Employee Health & Wellness February 2026

Just Some Of The Topics Being Addressed During This Session

Beyond the Surface: Mental Health Strategy Matters - Director Total Rewards at Six Flags Entertainment

• Understanding the Mental Health Landscape
•  How Employee Wellbeing Impacts The Workplace
• Considerations When Developing Your Strategy
• The Evolving Vendor Landscape

The Future of Total Rewards - Sr Director Compensation, Benefits & Compliance at Inmar

• Well-Being as the New Currency of Engagement
• Balancing Cost and Competitiveness
• Compensation and benefits strategy must evolve from transactional to transformational a lever for engagement, trust, and long-term organizational success.

AI Adoption in Total Rewards - Director of People at University Federal Credit Union (UFCU)

Expansion and education on lessons learned from an early adopter - VP of Total Rewards at Dawn Foods

• Timeline Challenges 
• Results
• New additions
• Items in development 
• Lessons Learned

Delivering a better employee experience/how to have strong communication with employees

Sr Director, Global Benefits, Mobility, Immigration & Wellbeing at TransUnion

• How We’re Reimagining Benefits Communications
• Generationally Tailored Messaging
• Break down benefits communication by generational perspectives to ensure relevance and resonance for diverse employee groups.
• Engaging, Multifaceted ChannelsUse dynamic formats—videos, podcasts, interactive tools, and gamification—to make benefits education fun and drive higher engagement.
• Year-Round Campaigns
• Move beyond one-time enrollment pushes to continuous, timely communication that keeps benefits top of mind throughout the year.
• Value-Focused Storytelling
• Highlight the real employee value of benefits and resources, ensuring employees know what’s available when it matters most. Testimonials. 
• Focus Groups. Listen.

The Brand Behind the Benefits: Why Total Rewards Needs Marketing - VP, Total Rewards at VCA Animal Hospitals 

• Elevating Employee Experience Through Strategic Design
• Building a Total Rewards Brand That Inspires
• Total Rewards as a Strategic Asset

Beyond the Chatbot: AI as Your Benefits Co-Architect in 2027 - Director of Employee Benefits at Veolia North America

Forget AI as just another vendor tool—what if artificial intelligence became your strategic partner in reimagining benefits from the ground up? In this interactive brainstorming session, we'll push past today's automation and explore how AI could fundamentally transform how we design, predict, personalize, and deliver benefits experiences that employees actually value. Through guided small-group discussions, you'll explore provocative scenarios where AI doesn't just make benefits faster—it makes them smarter, more human, and radically more effective. Leave with ideas you can't implement Monday morning, but might be piloting by 2027.

The Importance of Quality Care- Senior Director of Benefits & Wellness at JB Hunt Transport

The Art of Total Rewards in the Shadows of Pay Transparency - Head of Total Rewards at Turner & Townsend

• Has pay transparency killed merit?
• Will missing salary ranges on postings deter Gen Z?
• Is merit antiquated?

From Deal to Day One: Total Rewards in the M&A Lifecycle - Director, Global Benefits at Carrier

•   Components of due diligence for TR
•   Differing strategies navigation
•   Integration complexities for TR

Wondr Health

Future-Ready Weight and GLP-1 Management Strategies for Forward-Thinking Benefits Leaders.

• Emerging trends in weight and GLP-1 management: How employers can adapt to changing GLP-1 pricing, rising utilization, and related cost pressures.

• How to navigate the complexities of the weight and GLP-1 landscape and deliver responsible access and measurable outcomes.

• Future-ready strategies for cost containment: Practical approaches to reduce near-term GLP-1 spend and bend the long-term cost curve through prevention and whole-person health.

Teladoc                                                                                                                                           

From Fragmented to Connected: A Better Health Experience for Workforces

Employers face rising healthcare costs, fragmented vendors, and growing demand for mental health and cardiometabolic care, creating complexity and lost productivity. Leading organizations are moving to integrated, AI-powered care models that close care gaps early, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.

What Employers Will Learn:

• Why fragmented care and delayed detection drive higher claims and productivity loss.
• How integrated, connected care models simplify benefits, lower costs, and improve employee health.

Firefly

Evaluating and RFP’ing an Alternative Health Plan for Better Affordability, Quality, and Cost Control

Learn about the growing landscape of alternative health plans (AHPs) and how an AHP can drive your desired health plan outcomes. We’ll share what employers need to be looking for when they evaluate AHPs and Firefly’s own alternative health plan that unlocks affordability, better health outcomes, and an unparalleled member experience, all while providing real cost savings for employers. 

• Learn how AHPs can offer better access to care, quality, and affordability 
• Hear key factors that employers must assess the AHPs they are considering on for maximum impact
• Learn about Firefly’s clinically-driven alternative health plan

Healthee

Reimagining Employee Healthcare: Leveraging AI to Deliver Personalized, Efficient, and Future-Ready Health Experiences 

• Describe key challenges in healthcare benefits and their impact on employee outcomes and organizational costs. 
• Explain how AI transforms healthcare through predictive analytics, personalization, and reduced administrative burdens. 
• List steps HR leaders can take to adopt AI-powered healthcare solutions tailored to workforce and organizational needs.

Incomm

Confused, Declined, and Underutilized - What YOU wish you knew about HSAs

Are employees and employers truly maximizing HSA value? We surveyed 1,227 HSA users to understand how they view and use their accounts— and uncovered the key needs, challenges, and solutions that can help close the HSA underutilization gap.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why employees underuse their HSAs - and what’s confusing them
• The surprising impact of card declines and reimbursement hassles
• What features employees actually want (hint: cash back + automation)
• How delays in care tie back to HSA design
• Easy ways employers can boost engagement and satisfaction

whiskerDocs

The Pet Effect: Why pets are a big deal in today’s employee market

• Our changing culture on how pets are regarded, and generations having fewer children
• The impact pets have on employees’ health and well-being
• How pet telehealth works, and how it offers time and cost savings to their employees
• The impact, the pet effect, on the organization on attraction, engagement, retention, productivity, presenteeism, and influence long-term healthcare costs at the source

SmithRx

Reducing the Complexity & Cost of Pharmacy Benefits

In this session, pharmacy benefits experts will walk through the essentials of the
pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) landscape today—and how it impacts your company's
bottom line. Discover how legacy PBMs pose fiduciary risks and what modern alternatives exist
to help you lower pharmacy spend and improve member experience. You'll walk away with
actionable tools to evaluate your current PBM 39s savings claims and vet potential partners to ensure your benefits programs can thrive.

Color

From Awareness to Action: Strategies and Considerations to Combat Cancer’s Rising Tide

As the number one cost and the number one cause of death for working-age adults, cancer is
already top of mind for benefits leaders. And as incidence increases and costs of treatment show no signs of slowing down, employers are recognizing the critical importance of making comprehensive cancer care more available to their members, and more cost-effective for their plan. But with many emerging vendors, focused on various points of care across the cancer journey– second opinion services, end-of-life care, treatment and diagnostic services, and more– benefits leaders are often left wondering where to begin. It’s no small decision.

This workshop is intended to get you thinking about your company’s cancer care needs and help you understand what cancer solution would be best for the population you’re serving. We’ll outline critical questions to ask as you evaluate your cancer care needs and strategies for in-year planning and for the 2026 plan year.

Key Takeaways:

• What areas of care benefits leaders should focus on to truly move the needle and provide
  better health outcomes and reduce healthcare spend
• What questions to ask and how to sift through the myriad of available cancer care options
• What constitutes inclusivity in cancer care, and how to ensure that all employees have access
  to crucial cancer care services

ProgenyHealth

Managing Rising Maternal and Infant Health Costs: A Strategic Imperative for Self-
Insured Employers

Newborn cost trends in the U.S. are driven by a small subset of high-risk births that
account for a disproportionate share of the total healthcare spend. For self-insured plans,
this creates an unsustainable financial and clinical burden and means escalating claims and
growing concern for employee families.

The average cost of a NICU admission is $62,000 and rising. Nationally, maternal and
NICU-related costs are now among the top drivers of healthcare costs for self-insured
employers. Additionally, a NICU admission can have a devastating financial impact on
employees, as many are responsible for paying up to 20% coinsurance of the admission cost.

In this session, ProgenyHealth will reveal the key cost drivers and risk factors—including
rising risk during pregnancy, behavioral health, and social determinants—that profoundly
impact maternal and infant outcomes. You will learn how a unique whole population
approach to pregnancy and newborn care can:

• Significantly reduce NICU utilization and associated costs.
• Improve outcomes across all risk levels in pregnancy-not just the high-risk cases.
• Deliver measurable savings on your maternal and infant health strategy.

Learn how shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach can protect your bottom line
while better supporting your workforce. Join us to explore proven strategies and actionable
insights that empower self-insured plans to take control of maternal and infant
health—before costs spiral out of reach.