How AI can measure benefits ROI — and lock in C-suite investment

• Key insight: Discover how AI-driven measurement links wellness benefits to measurable business outcomes.
• What's at stake: Rising healthcare premiums and talent competition threaten margins and organizational resilience.
• Supporting data: Clients report 23% productivity, 15% retention increases, and over 3x ROI year one.
  Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

Workplace wellness support is a must have, but without real ROI data, it's not easy to create an action plan capable of pushing the C-suite to invest additional spend.  

Wellness benefits have become a key element of recruitment, but their impact on business metrics like retention and productivity can be harder to nail down, says Timothy State, founder and CEO of AI-driven predictive intelligence platform Altius. The right technology, he says, can change that.  

"We should absolutely be able to see the ROI of these investments," says State, who previously served as SVP of HR at Humana, and has experienced this challenge firsthand. "It is very straightforward to create that case, measure it, and demonstrate value over time."

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Altius's AI chatbot tool, Alti, combines conversational technology and scientific data to evaluate someone's wellness, offer feedback from scientific sources, and track progress and outcomes. It can also be trained on all of an employer's benefits, steering workers to offerings that may apply to them and gathering data on impact for leaders.

Organizations using Alti show a 23% increase in worker productivity, 15% higher retention and more than three times ROI in year one through improved engagement and benefit utilization, according to Altius. "Employees don't necessarily have to master all the available benefits — those benefits just need to be served up to them at the time that matters most," he observes.

With more holistic data, benefit leaders can better measure the impact of their wellness offerings at both individual and population levels, and determine what's having the greatest impact or where changes should be made, says State. This can help translate the impact of programs to the C-suite. 

"In the back of any CFO's mind, they're thinking, 'Okay, wait a minute. We already have standing investments in multiple different benefits. How does this new resource and those others work together as a system of benefits?' That's where taking that system's view for benefit leaders is really, really important — that we think holistically," he says.

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State explains why tracking well-being is a business advantage, and a strategy for benefit leaders to get a sign off from their C-suite. 

How does a more thorough measurement of wellness benefits improve business outcomes?
There are practical reasons in terms of the employee experience and expectations, but also practical reasons in terms of the cost. When we ask job candidates what is most important to them, or if we look at what is most predictive of current employees remaining with an employer and being highly engaged, whether or not they feel their employer is going to care for their well being … has become central to how people sense value. 

Every benefits leader is facing double-digit premium increases in their healthcare costs, so the appetite is stronger than ever to say, "How do we create the circumstances for a vibrant, restorative, smart application of well-being strategies that can help our workforce thrive?" [We need to] get ahead of non-communicable disease, of lifestyle-driven health risks, and of some of the mental and emotional health strain on the workforce. All of that ultimately translates into health improvement, which helps to bring down those costs.

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What steps go into making a good case for adding or adjusting wellness offerings? 
It starts with a strategy for the population. First, you would assume that whatever this benefit or program is, it's part of something larger. Ideally, it needs to reflect a holistic understanding around how to improve the population, but also how to improve the key ways in which the people in that business serve that business. This helps prioritize where your benefits investments should flow, because they should always point back to the mission and the purpose of the business. 

Then there has to be a way in which you can measure and reliably understand and track the value and the impact that's being created by whatever the benefit is. Ideally, we are able to predict what the impact will be, and give ourselves optionality. That is where some of the technology and the new tools can really be so helpful, because of our ability to bring the data in and see how it works as a system. [Then] you can project ahead reliably and understand what the value is going to look like a year from now, two years from now, and how it's going to play forward. 

Why is incorporating impactful wellness options an essential part of business success? 
To have employees at their very best is critically important for the ongoing work that they do, and that's part of that irreplaceability of the human element in business. As time goes on, that's going to be more and more important, not less.