The proliferation of ideas on how best to attack employee “sickness” is only rivaled by the rapidly growing number of “wellness” programs. But in a world where 40 percent of employees spend 15 minutes a year thinking about their benefits decisions, what is the secret to communicating and engaging employees in a wellness program that works?

We are in that season again. The time of the year when employers (and their brokers) evaluate changes to their benefit programs. Often, these contemplated changes involve tweaks to existing programs or the rollout of completely new initiatives. A continued hot topic for 2016 is “wellness.”

While there is great variety to the approaches taken by various employers, our research suggests that nearly all employers are confronting the fact that their investments in wellness are returning mixed results. When asked why, one of the top answers is that these programs are failing to adequately engage the target populations in significant numbers.