With JOON, People Teams have complete flexibility to create and optimize benefits programs that are aligned with their goals and workforce needs.

<aside> 🧠 Learn how JOON’s smart categories give you total control

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Program strategy

In general, we recommend prioritizing three criteria when designing your benefits program:

1. Flexibility

   Many high-growth organizations notice that their workforces have diverse needs and interests when it comes to personal wellness. A parent may have completely different priorities compared to a single in their 20s. Even two employees who meditate daily may prefer different techniques and apps. As well-intentioned as it may be, hand-picking individual wellness brands and creating one-size-fits-all benefits programs limits individual preference and can lead to lower usage. It isn’t inclusive and will bias toward one group’s preferences over another.

   Instead, make purchases within and across broad categories eligible for reimbursement.

2. Seamlessness

   Ease-of-use and seamlessness for your workforce and benefits administrators are critical for overall program effectiveness. The best employers set ambitious goals for their wellness programs that are directly tied to utilization. They know that successful wellness programs can have significant upside for employers, returning a multiple on the investment into them.

   Remove as many barriers as possible that might prevent your workforce from using their benefits.

3. Adaptation

   Every employee engagement initiative or benefits program is going to need ongoing tweaking and fine-tuning. Some initiatives sound great on paper but fall apart when rubber hits the road. Others are great at first but need to be updated as new trends and more modern wellness solutions become available.

   Use your check-ins with your account manager to review utilization and Purchase Reports in order to improve your programs.

   <aside> 💡 Learn more tips and recommendations, whether you’re creating your first benefits program or improving an existing program.

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Granular customization and best practices

Getting into the nitty gritty details of your benefits program is important because small tweaks can have significant impacts on employee utilization and appreciation. Here’s what our years of data show:

• Allowance rollover: Allowing unspent allowances to carry over to following months sounds generous, but facilitates procrastination and significantly reduces utilization. Benefits recipients amass unspent sums and either forget entirely or make a bulk purchase at the end of the year just to “use their allowance.” This is similar to people going to CVS at the end of the year to buy first-aid kits in order to use leftover FSA funds. This behavior isn’t consistent with the goal of consistently prioritizing health and wellness throughout the year.
• Cadence: Monthly programs create significantly higher engagement than annual programs. While it might be enticing to highlight a large annual number (e.g. $600/year might sound better than $50/month), our data shows that many benefits recipients will either use the entire allowance immediately, save it until the end of the year, or forget about it altogether. That means that most of the year they won’t actually be receiving reimbursements or appreciating your program. Low allowances might not be enticing in other wellness platforms that are tedious and burdensome, but they still work quite well in JOON due to the simplicity of getting set up and reimbursed. Even a $25/month wellness reimbursement can achieve 60%+ utilization and generate significant workforce appreciation.
• Restrictions: Broad and simple wellness benefits rules create higher utilization and appreciation, with minimal administrative burden. Specific restrictions are difficult to enforce and create adverse effects for honest benefits recipients. There are always going to be purchases that fall outside your intended program criteria, but the same is true for other benefits (e.g. an employee can get LASIK surgery on January 1 using not-yet-contributed FSA funds and then resign immediately). We strongly recommend selecting easy-to-understand categories and then only disallowing purchases that truly cross-the-line or are misaligned with your company values. Put specific examples in your categories guide to create clear expectations upfront. If someone is using the benefit and feels supported in their wellness journey, that's typically a win-win situation.
• Big box retailers: At this time, JOON cannot make a distinction based on what the purchase was actually for, in that we do not have access to SKU data on a receipt. For example, our purchase classifier does not know whether a Whole Foods purchase was for fruits and vegetables or toilet paper. Therefore, JOON is more likely to automatically mark a purchase as eligible when it’s directly from brands (e.g. “Headspace”) rather than from box retailers (e.g. “Walmart”). Benefits recipients can upload receipts to request eligibility for purchases from anywhere. Setting up and communicating your benefits categories to your workforce upfront will help to clear any additional eligibility confusion.

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