights into personalized actions that improve health and reduce risk.

The Moments That Already Drive Action

Activation happens in moments, when an insight about a person becomes their next step. Every one of these moments starts with the same question: where is this person, and what will help them take the next step?

Total Health Survey: personalized to readiness to change
Two employees with the same risk may need very different first steps. Navigate's Total Health platform personalizes benefits, resources, and programs based on each person’s needs, interests, risks, and readiness to change - the only platform built to focus on what an individual can do right now to take their best next step forward.

Biometric personalization: from results to next steps
Screening results shouldn’t end with a points total. Biometric personalization turns each person’s results into specific recommendations, connecting an out-of-range measure to the coaching, education, or care that can address it.

Claims personalization: what happened shapes what’s next
Claims show where care has and hasn’t happened. Navigate uses available claims data to find care gaps and personalize recommendations, so the next step reflects each person’s real health history.

Community support: what happens outside the doctor’s office
Food insecurity, housing instability, and caregiving strain can push preventive care down the list. Earlier this year, Navigate added social determinants of health (SDOH) screening and community support. Employees can confidentially identify challenges and connect with more than 970,000 verified community programs through the FindHelp network, at no additional cost to clients. Since 2022, Navigate participants have run nearly 70,000 community resource searches.

Two New Moments That Close the Gap

At What’s Next from Navigate, our recent briefing for brokers and consultants, we introduced two capabilities that complete the picture.

Health Dashboard: from “what’s available” to “what’s next”

A list of resources leaves employees to figure things out on their own. The Health Dashboard tells them what care is due, why it matters, and how to act. It brings preventive and condition-specific recommendations into one personalized view that shows what’s up to date, due soon, or overdue. Each recommendation connects to education, biometric insights, incentives, and coaching. Personalized reminders keep upcoming care in view, and claims data or physician forms can automatically update completion.

Employers get something they’ve rarely had: visibility into care gaps and follow-through across the population.

See it for yourself. Explore the Health Dashboard the way an employee would: care that’s due, why it matters, and the next step. Take the interactive demo →

Segmentation: same employer, different experiences

Employees, spouses, and acquired groups may share an employer without sharing plans or eligibility. Segmentation shows each population the benefits, resources, and challenges that apply to them, based on medical plan, spouse eligibility, location, role, or acquired group. Personalization then guides each person to their best next step within that experience.

The diabetes program reaches eligible people. The MSK benefit appears for plans that include it. Your Navigate team handles setup and updates, so HR doesn’t have to.

More from What’s Next

• Women’s Health Coaching: a five-session program, with four sessions led by a specialized women’s health coach and one by a Mental Wellbeing Coach. It connects hormonal health, sleep, stress, nutrition, preventive care, and cardiovascular risk across life stages. It joins Navigate’s full coaching suite, which includes Condition Management, Diabetes Prevention, Weight Management, Lifestyle, Tobacco Cessation, Mental Wellbeing, and Career Coaching.

• Engagement Series: an ongoing communication journey from pre-registration through re-engagement. In the first half of 2026, clients using it averaged 2.8x the daily onboarding activity of clients without it.

• One experience, every device: mobile onboarding launched in July 2026. An enhanced mobile app that mirrors the desktop experience arrives in early 2027. Employees learn it once. HR communicates it once.

Activation Shows Up in the Results

See It in Action and Take the Next Step

With costs climbing faster than in the past two decades, no employer can afford benefits that sit unused. An unused benefit is just a line item. A benefit that gets used is a strategy at work.

Watch the full session. Get the replay, slides, AI summary, and interactive demos of the Health Dashboard and segmentation. Watch What’s Next from Navigate →

Find out what your current strategy is missing. Every benefit solves a problem, but who connects employees to the care they need? Our guide, Every Benefit Solves a Problem. Who Connects Employees to Care? walks through where activation breaks down and what to look for in a wellbeing partner. Pair it with the Employee Health Action Plan worksheet to map your benefits, find gaps in how employees find and use them, and bring specific questions to your current partner. Get the guide and worksheet →

Brokers and consultants: bring us a client’s benefits map, and we’ll show you how Navigate will activate it. Start the conversation →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Navigate a wellbeing platform?
Yes, and more. Navigate Wellbeing Solutions is built on a foundation of workplace wellbeing: challenges, incentives, coaching, and culture. Navigate builds on that foundation with workforce health activation, connecting wellbeing to preventive care, benefits, community support, and clinical programs. As a result, employees take actions that improve health and reduce risk.

What is the movable middle?
The movable middle is the group of employees whose health can still change direction before risk becomes a costly claim. It includes people who are unaware of a need, people who understand it but aren’t ready to act, and people who know what to do but need help following through. Each group needs a different first step.

What is the difference between wellbeing and workforce health activation?
Wellbeing programs engage employees and build a healthy culture. Workforce health activation goes further. It uses readiness to change, biometrics, and claims data to guide each person to a personalized next step and measures whether they take it.

How can employers improve utilization of point solutions like diabetes, MSK, or EAP programs?
Utilization improves when the right employees see the benefits that apply to them, understand why they matter, and get timely prompts to act. Navigate combines segmentation, personalized recommendations, and an ongoing Engagement Series to connect employees to the programs employers already offer.

What is Navigate’s Health Dashboard?
The Health Dashboard is a personalized view of preventive and condition-specific care recommendations. It shows employees what care is up to date, due soon, or overdue, and connects each recommendation to education, incentives, biometric insights, and health coaching.

Does Navigate address social determinants of health?
Yes. Every Navigate participant has access to the FindHelp social care network, with more than 970,000 verified community programs across all 50 states, at no additional cost to clients. New in 2026, an expanded solution providing free, confidential SDOH assessment to personalize results was launched.