May 20, 2025

Senior executives, HR, Benefits and Well-being leaders have met numerous internal and external challenges in designing and delivering well-being initiatives for their employees and families. The 2025 Employer Well-being Strategy Survey explores the current employer mindset on well-being and ways they are working to improve the health of the population. Based on the experiences of 131 employers, the following top insights surfaced:

1. Employers remain committed to investing in well-being.

In 2025, employers are responding to numerous business pressures: rising health care costs, an uncertain global economy and world events, such as geopolitical conflict and climate emergencies. Despite these daunting headwinds, nearly all employers will either increase (20%) or maintain (73%) their investments in well-being. When asked their approach looking 3-5 years in the future, very few employers indicated a potential scaling back of their efforts.

2. Nearly all employers will raise expectations of their well-being vendors to deliver.

HR, Benefits and Well-being leaders are feeling the pressure from leadership to deliver on their well-being programs, ensuring that investments yield positive outcomes. Health care cost increases are also turning up the heat to manage program investments prudently. As a result, 94% of employers report increasing expectations of their vendor partners to produce outcomes. Many will look to well-being dashboards to help evaluate their partners.

3. Multinational employers continue to pursue consistency in benefits across countries of operations.

Eighty-five percent of employers have a global consistency strategy for their well-being offerings – or are actively developing a strategy. For many, this pursuit is a relentless quest to bring a comparable level of well-being opportunities to employees regardless of home country and is an important step in unifying the global employee value proposition. The main challenges that employers face in establishing a global consistency strategy are employees’ diverse needs, lack of local support/budget and lack of providers who are able to deliver relevant solutions around the world.

4. Physical activity continues to be prioritized, especially for weight management.

When asked which dimension of well-being is the most important, employers selected physical health among their top areas of priority. This could be in part due to the influence that GLP-1s have on employers’ approach to well-being programs. Sixty-six percent of employers reported that the growing utilization of GLP-1s has impacted their company’s approach to well-being, with making changes to their program lineup the most common reaction. Very few, however, have moved to reduce programming to account for higher GLP-1 spending.

5. Three approaches emerged as consistent offerings around the world: access to nutritious food, physical activity challenges and curating well-being champion networks.

These approaches tend to be offered in all or most countries where employers have operations and lend a hand to employees focused on their physical well-being goals. They also boost other areas of well-being; for example, physical activity challenges often have a social component and well-being champions provide support across the well-being continuum.

6. One hundred percent of surveyed employers include mental health in their well-being strategy.

This broad adoption has cemented this dimension’s prominence in employers’ well-being strategies. While employee assistance programs (EAPs) are the most commonly offered initiative worldwide, employers are promoting stress management, mindfulness and resiliency to employees everywhere.

7. Financial health programs are nearly ubiquitous among employer strategies.

Most employers are providing educational opportunities and tools to support financial decisions, likely as a way to increase financial literacy and engagement in benefits. Some are supporting financial well-being through subsidies or financial contributions to help with certain life events such as student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement and emergency savings.

8. Most employers that offer incentives will maintain their funding in 2025.

In 2025, employers will offer a median amount of $600 in well-being incentives per employee. A few employers are looking to lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) to support the well-being goals of a workforce with diverse needs and interests. However, widespread global adoption of LSAs has been slow to take hold. Looking to 2026, a majority of employers will increase (29%) or maintain (46%) incentive amounts.

More Topics

Resource Mental Health Physical Activity Financial Well-being