ROI
The real cost of benefits nobody uses
On a spreadsheet, an unused benefit looks harmless: you paid, nobody used it, end of story. In reality it's one of the most expensive items in your budget, because you pay for it three times.
You pay three times
The first payment is the obvious one: the license, the per-employee fee, the retainer. The second is quieter: the problem the benefit was supposed to solve is still there (the stress, the absenteeism, the turnover) and it keeps generating its own costs while the solution sits unopened.
The third payment is the one nobody budgets for: credibility. Every program that launches with fanfare and dies in silence teaches your workforce that benefits announcements can be ignored. The next launch starts in a deeper hole than the last one.
Why “more benefits” makes it worse
The instinctive response to low usage is to add: another wellbeing app, another discount platform, another provider. But every addition means one more portal, one more password, one more welcome email competing for attention.
Usage doesn't add up across a bigger catalog; it dilutes. And a budget spread across twelve barely-used programs is much harder to defend than one concentrated on things that demonstrably work.
The number nobody puts in the deck
There's a simple calculation that changes budget conversations: divide what you pay for each benefit by the number of people who actually used it. Cost per real user, not cost per eligible employee.
With single-digit usage, that number is usually uncomfortable: a per-user figure that would never survive procurement if anyone had written it down on day one. The point isn't to feel bad about it; it's that this is the number to manage, because it improves in only one way: more people actually using what you already pay for.
What to measure instead of catalog size
Catalog size is an input, not a result. The metrics that describe reality are activation (how many people go from need to first use), the time and steps that journey takes, and whether people come back a second time.
None of this requires surveilling anyone. Your providers already report aggregate usage; what's been missing is a channel that moves those numbers. Measure the uplift in the reports you already receive.
From line item to defensible investment
The difference between a benefits budget that gets cut and one that gets renewed is rarely the catalog. It's whether you can walk into the review with evidence that the programs are used, and used more every quarter.
That's the job Lazos does: it turns paid-for programs into used programs, by recommending the right benefit at the right moment and guiding activation to the end. Your providers' own reports show the climb, and your budget conversation changes from faith to numbers.
Find out what unused benefits are really costing you
We'll help you look at your current usage honestly, and show you how Lazos turns programs you already pay for into programs your people use.
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