Preventative health has been a fixture of benefits strategies for years. The logic is airtight: catch problems early, protect people, reduce cost. Every benefits leader agrees with it. Almost none of them can prove it's working.
That gap — between good intention and demonstrable impact — is one of the defining challenges in employee health right now. And it's prompting a harder question: if organisations can't measure whether their preventative health spend is doing anything, are they really investing in prevention at all?
Good intentions aren't translating
The data tells a frustrating story. According to our research, 77% of HR leaders say their business is now investing more in health and wellbeing benefits. And yet just 24% of employees feel their wellbeing is taken seriously where they work.
That's not a spending problem. It's an impact problem. Organisations are putting more in and getting less credit for it — because broad, untargeted provision doesn't land. Generic wellbeing campaigns. Initiatives designed not to cause problems rather than to solve them. Good intention that's diluted before it reaches the people who need it most.
The finance team knows it too. Without data to show what's being used, by whom, and whether it's shifting the needle, even well-intentioned programmes struggle to justify their budgets. The conversation is shifting: benefits leaders are increasingly being asked to move from "we believe this is valuable" to "here's what we're seeing." That's a fundamentally different position — and it requires a fundamentally different approach.
Health isn't uniform. Health benefits shouldn't be either.
Every employee arrives at health differently. Different ages, different life stages, different family histories, different symptoms they've been quietly ignoring for months.
A 27-year-old might want a full health MOT — not because anything's wrong, but because they want to know their baseline and protect their future. A colleague in their 40s wants to understand whether what they're experiencing is perimenopause. Someone else has been struggling with bloating for years and finally wants a food intolerance test. Another wants genetic screening because heart disease runs in their family.
These aren't edge cases. This is just what a real workforce looks like.
And yet most employer-funded health assessment schemes are built around a single provider — which means a single menu of tests, a fixed set of clinics, and a benefit that works brilliantly for some employees and barely at all for others. Good intention, limited reach.
That's the gap Epassi UK's Discounted Health Assessments are built to close — with access to 100+ assessments across 1,600+ clinics nationwide, so every employee can access the test that's actually right for them.
What employees are actually asking for
Here's what makes this more urgent: employees aren't passive in this. They know what they want. Our research found that 64% of employees would like their workplace to introduce free overall health assessments — rising to 70% of Gen Z workers.
That's a clear signal. Not a vague desire for "better wellbeing support" — a specific ask for access to preventative, proactive health tools. Employees want to understand their own health before problems arise. Employers who respond to that directly, with something tangible and easy to access, are the ones who'll close the gap between investment and perceived impact.
Prevention only works if people can actually access it
Before you can measure outcomes, you need the basics in place. Employees need to be able to get a health assessment without it costing a significant amount, without navigating a complex process, and without a long wait.
That's the gap Epassi UK's Discounted Health Assessments are built to close.
Through HealthiFlex and MyHealthDiscounts, employers can give every employee access to the UK's largest network of discounted health assessments — covering in-clinic appointments, at-home test kits, remote GP consultations and online health services. With discounts across 100+ assessments and 1,600+ clinics nationwide, it removes the practical friction that stops people from engaging with preventative care in the first place.
The clinical case is compelling too. Health assessments can help identify conditions before symptoms appear, and timely action can prevent up to 80% of chronic conditions. That's not a marginal improvement — it's the difference between an issue caught early and one that costs significantly more to manage later.
From nice-to-have to business metric
Employers moving fastest on this aren't doing it purely out of duty of care. They're doing it because preventative health is increasingly legible as a business metric — one that shows up in absence data, long-term claims costs, and retention figures.
92% of businesses in our research reported seeing improvements in productivity as a result of increasing health and wellness benefits. The ROI case is there. What's often missing is the access layer — the practical mechanism that gets employees actually using preventative care, rather than theoretically having access to it.
Epassi UK's schemes are built to be simple to implement, whether through salary deduction via HealthiFlex or a self-paid model through MyHealthDiscounts. The barrier is low. The long-term value isn't.
The window is now
Preventative health has been on the agenda for two decades. What's changing is the expectation that it will actually deliver — and the tools available to make sure it does. Employers who build the access piece properly now are the ones who'll have something meaningful to measure later.
Discounted health assessments are the practical first step. Find out more about Epassi UK's health assessment schemes →
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