Can your HR team prove that prevention pays? Grokker Innovation Labs’ latest research reveals that most benefits leaders are using or investing in AI, but not in a way that helps answer that question.
To understand why this matters—and to help provide you with a path forward with AI—the 2026–27 Healthcare Benefits Strategy Survey: AI Strategy & Adoption asked HR professionals which benefits challenges AI is most relevant to solving for their team, what resources employees turn to when they struggle to find or use their benefits, and who in the organization makes AI technology decisions.
The C-suite wants proof, but AI is solving a different problem
Survey insight: CFOs want proof that prevention works to reduce healthcare costs. Actuarial validation ranked #1 by 59% of respondents as the way to defend their benefits budget to the CFO, up from 53% in the earlier GIL Financial Strategy & ROI survey.
Yet 83% of HR organizations using or evaluating AI expect it to address administrative burden or low utilization—not the cost-steering mechanisms like prevention and low-acuity pathways that can result in healthcare benefits ROI. In fact, only 15% of respondents using or evaluating AI (6% of those who have already implemented some AI) name cost steering as a challenge they most want AI to solve.
The potential of AI: In the workforce health and wellbeing arena, preventive cost-steering is a “track” that AI is positioned to solve. The technology is capable of finally connecting employees to their entire benefits ecosystem and driving them down the paths that help improve health outcomes and deflect costs.
We explore this in detail in The wellbeing program participation paradox: How to reach your hardest-to-engage employees.
Every extra path to a benefit is another place to give up
Survey insight: The survey found a striking relationship between the number of disconnected paths an organization relies on to help employees find benefits and the likelihood of employees to “give up” without finding an answer. Eighty-five percent of respondents rely on at least one of static guides, manual HR support, or vendor chatbots, and the give-up rate climbs steeply with each added tool.
This suggests that low benefits utilization may be an access problem, not a content or vendor-quality problem. And that means the benefits you’ve thoughtfully put in place to support your employees are underleveraged due to poor findability—they remain hidden behind static PDFs or intranet links.
The important takeaway is when employees encounter friction in their benefits search, they give up or escalate to HR. They may miss out on critical preventive care and can increase administrative tickets for HR (another costly challenge). And over time, these unresolved searches undermine employee health outcomes and may drive up avoidable healthcare costs.
The potential of AI: Enterprise AI can eliminate access friction without adding another silo. It acts as the connective layer across the benefits tech stack, automatically routing employees to proven wellness programs right within their daily workflow (like Slack, Teams, or HRIS portals).
AI strategy is lagging behind adoption
Survey insight: Responses indicated that most AI in HR is arriving by default: extending existing systems or building internally, not through a deliberate buying decision. Furthermore, many AI efforts are moving ahead before budget or strategy is settled: 54% say their AI budget status is "not yet determined," including 57% of implementers; when HR lacks final sign-off authority, the AI is more likely to be directed toward administrative efficiency, not complex health guidance.
The potential of AI: When benefits organizations deploy AI via low-friction routes or ad-hoc tools that are generally designed for HR service delivery, they risk leaving privacy, accuracy, and prevention goals to chance. They miss the opportunity to implement AI designed to guide employees toward preventive, cost-effective care pathways. The real potential in the benefits space is with health-fluent AI that’s specifically engineered to make prevention easier to reach, and easier to prove.
Consider the human moments
These realities are impacting more than the benefits budget or organizational bottom line. They’re shaping a benefits experience that too often fails to provide employees with the right support and guidance when it matters most.
One survey respondent said, "By the time we find out about an issue, they already have a plan in place so we can't steer them to a lower cost or better care option." This response underscores the significance of using AI to ensure that benefits can meet employees where they’re at, in the moments of need.
The right AI shouldn't be another destination employees have to remember—it should serve as an overarching orchestration layer that connects them to the wellness resources already in place. By embedding health and wellbeing guidance directly where employees work, purpose-built AI routes individuals to preventive pathways in their moment of need. This removes access friction, drives usage to existing programs, and delivers a direct line of sight to the health and cost-saving outcomes required by Finance.
Want to dive deeper into the data?
Explore the 2026–27 Healthcare Benefits Strategy Survey: AI Strategy & Adoption report.
Inside, you’ll find:
- The full access curve, and which navigation method shows the widest abandonment gap
- How sign-off authority shapes what AI is asked to do, with the numbers behind it
- How privacy and accuracy concerns change once AI is live
- Five questions to ask before your next AI decision