REGINA IHRKE: I keep focusing on, from our employers, they have decided that they are going to make disruptive changes over the next three years. And so if disruptive changes are on the horizon, I kind of question things on, what does disruptive changes mean?
Really, what does that mean? And it's always different for every employer. And it's very much on the eye of the beholder on how you measure disruption. But what we're hearing from these three, from employers is they're going to need to have significant changes to make this next piece happen from a affordability and financial sustainability perspective.
And so if you think about managing big time pieces of healthcare cost, that happens in shifts towards plan-design innovation. Risk management strategies like captives and ICHRA are actually going to start to see themselves come to light this next few years -- and a lot more vendor oversight.
We already saw that creeping up last year but will continue this year. And then there's global. There's still a global push that we're seeing on overall preventive care to try to get ahead of the curve that a lot of employers are already seeing in the United States that's happening.
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, which makes a whole lot of sense. Preventative care just makes so much sense. And definitely, we're seeing organizations want to revisit and refocus on prevention to get ahead of that curve, like you say.
But really, I mean, much of the gains in preventive care are probably, at best, medium or long term, unless maybe you think about technology. And that technology part now is now. And it's going to play a huge role here today. Is that what you're seeing too?
REGINA IHRKE: Yeah. I mean, if I'm not talking about GLP-1s, I'm talking about AI. So AI and analytics are set to play a much larger role. Nearly 80%, I think we're hearing, of employers believe AI will transform healthcare benefits within the next three years, especially in the areas of navigation, decision support for employees, and crucial cost management.
It's about making those smarter, data-driven choices. But wellbeing is still important to many employers. It's not gone away. It's, how do you balance that wellbeing with cost management? That seems to be the ask and the challenge that we're all going for. What do you think when you think about that, Wendy?
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah. And as you and I have talked about, I think organizations, they want to keep wellbeing as a top priority because it just really has to be in order to get through these times and to develop a resilient workforce. And really, five years out from the pandemic, wellbeing has really kind of become embedded in total rewards and benefit strategies and, really, actually, in culture.
Lots of organizations still really wanting it to be part of everyday life at the organization. So I think we're seeing as some of the next steps, really, thinking-- and this goes along with your AI piece-- this idea of hyperpersonalization and choice and really making the programs and practices that make up a wellbeing approach to be just much more meaningful to meet the diverse needs of the employee population.
I think it's, what, 70% of organizations said that they plan to expand benefit choice in the next three years. Because we know that high-choice environments directly correlate with higher satisfaction from employees and higher levels of wellbeing. But as you have just mentioned, maybe that puts even more pressure on employers to get employees to the benefits they need in the moments that matter.
That's all about navigation. And we really expect and hope, maybe-- there's a bit of hope there-- that AI and technology are really going to step in here and really help reshape how personalized health and wellbeing approaches are delivered.
REGINA IHRKE: Right. And it's not about offering more. I think that's a key piece of choice. It's not really about offering that more piece but really offering the right things for each person. And we're seeing holistic wellbeing strategies really mature.
My gosh, if we think about where we were at five years ago, Wendy, to where we are now, holy moly. Employers have done a really big effort --
WENDY POIRIER: A ton.
REGINA IHRKE: -- to get the word out and the understanding of the commitment to wellbeing.
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and even if you think about last year, when we were talking about this, Regina, that huge gap we saw in 2024 between employer priorities and employee priorities, we talked about this a lot last year. We talked about this a lot with employers, who were a bit maybe deer in the headlights.
Like, wow, how did we miss that? But yeah, that was the whole difference between their huge focus and their continuing focus on mental and emotional wellbeing, which, don't get me wrong, as we both would agree, that's still a huge part.
It should be a huge focus of employers. But employees had said they were really struggling with financial being, and that was their biggest issue. And employers had not really risen to that challenge. But I think we both saw, in 2025, that they did, that there was a lot more from developing that holistic approach, a lot more around financial being, a lot more connecting and recognizing how financial wellbeing connects to emotional and mental health, how it connects to physical and social health.
So that definitely is seeing way more true, holistic approaches to wellbeing and then more targeted support across the spectrum in each of those areas for the diverse employee segments. We think caregivers see lots of leave work going on, lots of caregiver support focused in on things like low-wage employees or workers, maybe under-represented groups.
And I know you know this better than I do, that healthcare plan design is becoming a lot more dynamic and employee centric, more things like lifestyle accounts being offered for more truly personalized support.
REGINA IHRKE: Yeah, it definitely sounds like a much more tailored approach that we're able to really start to dip our toes in the water on. And with all these offerings, we can't do them without vendors, Wendy. But are the vendors really working? I mean, what's your take on what's happening with vendors that help support this?
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, I think we're seeing more and more intense work on vendors. I think that's going to continue to ramp up, that whole idea of optimizing the array of vendors, particularly in a cost-focused environment. Are you getting what you paid for?
Do you need to pay for all those different vendors? What are the outcomes? How are you managing performance? So we're seeing activity around service-level agreements and monitoring those agreements, looking at the outcomes.
I think that's just going to intensify. I think employers are going to demand more from their vendors, better integration between them, clear return on the amount that they're investing in these vendors, and then just overall alignment with organizational values on top of what I'd call the basic blocking and tackling around measuring accountability, making sure there's data-driven insights, making sure that all the technology works and, again, is integrated amongst all the different vendors, employee reporting. All those things, I think, are just going to continue to be a focus for employers.
REGINA IHRKE: Yeah. And that brings us to the next point, this overarching role of tech and AI. There's that word again. So we touched on it. But let's dive deeper into how AI is going to shape wellbeing in 2026. What do you think?
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, it's a huge topic, right? And what do we see in our research? And there's so much research now about this. But I think one of the telling stats to me is about 3/4 of employers see AI as a tool to enhance employee's performance, not necessarily to replace them or to reduce the labor need.
Although-- that's what the research says-- what practice seems to be is perhaps, maybe, even more layoffs than we've seen in a long time in 2025. So we're going to be working with smaller teams under a lot of pressure from a cost management and keeping people well. So more pressure and focus on doing more with AI.
REGINA IHRKE: Yeah. So maybe more augmentation than replacement. That's what I'm hearing, Wendy.
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, yeah.
REGINA IHRKE: What kind of AI-powered tools do you think we're going to expect or what you're hearing in the marketplace?
WENDY POIRIER: Yeah, I think we see it across the whole benefit ecosystem, from that front end, virtual health coaches, virtual mental health counseling, those kinds of things, personalized guidance to support people, predictive analytics at the other end of the spectrum to see if we can really get ahead of trends and understand what is going to be affecting our population. So I think, really, I mean, we're just starting to see it in its early stages. But we're really going to see AI become a standard part of how wellbeing is delivered and managed.
REGINA IHRKE: So if employees and members are really starting to use AI and more virtual, then obviously it feeds into a data-driven decision-making process. Does that really become the norm?
WENDY POIRIER: I think so. I mean, I think what we're seeing is, what, 65%, almost 65% of employers already use measurement insights to inform their design, vendor selection. And I think some of what's restricted employers from using more data to drive decisions and design is just the resources it takes and the time.
So if AI can help us overcome some of those resource and time constraints, then I think there's kind of nothing stopping us from getting AI to really support a data-driven approach that gives us insights we really need to fully inform decisions about wellbeing programs and practices. So how about mental health? What are you seeing in mental health?
REGINA IHRKE: We've done a lot of work in mental health over the last several years. I think employers have committed a ton more than they did in the prior five years before that. It is now an imperative.
It is clear organizations need to manage this piece. But mental health is really a key piece. They've really started to edit the piece of EAPs, and they've leaned in on that. But now they're asking for more. So they have more awareness of psychosocial in the workplace.
There's more about mental health first aid and awareness, and there's greater tools. And now they're leaning into it's really important still and how do we lean in? So that's the next question, I think, Wendy, is, how do they lean into mental health after they've done those first steps of resetting the baseline?
WENDY POIRIER: I'm so happy you mentioned psychosocial risks and health, Regina. It's one of my things close to my heart. I do see that. I mean, both from a regulatory perspective, globally, it's been rising lots, maybe perhaps following the really big push in Australia around psychosocial risk assessments.
But many countries are putting those requirements in. So absolutely, it's become a big topic. And in some ways, it does actually pull in together more of what goes on with mental health, the idea of work-life balance and how you design jobs so that they have enough decision-making latitude so that employees feel that they are rewarded adequately for the kind of effort they put into work.
So psychosocial safety, I think, is a nice way to pull a lot of that mental health stuff together. And so I think we're seeing more organizations think that way as well and as a way to really make their mental health go to the next level. So I think we're going to see more in 2026 around that, which gets us to, how do we put it all together?
Looking at all this wellbeing landscape, for wellbeing, it's definitely more complex, I think definitely more critical. What do you think?
REGINA IHRKE: Oh, it truly is. Looking ahead to this year, the imperative is clear. Organizations are really, really focused on managing cost, but they don't want to lose sight of the investments that they made and want to continue to make in that holistic and inclusive wellbeing.
They do want to continue to embrace innovation, just as they have over the last 15 years, and how do they leverage technology and really make an impact where it matters for where their members need it most?
WENDY POIRIER: Right. So I mean, ultimately, the goal in 2026 is to navigate the current cost crisis but also build that resilient, engaged, thriving workforce for the future. Lots ahead, for sure. That's a big ask for employers. So good luck to us and to them.
REGINA IHRKE: Yeah. So a lot of tough prioritization that they're going to have to do this year, for sure.
