This article explains how employers can use health and wellbeing data to improve workforce performance and business results. Written by the team at HealthNEXT, led by President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ray Fabius, it is designed for C suite executives, CHROs, and CFOs who are accountable for workforce strategy and financial performance. It focuses on employer health and wellbeing analytics, including concepts such as the population health continuum, illness burden, and integrated dashboards that link clinical, productivity, and experience outcomes. 

Why your organization’s health data isn’t telling a story yet 

Most employers are swimming in data from health plans, PBMs, disability carriers, EAPs, and wellness vendors, yet still struggle to answer a basic question: “What does this say about the health of our workforce and our business?” Data feeds often arrive as fragmented cost reports, emphasize lagging indicators, and underplay the sizeable productivity loss associated with poor health — which research suggests is two to three times direct medical spend. As a result, C-suite leaders see line-item costs, not an integrated view of illness burden, risk, and its impact on performance. 

A population health continuum view changes this narrative by tracking your people from those who are well to whose at risk, through their bouts of acute illness, to the diagnosis of their chronic disease, and catastrophic illness. When you connect this continuum to business metrics—absenteeism (health-related days lost), presenteeism, disability, safety incidents, and turnover—you can frame health as a performance lever instead of a benefits expense. 

Grouping vs. splitting: Framing health prevalence for the C-suite 

Most standard reports split data into narrow diagnostic categories that fail to communicate the true magnitude of an enterprise’s challenge. For example, you might see separate prevalence figures for depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, substance abuse and alcohol problems; each line looks small on its own and is easy for leadership to dismiss. For most employers grouping the prevalence of these separate conditions demonstrates the remarkable potential influence behavioral health can have on productivity.  For many employers this is the number one health related concern for work performance on a population scale. 

A grouping approach aggregates related conditions into strategic diagnostic categories that can best direct health and wellbeing efforts to be most impactful. Instead of five separate mental health conditions independently evaluated, you group them and show that one in four employees has a significant behavioral health issue. 

• Instead of treating obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol as isolated findings, you group them as cardiometabolic risk and connect them to cardiovascular claims, disability, and deaths. 

• Instead of listing rare catastrophic conditions by name, you group them as “high-cost claimants” and link them back to upstream risk factors and care gaps. 

For example, when Dr. Fabius presented a grouped mental health view to one CEO—demonstrating that one out of every four employees had a behavioral health condition—it fundamentally changed the executive’s understanding of the issue and action plan. Grouping shifts the conversation from “we have some depression and anxiety” to “a quarter of our workforce is struggling.” 

Waterfall reporting: Following impact from eligibility to outcome 

Another reason health and wellbeing investments underperform on paper is that many vendors report only final outcomes or participation rates, not where potential impact is lost along the way. For example, a vendor may report on the percentage of program completions, but only accounting for those who participated, not for the total population who may have benefited from the intervention. Waterfall reporting solves this by mapping the entire journey from the total eligible population to those who actually improve. 

A robust waterfall for a diabetes management program, for example, would show: 

• Total number of diabetics in your population (e.g., 1,440 people) 

• Number with valid contact information who can be invited. 

• Number contacted 

• Number who enroll 

• Number who actively participate 

• Number who complete the program 

• Number who achieve improved clinical or utilization outcomes after completion 

With this line of sight, you can separate employer issues from vendor issues. 

• If there is a large drop from total eligible to “invitable,” you likely have data quality or contact information problems that HR and IT must fix. 

• If many are eligible and invited but few enroll, you have a marketing and communications problem because employees aren’t appreciating the program’s value. 

• If enrollment is strong, but completion and outcomes are weak, the program design and vendor execution needs scrutiny. 

Waterfalls turn “the program isn’t working” into “here is exactly where we’re losing people and who owns that step,” which is the level of specificity the C-suite needs to make governance and investment decisions. This approach is no different than how businesses control manufacturing production or supply chain management. 

Illness Burden PlacementTM: One page that connects risk to business impact 

To truly align health and wellbeing strategy with business strategy, you need a one page view of your organization’s illness burden that integrates multiple data sources. Dr. Fabius refers to this as an Illness Burden Placement™: a single page that orders, by prevalence, the key elements that define the health of your workforce. 

That page should show, in grouped form: 

• Top risk factors (e.g., obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, high blood pressure) 

• Top reasons why the covered lives are accessing care (grouped by major clinical domains, such as musculoskeletal, cardiometabolic, and behavioral health) 

• Top reasons why the covered lives are taking medication (such as behavioral health, or cardiovascular) 

• Most prevalent chronic conditions 

• Most common drivers of high-cost claimants 

• Leading causes of disability both short term and long term 

• Leading causes of death (derived from life insurance claims) 

When you line these up, patterns emerge. For instance, if cardiometabolic risk factors are prevalent, cardiovascular conditions dominate claims and pharmacy, drive disability and high-cost claimants, and are the leading cause of death, you now have a clear, evidence-based rationale to invest in cardiometabolic prevention and care.  

From metrics to a corporate health cockpit 

The end goal is not a bigger report—it is a cockpit: an integrated collection of key metrics that lets leaders manage workforce health as a strategic asset. A mature cockpit aligns with healthcare quality’s Triple Aim: improving population health, controlling cost and productivity loss, and elevating employee experience and satisfaction. 

Effective C-suite ready metrics and visuals share several traits: 

• Quantitative with clear numeric values rather than vague ratings 

• Actionable, linked to specific levers in benefits, workplace design, and management practices 

• Leading where possible (e.g., risk factor prevalence, primary care attachment) rather than purely lagging (e.g., last year’s spend) 

• Causally connected, showing how risk leads to disease, claims, productivity loss, and turnover 

Visualization matters. Simple, executive friendly tools, such as red/yellow/green streetlights, gauges against targets, and trend arrows help leaders quickly see where they are on track and where intervention is urgent. Site and business unit level scorecards and dashboards can be rolled up into an enterprise level cockpit, creating constructive competition among locations and shining a light on leaders who have built superior cultures of health and safety. 

Ultimately, integrated health and wellbeing data should enable you to demonstrate that a healthier workforce is not just “nice to have,” but a persistent source of productivity, resilience, and financial outperformance. When your data is grouped strategically, tracked through waterfalls, and organized into an Illness Burden Placemat™ and health and wellbeing cockpit, the health of your people becomes legible and investable for the C-suite. Effective health informatics converts employee health from “a cost to control” to an investment. Research by HealthNEXT and others have demonstrated that a healthy workforce is a competitive advantage.  

Related Resources: NEXTpert Take: Data-driven Population Health Strategies