Low Well-being Participation?

You may not be asking the right questions to solve the problem.

Author

Nicholas Layne
July 27, 2026

Welcome to the Well-being Wire, the bi-weekly newsletter focused on practical strategies and solutions that advance well-being in the workplace.

Here's a question that completely changes how you might think about employee well-being programs:

What if low participation isn't actually an engagement problem?

Most organizations evaluate their programs using one number: overall participation.

Maybe it's 20%, maybe it's 30%, maybe it's higher. But that single number can hide what's really happening beneath the surface.

We recently analyzed participation data across multiple industries, including higher education, manufacturing, banking, and government organizations. What we found was surprisingly consistent.

Participation isn't random. It clusters.

Employees are far more likely to participate when the people around them participate. Behavior forms within the immediate social and operational environments employees experience every day. In other words, participation is often shaped by the department, location, branch, or workgroup someone belongs to—not just by enterprise-wide communication.

That means two departments in the same organization can have dramatically different participation rates even though they received the exact same emails, announcements, and incentives.

One team may be highly engaged while another barely participates at all.
And that's where most organizations get stuck.

They see a moderate participation rate and assume everyone needs more awareness. But awareness isn't the problem if everyone already received the message.

The real questions we should be asking are:

Where is participation already happening, where is it lagging, and what is different about those environments?

What's interesting is that the answers vary by industry.

In government and higher education, participation tended to cluster most strongly at the department level. In banking and manufacturing, work location often had a greater influence. The common theme was that participation consistently formed in the groups closest to employees' day-to-day experience.

The practical takeaway is simple.

Stop looking only at organizational averages.
Start looking at where behavior is clustering.

Identify the groups that are outperforming. Find the groups that are being left behind. Then, tailor communication, outreach, and programming to those specific audiences.

Because participation isn't just an awareness problem.
It's an environmental and cultural phenomenon.

And when organizations understand where behavior is actually forming, they gain a much clearer path to increasing participation and creating lasting change."

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Want more? Check out our full library of past issues here.

An example of a fully customized well-being portal designed by Propel

At Propel, we create made from scratch well-being platforms that are built to fit your brand, goals, voice, initiatives, and culture.

Propel partners with our clients by providing a dedicated team that works collaboratively on a weekly basis to develop a program plan, set metrics, create custom branded communication and marketing materials, plan and implement engagement initiatives, answer questions, and provide strategic advice.

From marketing and communication strategy and execution to well-being champions programming, we design your program (not ours).

If you believe there is value in a well-being program that truly integrates your organizational culture but need strategic guidance or a team to take the workload on for you, Propel would love to help. The easiest way to get started is by scheduling a strategy session with us to discuss your program.

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