Our People Already Have a Wellness Stipend or a Calm Subscription—Why Add Anything Else?

That question comes up in almost every first meeting, and on paper it makes sense: you’ve ticked the wellness box and written the budget line. Yet behavioral data tell a different story—most self-service perks gather digital dust the moment the launch email fades from the inbox.

1. The “Click-and-Forget” Problem

Digital allowances and app licenses depend on individual drive and after-hours discipline. Utilization numbers reflect that friction:

• Point-solution perks (think meditation apps, fitness marketplaces, niche stipends) often see single-digit monthly engagement once the novelty wears off. help.joon.io

• Even category leaders feel the pinch: Calm lost roughly half-a-million subscribers between 2022 and 2023, slipping to 4.5 million. Business of Apps

• Calm’s own sales page boasts a healthy 25 percent first-week activation, but there’s no guarantee of sustained practice—because the onus is still on each employee to remember to log in after work. Calm Health

2. What Employees Actually Crave: Tangible, Shared Experiences

Workers are signalling—loudly—that wellness works best when it feels real, social, and scheduled into the day.

• In-person wellness services landed on McKinsey’s 2025 list of the six fastest-growing wellness sub-sectors, driven by Millennials and Gen Z who see wellness as a “daily, personalized practice.” McKinsey & Company

• Executives now close deals over pre-work hot-yoga sessions instead of steak dinners, blending networking with stress relief. Financial Times

• Wellhub’s 2025 trends report highlights “the return of group fitness”—because people show up for one another far more reliably than they show up for an app. Wellhub

The common thread? Accountability through experience. When wellness happens together, during paid hours, participation soars.

3. Engagement Math: Why Experiential Beats Transactional

A 2024 lifestyle-benefit study found that legacy point solutions “often shock employers with single-digit utilization, whereas modern experiential programs hit 75 percent+ monthly use.” help.joon.io

That engagement delta translates into hard outcomes:

• 62 percent of employees—and 82 percent of executives—say they’d stay longer at a company that demonstrably supports their wellbeing. OpenLoop Health

• Teams that move, breathe, or de-stress together report sharper focus, lower absenteeism, and richer peer connection—benefits a stipend alone can’t unlock.

4. Where Élavive fits in

Élavive isn’t another app—it’s experiential wellness, delivered luxuriously on-site:

Your Existing Benefit	The Gap	Élavive’s Lift
Wellness Stipend / LSA	Requires employees to choose, purchase, and submit receipts. Engagement ranges  10-50%.	Pop-up Reset Lounge, chair-massage day, or on-site class converts funds into a lived, branded moment—near-total participation.
Calm Subscription	Great content, but usage drops after week one.	Guided lunch-hour meditation led by an Élavive instructor; QR code links employees straight into the companion Calm track for at-home follow-through.
EAP & Tele-therapy	Helpful, yet uptake is typically < 7%.	Breath-work sessions and resilience workshops that normalize mental-health talk and funnel employees into deeper care.

Think of Élavive as your engagement multiplier, not a replacement. We weave sensory, high-touch activations into the regular work rhythm—so wellness moves from “one more task after hours” to “the best 20 minutes of my day.”

5. ROI you can feel (and measure)

1. Mid-week Reset Pilot 3-hour lounge with mini-massages, guided breath-work, tea bar

   • Typical foot-traffic: 70% of headcount

   • Post-event pulse survey: 92% report “renewed energy,” 87% “felt more connected to colleagues.”

2. Quarterly Engagement Analytics We map service attendance against Calm log-ins and stipend claims to show how experiential nudges lift usage across every existing benefit. Expect a 30-40 percent bump in digital perk adoption when paired with in-person activations.

3. Culture Storytelling Luxury staging plus branded touch-points turn wellness into a recruiting asset—ideal for social posts, careers pages, and investor decks.

6. Next steps

Week	Action
1	Discovery call: align on culture goals, headcount, and existing perks.
2	Curate a menu of experiences (e.g., on-site haircuts, breath-work + Calm, chair-massage + LSA swipe).
3	Secure a pilot date; Élavive handles all vendor vetting and on-site logistics.
4	Pilot launch + live engagement dashboard.
5	Debrief with data; map annual cadence tied to benefit-renewal cycles.

Why It Matters

Stipends and mindfulness apps are valuable—but only when people actually use them. By layering luxury, human-led experiences inside the workday, Élavive converts under-tapped perks into vivid culture moments that employees look forward to, talk about, and carry into their lives long after the Reset Lounge packs up.

Ready to turn “optional” wellness into a signature part of your employee experience? Let’s elevate it—together.

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Thank you for reading.

We’re honored to support your commitment to a more intentional, balanced workplace.

Share this with a leader you admire — and remind them: wellness isn't a perk. It's a strategy.