The future of employee wellness: rewarding behaviour, not bailouts

Johannesburg – 12 May 2026 For many human resources (HR) directors, wellbeing can feel like yet another priority that’s competing for limited budget, time, and attention. But Guy Chennells, Chief Commercial Officer of Discovery’s Corporate and Employee Benefits division, argues that wellbeing is not a separate ‘nice to have’ spend item. It’s actually a multiplier of the investment which organisations are already making in their people.

Speaking at the HR Directors’ Conference in Stellenbosch earlier this year, Chennells advised that, when considering where wellbeing fits into the many priorities on an HR director’s desk, it helps to remember that each HR pillar ultimately flows through the people within the business, before it can translate into impact.

“Yes, HR teams are already investing in rewards, growth, performance, engagement, and culture,” he added. “But if employees are struggling mentally, emotionally, physically, or financially, much of that effort will be diluted before it can translate into improved business performance.”

As Chennells explained, “The place of wellbeing is to multiply the effort that you’re already putting into all the other pillars.” In other words, when more employees move from merely coping to being genuinely well, this directly translates into more value which organisations can extract from the same HR spend.

Pillars, inextricably linked

A useful way to understand this is through the link between physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. Chennells is clear that these challenges rarely exist in isolation.

“These pillars are all inextricably linked,” he says. “For example, a person’s depression could be linked to a level of financial responsibility that they simply cannot meet, which could in turn be driven by costly health challenges.”

Here, data becomes powerful. Chennells explains that the Discovery business is a core client of the Corporate and Employee Benefits team, and so the team is able to gain valuable insight through data and partnership with the Discovery human resources department. During the presentation at the HR Directors’ Conference Chennells and Discovery Chief Experience Officer, Steve Teasdale, shared a number of insights, innovations and case studies that have emerged from this.

For example, an internal analysis has found that employees with BMIs outside the healthy range (i.e. with an index above 27) take on average 51% more sick leave days than those whose BMI is within range.

Chennells is careful to frame BMI appropriately. “This is not to body-shame anyone,” he says. “But there’s a statistical link between weight and a number of other critical health conditions. This makes BMI a good measurement index for overall health.”

Absenteeism, or presenteeism with a lack of engagement

For HR leaders, the point is that health impacts productivity. Poorer health often manifests through higher absenteeism, lower energy levels, and reduced capacity to perform. Healthier employees, by contrast, are simply able to contribute more.

“You’re getting a third less absenteeism from the people who are healthier, without you doing a single extra thing,” Chennells notes.

The same pattern appears in mental wellbeing. Employees identified as high risk on standard mental wellbeing questionnaires show significantly higher sick leave scores than those in a healthier range.

And when health improves, productivity does too. Further analysis shows that for employees whose BMIs moved from out of range to within the healthy range (below 27 on the index) over time, their sick leave dropped by almost 20%.

Cause, effect, and targeted interventions

Evidence like this matters because it answers a question every HR director faces: can you actually change an outcome for the better? Chennells believes the answer is yes.

He notes that the real insight is that organisations do not need to do everything for everyone.

Chennells points to the Pareto Effect in relation to wellbeing. “Eighty percent of the consequences in your organisation which result from poor health, or poor wellbeing, come from 20% of the people,” he says.

This means the highest-cost wellbeing issues are often concentrated within a relatively small group of employees. Targeted interventions, informed by data, can therefore outperform broad, generic campaigns aimed at all employees.

“As you target and segment, you start thinking about people in a focused way. This gives you a better outcome,” Chennells explains. “You get about a 20% better impact on behaviour from an intervention when it is highly targeted.”

The worst kind of stress: debt

A financial wellbeing example – or case study – may be the clearest proof that HR does not always need more budget to make a meaningful difference. The Discovery HR team had presented the Corporate and Employee Benefits team with the challenge – financial stress is the number one employee concern, and despite everything being done it just did not seem to be enough. Discovery is not alone, though, because debt stress is widespread, and is one of the strongest hidden drivers of emotional distress and poor performance, yet most employers cannot simply raise salaries to solve it.

Recent retirement reforms in South Africa have added another dimension to the challenge. The introduction of the two-pot retirement system was designed to give employees limited access to their retirement savings, in times of financial pressure.

While the intention was aimed at providing flexibility and relief, the reality is that many employees are withdrawing funds to manage short-term debt or financial emergencies. At the same time, long-standing behaviour remains common: employees resigning from jobs primarily to access their retirement savings. These withdrawals can provide immediate cash flow relief, but they are unfortunately accessed at the cost of long-term financial security.

For employers, it can also contribute towards higher turnover, financial stress, and disengagement among employees who feel trapped in cycles of debt. This is where data-driven financial wellbeing interventions can shift outcomes.

Employees caught in debt cycles often make financial decisions that feel unavoidable in the moment – i.e. withdrawing retirement funds, taking high-interest credit, or leaving jobs to unlock savings. But when these behaviours change, value is created across the entire financial ecosystem.

“If someone avoids withdrawals that they would otherwise have made, that behaviour change has real financial value,” Chennells explains. “That retained money earns valuable fees in the system. If we can prevent withdrawals through better financial support and incentives, we can redirect that value back to the employee.”

If that insight could be unlocked, it would mean that:

• Firstly, employees preserve their long-term retirement savings rather than eroding them through repeated withdrawals;
• Secondly, financial stress decreases as employees regain greater control over their debt and cash flow;
  and
• Thirdly, employers benefit from improved workforce stability and productivity. Financial stress is one of the most significant contributors towards absenteeism, distraction, turnover, and mental health strain in the workplace. Addressing it therefore has ripple effects across engagement and performance.

Discovery Corporate and Employee Benefits responded to the need with an innovation called Debt Reset, built around a simple principle: it is worth it for a Retirement Fund to spend money to get and keep someone out of a debt trap. As Chennells explains it, “Find a way for someone’s behaviour to create value, and then give that value back to them.”

Importantly, the Debt Reset intervention does not require additional employer funding. Instead, it unlocks value that already exists within the system. Employees can pause their retirement contributions for up to twelve months and redirect those funds toward settling debt, up to a maximum of R25 000. For many, this provides the first realistic pathway out of persistent indebtedness. The Debt Reset solution is permitted for those employees who have successfully completed an important financial education, budgeting and coaching session specifically designed for them, and once they can show that they have established a pattern of stable spending.

“The behaviour change is hugely valuable for both the employer and the individual,” Chennells says. “Even better, if we then reward the employee by ensuring that those retirement fund contributions which were missed as a result of the Debt Reset payment plan are also paid back into their fund, the change in behaviour is reinforced again. We just take all the fees related to the withdrawals they would have made and give it back to them as an incentive for doing the right thing. Then we all win.”

Big strides in behavioural change

For HR leaders, the broader lesson is clear: financial wellbeing programmes are not simply about education or creating awareness. When designed around behavioural economics and real financial incentives, they can actively reshape employee financial decisions.

The case studies mentioned above (focused on health data and targeted interventions, and Debt Reset unlocking an existing spend item - namely an employee’s retirement fund - to solve a broader need) also serve as powerful examples of how existing benefits can be made to work harder. HR directors do not always need more money – they simply need better leverage from the money and partners already on the table.

Chennells sums it up like this: “Discovery’s wellbeing spend has not increased once over the last four years. The focus is just concentrated now on targeted groups with specific key objectives. And we are seeing increasingly positive behaviour, better engagement, and higher productivity scores overall.”

For HR leaders under pressure to deliver more with less, these case studies reveal significant opportunities. Wellbeing should therefore not be treated as an additional line item that needs justification.

Instead, it can be harnessed to dial up the impact of all the other HR investments already in place – by unlocking more value from the people these investments are designed to support.