The benefits industry has solved access. Now it must solve behaviour. 

For more than a decade, the employee benefits market has focused on one central challenge: access. 

Employers have invested heavily in platforms, wellbeing programmes, health benefits and digital tools designed to help employees live healthier lives. The result is a workplace health ecosystem that is arguably more sophisticated than ever before. 

Yet one uncomfortable reality remains. Many employees still fail to engage with the support available to them. The question facing the industry is no longer whether organisations offer enough wellbeing support. It is whether employees are changing their behaviour as a result. 

That distinction could define the next chapter of workplace health. 

As workplace health moves beyond access and towards engagement, new questions are emerging around behaviour change, prevention and the role of technology. To explore what that future might look like, The Well Crowd spoke to Guy Clarkson, who was appointed Head of Online for Health Solutions at Aon UK earlier this year. We discussed AI, personalisation and why the industry may need to rethink how it measures success. Here’s what he had to say. 

“The real challenge is helping people use benefits in ways that genuinely change behaviour,” says Clarkson. “We need to shift the question from ‘What else can we offer?’ to ‘What gets in the way of someone taking action?'” 

The answer, he argues, often lies in seemingly simple barriers. Confusing signposting, friction in the employee journey, stigma and lack of time can all prevent people from accessing support. 

As a result, organisations may need to rethink what success looks like. 

Rather than continuously adding new benefits, the focus may need to shift towards understanding employee behaviour and designing pathways that make healthier choices easier. 

The next generation of workplace health technology 

This shift has significant implications for workplace health technology. 

The first generation of benefits platforms largely focused on digitising administration and giving employees easier access to services. The next generation will be judged on something different: outcomes. 

“The next wave will be judged on whether it improves health outcomes and decision-making, not just administration.” Clarkson says. 

He believes the most effective platforms will move beyond acting as digital catalogues of benefits and instead will curate relevant support, use data to understand what works and integrate wellbeing into the natural flow of work. 

“The differentiator won’t be how many point solutions an employer has, but how seamlessly and intelligently they are connected.” 

This reflects a broader challenge facing the sector. As the number of wellbeing solutions continues to grow, complexity itself risks becoming a barrier to engagement. 

The organisations that succeed may not be those offering the most support, but those creating the simplest employee experience. 

The workplace becomes a health platform 

At the same time, expectations of employers are changing. Work is increasingly recognised as one of the most influential environments affecting physical and mental health, as well as long-term wellbeing. 

This is prompting a shift from treatment towards prevention. 

“The workplace already functions as a major health environment,” Clarkson says. For him, the question is not whether employers should play a role in preventative health, but whether they are prepared to do so effectively. 

The organisations making the greatest progress are typically those treating workforce health as a strategic business issue rather than a standalone wellbeing initiative. They focus on identifying specific workforce risks, supported by data, technology and specialist expertise. 

Importantly, Clarkson does not believe employers should become healthcare providers. Instead, their role is to bring together insurers, clinicians, advisers and technology partners around shared prevention goals and measurable outcomes. 

The promise and reality of personalisation 

Personalisation has become one of the workplace wellbeing industry’s favourite phrases. Yet despite advances in technology, many employees still receive largely generic communications and wellbeing recommendations. 

Clarkson believes the gap between what is technically possible and what organisations currently deliver remains significant. 

“Technically, hyper-personalisation is already here,” he says/ “Practically, most organisations are still in the early stages.” 

He argues that the barriers to scaling personalisation are rarely technological. Instead, data governance concerns, organisational silos and cultural challenges often prevent employers from making full use of available capabilities. 

Over time, however, workplace health experiences are likely to become increasingly responsive to an individual’s circumstances, behaviours and risks. 

The goal is not simply personalised content. It is delivering the right support at the right moment. 

“The step change will come when strong analytics are combined with hyper-personalised communication that feels supportive, not intrusive,” Clarkson says. 

The AI transformation 

Artificial intelligence is likely to accelerate this transition and while many organisations currently view AI as an efficiency tool, Clarkson believes its greatest impact may be in helping employees navigate increasingly complex health and benefits ecosystems. 

“The most visible change will be moving from hunting through portals to asking simple questions in natural language and receiving tailored, actionable guidance,” he says/ 

Clarkson sees a future in whichemployees may no longer need to search through multiple platforms and resources to find support. Instead, AI could help identify needs, recommend interventions and guide individuals towards appropriate services. 

However, he warns that the quality of AI will depend less on the language model itself and more on the quality of the data underpinning it. 

“The depth, breadth, quality and integrity of source data is the AI differentiator, not the LLM being used,” he says. 

Trust, transparency and governance will remain critical if employers are to realise the benefits of AI while maintaining employee confidence. 

Measuring what matters 

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the workplace wellbeing sector is proving impact. 

Historically, organisations have relied heavily on engagement metrics such as logins, clicks and attendance. Those measures are easy to collect; they are much harder to connect to business outcomes. 

“We’ve often measured activity because it’s easy, not because it proves impact,” Clarkson points out, and argues that employers need a more balanced approach. That means combining health indicators, people metrics and business performance measures to create a clearer picture of value. It also requires patience. 

Many preventative health interventions generate returns over years rather than months. Without a longer-term perspective, organisations risk abandoning effective strategies before meaningful results emerge. 

Looking towards 2030 

If today’s wellbeing strategies are built around benefits, Clarkson believes tomorrow’s will be built around workforce health. Several assumptions underpinning current approaches may look outdated by the end of the decade. 

The idea of a standard benefits package designed for an average employee is likely to become increasingly obsolete. Annual wellbeing cycles may give way to continuous, data-led support. Most significantly, employee health may no longer be viewed as a cost centre. 

Instead, workforce health is increasingly being recognised as a strategic asset. 

“The biggest shift is seeing workforce health less as a cost and more as a strategic asset that underpins performance and risk management.” 

If that prediction proves correct, the future of workplace wellbeing will look very different from today. 

The organisations that succeed will not necessarily be those offering the most benefits – they will be the ones that understand how to change behaviour, prevent ill health and create healthier workforces at scale.