Fast Break: From Perk to Performance

Matt Cranney

Employee wellness isn’t a perk anymore, it’s a performance driver. Today, we’re breaking down how organizations are reducing turnover, increasing productivity, and building healthier cultures by investing differently in their people.

I’m joined by Alex Simmons, CEO at Boon, a company redefining employee well-being through coaching, access, and data-driven engagement. Alex works directly with employers who want to improve employee growth, reduce burnout, and build resilient teams. Alex, welcome to the show.

00:37 Alex Simmons

Thanks for having me, Matt.

00:38 Matt Cranney

This is a conversation that I am really excited to have at a time that I’m really excited to have it. This topic of employee well-being, employee wellness, and I think we’ll explore that space a little bit in terms of how we define the space here in a bit.

But I think this is on everybody’s minds, whether it’s business owners, employees, team members. As always with Fast Break, I want to start with the business case. So when you and your team are talking to employers today, what problems are they trying to address through that bucket of employee wellness, specifically in 2026? Because I feel like this space is so rapidly evolving and changing, and Boon has done such a great job of evolving and moving with it. And so, what’s the tangible impact when companies get that definition right?

01:36 Alex Simmons

It’s a great question. And the idea of how fast this industry has changed. I think there is like a macro level economic view. So, I like to take a step back to 2020, 2021 COVID era, because I think the full context is kind of needed here. Where you had this great resignation period where every company went remote, where all of these companies were hiring like crazy. There was almost this artificial movement towards, hey, we have to have the latest and greatest benefits really from a competitive perspective.

But there was a, hey, we have to have this benefit, we feel like all of our employees are talking about this, is the latest and greatest thing.

So mental health went through this huge, robust growth period through the 2020 to 2022 timeframe. Interest rates were zero, employees were hopping around different businesses, and employee wellness was all the rage.

And I would say in early 2022, we really saw the tide start to change. So when interest rates started rising, you all of a sudden started to see this massive shift where it was no longer like, hey, how can we get the latest and greatest benefit for our people? The economy started retracting a little bit. You saw instead of massive hiring sprees, you saw a lot of hiring freezes and even layoffs across the board, specifically in big tech, which is really where we work a lot.

And so I think the employee wellness conversation started to shift quite a bit to, hey, is this actually having an impact on our business? And even more so, do we really want to be focusing on the entire employee population right now? Or do we want to be focusing on a select few or our emerging talent and invest more intentionally into that cohort of people?

So I think there’s really just been an overall re-underwriting of what are we investing in, how are we thinking about employee wellness? The big shift that we have seen is going away from this term of mental well-being and really thinking about, okay, how can we support the entire human and the entire employee?

So a lot of folks that we’re talking to in the HR space, it’s not, hey, how can we help folks from a mental health perspective; It’s how can we help our team personally and professionally. And it’s become increasingly more difficult to separate those two things.

04:08 Matt Cranney

It’s a really good call out. And I think the COVID time period is a great base reference because what I observed a little, Alex, at the time was there was so much that came out into business language, even here at M3 where we sort of talked about one of the impacts of COVID was sort of breaking down that barrier between there is work me and home me. Because our work was at our home for a period of time.

And it moved away from, hey, what can we do to support work Matt? And now moving into this idea that holistically, there’s really only one Matt. And I need support from a well-being perspective holistically in all areas. And how do you address that?

Because, if I’m struggling outside of work, then likely I’m going to struggle inside of work, right? And it’s funny that it took us maybe that massive, world-changing event to make that realization.

05:09 Alex Simmons

And when you think about leadership development and employee benefits, those two things have historically been in two different buckets managed by two different teams and thought about completely in isolation.

It’s like if you have a new manager who is, they’re just coming into their new role. They’re struggling to deliver feedback. They’re struggling to delegate. They don’t know what they’re doing. There’s no proper training for them as a new manager. Naturally, that is going to bring anxiety, bring stress, bring burnout into their life.

So there’s just a very clear synergy and connection between those two things. So how do you marry those two concepts and just create an integrated solution around them?

05:49 Matt Cranney

I’m hopeful, Alex, that maybe you can share a really practical example of an organization that you’re working with that’s really getting this right.

05:58 Alex Simmons

I think specifically in the remote and hybrid environment, we’re just seeing this need for connection and this need for peer-to-peer learning being a huge component and driver of, okay, how do we weave that into whatever programs we’re thinking about right now?

So the big thing that we have seen is, you mentioned leadership development and employee wellness in their own buckets. Whether it’s Boon or whether it’s some other offering, I think the big thing that I like to highlight is integration between these other resources. So all of a sudden you have this cohesive program that you are thinking about across all phases of your development.

And I think it’s just symbolic of what I believe is going to take place over the next five years, which is, I think one of the best things about AI is that it is enabling personalization at scale, and I think what that is going to lead to is consolidation. So instead of relying on all of these different vendors who specialize in all of these different things, I think there’s going to be a consolidation of, okay, this is our personal and professional go-to tool for all of these things.

And so that’s how I’m viewing the world right now. It’s less in this employee wellness bucket. It’s like, okay, how can we support our people across the board? Period.

07:26 Matt Cranney

I love that. That’s such a great framing, I think, of both the opportunity and the challenge, right? And to that end, actually, Alex, can you talk a little bit about where does your passion for this come from?

I can sense very quickly from you that this is something that is beyond just, you’re not passionate about this because of your position as CEO at Boon.

This is who you are.

07:51 Alex Simmons

Yeah. I mean, my background is actually more in finance. So I’m a CPA by background. I worked in investment banking and private equity prior to starting Boon. And, anybody who’s familiar with the investment banking world would tell you that pretty toxic work environment. You’re grinding 100 hour work weeks.

I went through my own burnout journey through that, found coaching and therapy in my own life and saw the incredible impact that had personally. And it made me feel like there was a huge opportunity and void where you think about traditional EAP programs and what they’re providing, where, let’s be real, most employees view them more as a crisis management tool. I would even go as far to say most employees don’t even know they exist at their own company.

So it just felt like we were moving towards this world where talking about and working through personal and professional growth was becoming more accepted, becoming something that employees wanted as part of their professional experience. And I saw democratized coaching at scale as a great way to do that.

So I was working with businesses where you were buying 100 employee company and you were basically underwriting to the fact that we are going to triple or 5X the size of the business over the next three to five years. Well, the team of people that you’re going to be doing that with today, they’re going to have to evolve quite a bit if you’re trying to triple the size of the company in such a short timeframe.

So I was behind the scenes to seeing the lack of sophistication in a lot of these businesses where we bought them, to seeing what needed to happen over the course of this really rapid scale evolutionary period.

And you’re seeing so many companies go through that today where it’s, hey, we are, you know, we just hired 100 people in the last 12 months. We don’t have any formal training program. These people are getting promoted by virtue of them doing a good job in their previous role and now they don’t know how to lead. So how can we be more thoughtful in providing something that is actually helping people grow?

10:03 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your journey.

You mentioned a phrase in there that, you know, it offered, AI offers personalization at scale. One of the other things it does that struck me in your response was it also offers democratization at scale.

So when you think about the 0.1% of executives that receive that level of coaching, we’re all 100% human, right? And so regardless of our titles, perhaps some of the pressures and stressors are different, but also perhaps some of them are the same.

Jumping back into the practical pieces for our business leader audience, I think, I hope people listening to this episode would agree, this matters. But maybe people’s challenge is they don’t know where to start.

Because I think the hard, I use the phrase around here a lot at M3, the hardest thing in the world is to go from nothing to something. It’s much easier to go from something to something bigger.

So for our listeners, Alex, who are maybe, they’re not nothing, but they’re not where they want to be in this area, can you walk us through the steps that you’ve seen great clients of yours take to build program here that really drives those business outcomes that we talked about.

11:20 Alex Simmons

For Boon’s customers, I think the biggest consistency and correlation that I see for companies that have really high utilization, really high engagement, and just overall, I’d say better cultures internally is like, there is clear buy-in from the top. Leadership vocally talking about the importance of these things.

There is leadership vocally being vulnerable with their own experience and their own journey. I think showing the authenticity of like, I’m doing this myself and just leading and just walking the walk from that perspective, I think is huge. Employees can feel when you are just doing something to check the box.

I’ve talked to a lot of customers where, you know, they’re using these platforms that are available to the masses and it’s like, hey, we’re paying some sort of per employee, per month, fixed fee to give our people access to these platforms. The most consistent feedback that I hear is like, hey, we’re paying this fixed fee and nobody’s using it.

So have something that is actually usage-based pricing where you can actually tie outcomes, tie usage, tie the value that you are getting from your programs to the ultimate price that you are paying for it.

And I would say, just really equipping your managers to start having real conversations because managers have the biggest ripple effect across the company. So if you can start there, a lot of people would say, start with the executives because that’s going to funnel down through the organization.

I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but I will say that we consistently see managers having the biggest ripple effect across the org. They’re the culture carriers. They’re ultimately going to be the ones driving a lot of the big vision ideas that you’re looking to push. So how can you get them on board, is, to me, the biggest unlock that we have at our company. And in a lot of instances, it’s where we start with a lot of our programs.

13:28 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love that. I was going to ask a follow-up, and maybe I still will, about where companies maybe get it wrong. I think you’ve referenced, you know, checking, using it as a check the box exercise.

Yes, we have that, Let’s move on to something, right? Not good.

Not engaging frontline managers is part of the supported delivery mechanism and making sure those front lines are fortified from a resources perspective so that they’re equipped and ready. Because when you think about the front door of an organization, oftentimes is our line managers, because they’re the ones that are dealing with and hearing from our employees the most.

Are there any other ways that you’ve seen maybe people get it wrong?

14:10 Alex Simmons

Yeah, I mean, I think I don’t love the term right and wrong. You know, it is all relative, but I will say from an efficacy perspective, I think one of the biggest things, at least when I think about Boon, is like you’re providing a safe space for your people to have a non-judgmental third party that they can turn to that is not their mentor or the HR leader or it’s somebody outside of the company.

So, in certain instances, we’ve seen customers say, well, if an employee wants access to Boom, they have to let the HR team know and then they’ll go through those channels to be able to do that. So, you know, it’s a little bit, I don’t know if hypocritical is the right word, but it’s against the nature of what you are trying to solve for by using Boom, right?

It’s like you’re trying to provide a confidential experience, let’s create that experience from step one so that you don’t even know who’s using it.

You know, I think the other piece of it is, it’s like, if you don’t have a dedicated budget associated to this, is where the tough part becomes to solve. I think it’s just, how do you want to be thoughtful about creating the most impact? Is it worth spending, you know, 50% less on a tool that’s not going to generate much impact at all, versus thinking about reallocating and reworking things more broadly across the board and just thinking more holistically about things.

And then I guess I would just point back to like lack of leadership buy-in. I think you not being visible as these things are being rolled out, you know, talking about these things in town hall meetings, if that’s not part of your agenda, if you’re not engaging with any of this culturally, like your people are going to feel that,

16:01 Matt Cranney

As we sort of take this journey together as individuals and organizations, I think that encouragement from you, Alex, to say, the very best that you see, this is a priority.

And I think the other piece for me that stood out to your response was the idea of prioritizing the spend. So in traditional employee benefit models, we’ve kind of been doing this for years, right? Whether it was, how do we prioritize the spend between this health plan and this health plan, or a high deductible plan, or versus an HMO plan, or offering dental and vision and those kind of things? This is just an iteration of that in terms of continuing to think about that, having this as part of your total culture of employee care.

I think one of the things that we really try hard to do, and I think Boon does too, is we don’t want to be a pendulum organization, where, yesterday we had nothing and now we have everything. We want to see on our integration of these things and our approach to where, employees don’t fear change, they fear sudden change, right? Or change they don’t know about.

And so how can we continue to move the needle at a pace that feels appropriate and manageable for our organization? And I think about the people listening to this conversation, I think that’s something worth thinking about too, and you actually referred to it in your answer as well, if you’re not doing anything today, it’s not, jump to a massive spend and think about, it’s, do we have buy-in in our leadership team? Can we start talking about authenticity and vulnerability in public spaces within our organizations?

And then as you continue to build, you have the, to a Brene Brown concept, the buttons in the jar with your people to be able to build on where that feels like a very natural evolution, not a brand new revolution that is the flavor of the day that could potentially go away tomorrow. Because this is a who we are conversation, this is not a what we’re doing conversation.

18:00 Alex Simmons

Right, 100%. And to that point, something I remember about how the M3 relationship started is it started small. Like we did a pilot with a select group from the leadership team and emerging leaders.

And I think that is, I guess, just another bucket I would categorize under the like, this is how I would do it if I were rolling out one of these programs. Hey, let’s prove that it actually works with a select group. They will appreciate that this is being offered to them. And then you’re kind of proving it out from there in more of a pilot type period.

18:36 Matt Cranney

Yeah. And that is something that for us, the pilot method helps us so much because, it allows us to do is to take a small group of employees who have an incredible experience, and they are our best salespeople.

Because if we stand up as leaders and say, Boon is incredible, and this is a topic that we care, well, we’re sort of paid to say that, right? Again, not literally, but that’s part of our obligation as leaders of the organization.

When they hear it from a peer who says, hey, I participated in Boon coaching, and it made a difference, not just to how I show up at M3, but how I show up for my family, for my friends, for whatever it is. That’s where people go, maybe I could do that. And then it snowballs and then you get to a scale that we are today with our Boon relationship, which is great.

Alex, I want to kind of ask you, you’ve referenced it a little bit in terms of what you see coming in the future of the space. What would you encourage our listeners to be thinking about as we move through 2026 into the coming years in this arena.

19:43 Alex Simmons

The biggest bugaboo in this space, at least from my experience, has just been how soft the ROI can be. If you’re an HR leader, which is typically who you’re selling this to, ultimately HR is having to sell this internally. So it’s like, how am I selling the story and the impact of this to my CFO, if I’m reporting to my CFO or my CEO.

And so I think that we are going to continue to get significantly more dialed in around what is the true impact to the business. Like I think a lot of those soft personal impact areas are going to remain in place. I do think I’m seeing businesses get more grief-less around like, how is this impacting performance? How is this impacting other sorts of things that I can tangibly see the impact of outside of satisfaction? You know, I think things that we’re tracking are things like employee retention. So, you know, the relative increase of an employee staying with a business over the course of using Boon versus if that person had never not used Boon.

That’s something that we look at across our customer base. And we found that Boon users are 50% less likely to turn over than non-Boon users. So it’s like, okay, well, how are we tying to promotion rates? How are we tying to bottom line? How are we tying to core competency areas that the business is actually breaking down in their core values, their core competencies, all of that, how are these programs tied to all of that? And how is it in the flow of work?

I think that’s another big term that I’m hearing a lot from HR leaders is like, we don’t want another disparate app for our people to download. It’s like, how is this in the flow of work?

And how is it, It’s not taking me to another place. It’s organic. It’s taking place in my day-to-day. And it’s streamlined with all of the other workflows that I already have enabled.

That is going to kind of feed this idea of consolidation, in my view, where it’s like, okay, well, instead of having five vendors, you have one vendor that is within the flow of work across all of these different areas.

22:12 Matt Cranney

As we get ready to end our conversation. I wish we could keep going. This has been such a fascinating conversation, but what I love about your approach is that it treats wellness as part of the operating system of a business, not a bolt-on.

And a few big things that stood out from our conversation today, really, for me, there were four big ones, which was wellness driving measurable outcomes and tying it to those. I love your phrase, in the flow of work. So that we’re not seeing things as separate, but integrated.

And I love that. People wanting personalized support, not just broad programs.

And what does AI offer from that personalization at scale piece that’s going to be really interesting to watch in the future.

Next, well-being is becoming a leadership core competency, not just an HR initiative. So our ability for us to make sure that we are not just equipping our employees, but equipping our leaders to lead responsibly in this world.

And maybe most importantly, you can start small and build, right? Whether it’s a pilot program, whether it’s a coaching pathway, a focus area, leadership development, whatever it is, it’s that sort of one small cultural shift at a time that continues to move the pendulum.

23:38 Alex Simmons

There was one other thing I was thinking about as we’re thinking about our own product offering and like how does AI integrate with what we’re building, I think what we really see is this idea of how do you build continuity in between your coaching experience, in between any program that you’re rolling out.

I think that’s one of the biggest issues that we’ve seen is like, whether you’re doing a workshop or you’re doing executive coaching, or you’re doing really anything leadership or personal growth related, I’ve always found that there is a huge fall off associated with it. So it’s, you know, no matter how much value you get out of the workshop or out of the engagement, there’s not really a ton of follow through that’s associated with it beyond that.

So I think what AI has enabled, at least for our product, and we’re rolling this out right now, is that there’s a really, a really streamlined and easy to integrate continuous program. And what I mean by that is you have your coaching session, your coach is giving you your goals and action items coming out of that tied to your employee portal. Within your employee portal, you then have the opportunity to role play with Claude associated with the themes and action items that were mentioned in your last coaching session, you’re getting evaluated on that scenario.

So say it’s delivering critical feedback to one of your employees about X, Y, Z that happened. You have the opportunity to do that now. That’s flowing into Slack or Teams so that it’s all native wherever you’re working. AI enables that flow of work in a much more seamless way. And I think this idea of continuity and how do you not just have this like point in time solution, but you’re building something continuous.

25:32 Matt Cranney

Alex, if people today have been engaged and challenged by the conversation and want to learn more about Boon, what’s the best way for them to do that?

25:40 Alex Simmons

Yeah, I mean, you can check out our website at Boon-health.com. If you want to follow me on LinkedIn, I’m at Alex Simmons.

And then I also, I have a newsletter that I send out every week. It’s called Leading in the Gray, where I’m basically highlighting a lot of these scenarios and just interesting things that I’m seeing across the businesses I’m talking to, you know, trying to highlight different challenges that maybe aren’t being talked about a lot elsewhere.

26:13 Matt Cranney

And yeah, so on LinkedIn, I’ve got a newsletter, got our website.

26:18 Alex Simmons

Oh, I’m around.

26:20 Matt Cranney

Awesome. audience, go subscribe to Alex’s newsletter. Go check out Boon online and follow Alex on LinkedIn.

Alex, thank you so much for making the time to join us. And thank you to our listeners who’ve made the time to listen. I always think anybody taking the time to listen to a conversation like this means that they’re invested and really focused on driving a great experience for the people that count on them to lead the most.

So if today’s episode was helpful, share it with a colleague or a friend who’s thinking about and also investing in their people. And we’ll see you next time on Fast Break.

This has been Fast Break brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney, thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to grow protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes and we’ll see you next time.