Welcome to The People First Podcast by Navigate! Each month, our CEO and Founder, Troy Vincent will bring you an episode featuring some of our favorite people in the employee wellbeing industry, as well as insights from our own team. Get ready to learn and grow with us as we discover and discuss the resources you need to bring more health and happiness back to your people and culture. Navigate | Corporate Wellbeing Platform Subscribe on Goodpods today! 134354
Why Middle Management Is Where Your Wellness Program Goes to Die
Drew Mettille is a Human Resource Analyst and Wellness Coordinator for Polk County in Des Moines, Iowa, where he and his team have driven an 84% increase in wellbeing engagement over the past two years. Troy and Jay sit down with Drew to go behind that number, not just what the program looks like on paper, but how a single wellness coordinator earns the trust of nearly a thousand employees spread across 20 buildings.Drew walks through the flexible, points-based system that lets a mechanic, a park ranger, and a detention officer all define "wellbeing" on their own terms; the pivot from an expensive gym-and-Peloton reimbursement program into the more sustainable "Wellness Bucks" model that helped drive the engagement spike; and the very human, very specific barrier that decides whether a department goes all-in or opts out almost entirely. We also cover:
Why Polk County's points system rewards "overall wellbeing" broadly enough that an employee at the equestrian center earns credit for playing flute for the horses, and why that flexibility matters for a workforce this diverse
How an unsustainable, wildly popular gym and personal-training reimbursement program got consolidated into "Wellness Bucks", a $200 annual reimbursement that became a major driver of the 84% engagement increase
Why Drew's simplest advice to other wellness coordinators is also his most repeated: "be seen"
22 Sept 2026
A new framework for wellbeing. Empowering employees to thrive
Ask almost anyone how they're doing at work and you'll get the same word back: fine. Meanwhile your tenured people are quietly heading for the door, claims costs keep climbing, and half your workforce is carrying financial stress, burnout, or quiet disengagement that never shows up on a dashboard. Fine isn't thriving, it's just where struggle goes to hide in plain sight.
That gap between looking fine and actually thriving is exactly what Jen, who leads product and strategy at Navigate, and Matt Percia, a Navigate strategic advisor, spend their days closing. They walk through why most wellbeing programs (with their gamification and engagement dashboards) never touch the real reasons an employee is struggling, and introduce the PAVE framework Navigate uses instead to picture the future, assess the present, find the highest-value opportunities, and engage employees for the long haul. Along the way they share what happened when a 29,000-person health system stopped guessing about what its people needed and actually asked.
We also cover:
How to read the eight pillars of wellbeing so you catch financial or career strain before it shows up as a resignation or a claim
What Prisma Health did differently that turned one new financial wellbeing benefit into a 44% jump in learning completions and a 1,000% spike in webinar participation
Why letting go of last year's wellbeing playbook (even one that "worked") is often the fastest way to get better results this year
30 Jul 2026
From checking the box to all in: Box Butte's wellbeing transformation
Some wellbeing programs are built quickly, without thought or strategy. Others are built over decades. Refined, rethought, and rooted in something real.Box Butte General Hospital's story is the second kind.
In this special edition webinar-turned-podcast episode, our EVP of Client Services and Experience, Jim Barclay, has a conversation with Dan Newhoff, Organizational Development Specialist, and Peggy Hinman, Certified Life & Wellbeing Coach, from Box Butte General Hospital. Box Butte General Hospital has spent decades evolving their wellbeing program.
In this episode, you'll also hear:
A new way to think about incentives — what Box Butte tried, what they changed, and what finally clicked for their people
The Peggy Effect — why hiring a dedicated wellbeing coach became a turning point for the entire program
How they made the business case — the data, the frameworks, and the conversations that earned lasting leadership buy-in
What employee engagement looks like — and why it starts long before anyone opens a wellness app
Lessons from 30 years in the field — the good, the hard, and everything worth stealing for your own program
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