Reaching the Unreachable: 22% Activation Across a 57,000-Person Non-Desk Workforce
Key takeaways
- Baylor Scott & White Health reached 22% activation across 57,000 employees in seven months, well above the low-single-digit norm for point solutions.
- 80% of the workforce is non-desk, a population most digital benefits struggle to reach at all.
- A connected suite of benefits drove the result. One program’s outreach lifted enrollment in others, so employees found more of what they needed through a single front door.
Every benefits leader evaluating a new solution asks the same question, usually somewhere in the first meeting: will our people use it? A program nobody engages with is a line item, not a benefit. And most of the industry gives them reason to worry, since point solution utilization tends to sit in the low single digits.
Baylor Scott & White rolled Levanto out to its workforce of 57,000 employees, 80% of whom are non-desk workers. Seven months in, 22% of the marketable population had activated. For context, that’s several times the engagement most point solutions report, and it happened with a workforce that’s traditionally hard to reach.
Why the number is high
Good communication played a part, but the bigger driver was structural. When Baylor Scott & White promoted one program, employees signed up for others. Outreach around Mental Health and other condition specific benefits drove demand for Healthy Weight, which went on to pull 3x the enrollment of any other program.
One connected offering meant a single message could open the door to the whole portfolio, not just one condition.
That’s the difference between a stack of separate point solutions and a connected offering. In a fragmented model, every program markets on its own, competes for the same attention, and asks employees to start over with a new login each time. In a connected one, an employee who comes in for a bad back or a question about their weight lands somewhere that can point them toward everything else they’re eligible for. The front door does the work that seven separate enrollment flows never could.
Reaching a non-desk workforce
The 80% figure is worth a closer look. Frontline and shift-based employees are the population benefits teams have the hardest time reaching, because email doesn’t follow them onto the floor. Hitting double-digit activation across that workforce took meeting people where they were and giving them one clear place to go rather than a scatter of programs to track down.
The takeaway for benefits leaders weighing their options: engagement isn’t only about how good the individual programs are. It’s about whether the way in is simple enough that people walk through it. Baylor Scott & White’s numbers suggest that when the offering is connected, they do.
The bottom line
Will people use it is the right question to ask. The Baylor Scott & White data offers an early, concrete answer: 22% activation in seven months, across a hard-to-reach workforce, driven by a connected approach that a collection of point solutions can’t replicate. It’s still early, and there’s more to learn as the data matures. But the direction is clear enough to build on.
