May 20, 2025

Amid Uncertainty, Employers Continue Well-being Investments

In 2025, employers must respond to numerous pressures and influences: rising health care costs, an uncertain global economy, and world events, such as geopolitical conflict and climate-related emergencies. These pressures, resulting in competing resource needs, could easily draw attention away from prioritizing well-being.

However, despite these headwinds, employers have instead seen the need for programs that improve employee well-being. As seen in Figure 1.1, 96% of employers say that well-being plays a role in their overall workforce strategy, with 44% viewing it as integral and 52% saying that it is a component of their strategy. Furthermore, nearly all employers will either increase (20%) or maintain (73%) their investments in well-being, influenced by the macro environment in 2025 (Figure 1.2).

Despite ongoing economic pressures and rising health care costs, employers have maintained a strong commitment to funding well-being initiatives. Employers allocated a median of $188 per employee annually toward well-being, accounting for approximately 3% of their overall health budgets. This sustained investment reinforces employers' view that well-being programs are important to overall business success.

Employers are Optimistic About Well-being Programs’ Impact

Employees’ health risks continue to be a challenge for employers. In response to the sustained and increasing chronic health needs of employees, organizations may question the role of well-being programs, especially in concert with, or perhaps in contrast to, other solutions such as pharmaceutical treatments like GLP-1s.

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Cost increases give us the platform with our leadership to show how well-being services can help save on those rising expenses.

- Jerry Wallace, Straumann Group

With this quandary in mind, the survey sought to gauge employers’ confidence in well-being programs’ ability to positively impact employee health. Figure 1.3 shows that a vast majority of employers agree that well-being programs have an impact on employees’ health, with 31% seeing a significant impact and 56% asserting that they have a moderate impact.

Progress Made in Reaching Goal of Global Consistency of Well-being Programs

Multinational employers face the ongoing challenge of providing a consistent set of offerings around the world. In fact, employers’ number one challenge in implementing a global well-being strategy is that employee needs vary between countries, followed by the lack of support or budget at the local level (Figure 1.4)

Despite these challenges, most employers have a well-being strategy that guides their own company’s approach to consistency. About 31% deploy the same well-being programs globally, and another 38% strive for consistency, but at the same time, allow for approaches to be tailored to each market.

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We ideally would strive for global consistency, but the reality is that reaching these different groups in different countries becomes a tangled web of how well-being information gets to certain people. The question is always: What is done with that information once it’s received?

- Cindy Friman, Mondelez International

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