5 Smart Ways to Use Expiring Wellness Credits Before Year-End
If your organization has 50+ employees, there’s a good chance your health plan includes wellness funds, credits, or incentives that can be used to support employee wellbeing.
Depending on the carrier and plan, that can mean anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000+ per year.
The problem? A lot of those dollars come with a deadline.
By the last few months of the year, HR and benefits teams often realize they still have funds available, but assume there isn’t enough time left to do anything meaningful with them.
That’s not necessarily true. Even with fewer than 60 days left in the year, there are several ways to turn unused wellness dollars into something your employees can actually benefit from in 2027.
1. Pre-pay for a 2027 wellbeing platform
You don’t necessarily need to launch a new platform before December 31.
Depending on your carrier’s reimbursement rules, you may be able to use this year’s wellness funds to pre-pay for a platform you’ll roll out in 2027. That gives you more time to plan the launch properly while still putting this year’s budget to work.
The Wellbeing Hub gives you an entire year of employee wellbeing programming in one place, including wellbeing content, challenges, benefits resources, communications, and engagement tools.
2. Pre-pay for a year of wellbeing content
Not every wellbeing strategy needs another app.
Consider using your remaining dollars to fund a year of ready-to-use employee wellbeing content: articles, campaigns, challenges, communications, and resources your team can roll out throughout 2027.
This approach is especially useful for small/lean teams that want consistent employee communications without adding another major initiative to manage.
Our Annual Wellbeing Toolkit is built for exactly this. For less than $200/month, HR teams get a steady stream of ready-to-use wellbeing content and campaigns without having to plan, write, and design everything themselves.
3. Invest in an employee wellbeing assessment
Some teams get stuck because they don’t have a sense of what their employees actually need.
If that sounds like you, a wellbeing assessment is a great place to start. Assessments can take different forms, but they can help you understand things like:
Where employees are struggling
Which benefits employees know about and use
What’s getting in the way of participation
Where managers or workplace culture may be contributing to stress
Which wellbeing investments are most likely to make a difference
Two of our most popular options at On the Goga are our Wellbeing Needs Assessment and Psychological Safety Assessment. Both give you clear insights and direction on where to focus your time and budget next.
4. Build your 2027 wellbeing strategy
One of the most impactful things you can do with your year-end wellness credits is set yourself up for the year ahead.
Bring in an expert to review your current wellbeing offerings, employee needs, engagement data, leadership priorities, and existing programming, and turn all of that into a clear operating roadmap for 2027.
This can be especially valuable if your team has accumulated lots of programs, vendors, and benefits over time but doesn’t have a cohesive strategy tying them together.
At On the Goga, we build wellbeing roadmaps for our clients, including: what to prioritize, what to stop doing, what to communicate, when to activate different programs, and how to measure whether it’s working.
5. Host a leadership or team training
Last but certainly not least: use year-end credits to create a powerful development experience for your team before the year is through.
Training can be one of the simplest, highest-impact options to implement quickly, especially because it doesn’t require a long technology implementation or months of planning.
Depending on your workforce, that might mean training around:
Burnout and sustainable performance
Managing stress and uncertainty
Psychological safety
Communication and connection
Navigating change
Building healthier team habits
Manager and leadership effectiveness
AI, change, and the future of work
Need help? We offer virtual and on-site training for both leadership teams and broader employee populations.
Don’t spend the money just to spend the money
If you still have 2026 wellbeing dollars available, don’t assume it’s too late. With the right approach, your remaining funds can become the starting point for a much stronger 2027 wellbeing strategy.
Of course, wellness credit rules vary by carrier, plan, and employer, so before committing funds, you’ll want to confirm what qualifies and when the expense needs to be incurred. We can help with that, too.
At On the Goga, we help employers and benefits partners figure out how to turn your expiring wellbeing credits into content and experiences that actually matter for employees.
Schedule a free introductory call with a wellbeing specialist today to learn more.
