The Danone success story: Building a personalized home for health, wellbeing and benefits

The challenge

Investment that employees couldn’t see

Danone’s workforce is as diverse as its product range. Employees range in age from 18 to 77 and span office staff, hybrid workers, field-based teams on the road all day, and factory colleagues, including several hundred at the Liverpool site who have no company computer. Designing a wellbeing strategy that reached all of them, equitably, was the central challenge.

Danone already invested in wellbeing, but the experience worked against the investment. The old benefits platform was static and transactional: employees logged in once a year at renewal, made a few changes, and did not return.

Access to wellbeing and benefits was uneven. Deskless factory staff had no easy route in and were reluctant to use personal devices for work admin. Wellbeing activity was scattered across business units, with no single owner, which produced both duplication and gaps. And because there was no self-service support, every routine query landed with a very lean benefits team, draining the time that should have gone into strategy.

The result was that most employees never grasped the full value of what they were entitled to. As Evelyn Naulls, Head of Benefits UK & Ireland, put it, employees “didn’t really see a connection between wellbeing and benefits. That’s what we really wanted to change. We wanted to show them a complete picture.”

Four core priorities emerged for the UK and Ireland:

• Drive always-on engagement, not a single annual spike.
• Improve health outcomes by shifting toward prevention, focused on the workforce’s biggest health risks.
• Guarantee equitable access for every worker, deskless included, through a mobile app.
• Strip out admin and duplication so a lean team could focus on strategy rather than firefighting.

The solution

Bringing BeWell to life

In 2022, Danone launched BeWell, a new global health and wellbeing strategy designed to give every employee access to three wellbeing pillars — physical, mental, nutritional. The UK and Ireland team added a fourth, financial wellbeing, in response to employee concerns about the cost of living, energy prices and pensions.

The strategy was built on listening, not assumption. A dedicated health and wellbeing survey, a relaunched Health & Wellbeing Champions network and the Employee Consultative Forum shaped what was offered; when the survey showed the gym benefit wasn’t working, it was replaced. Danone also created a single point of contact for wellbeing within HR, giving the strategy clear ownership.

Launching “Danone for Me”

In 2025, Danone partnered with Benifex to build a single, app-based home for its wellbeing pillars. Branded “Danone for Me” and powered by Benifex’s Home module, it brings benefits, wellbeing content and communications together in one place that field and factory colleagues can access wherever they are.

The design turns wellbeing from a static directory into an interactive, self-select, personal wellbeing journey. Each of the four pillars has its own space, and beneath every pillar are three pathways:

• Self-serve resources available to anyone at any time
• Benefits-linked support that connects wellbeing needs to entitlements people often did not realize they had
• A referral route for more serious cases, signposting early intervention through income protection, occupational health and specialist support

Content is personalized so UK and Ireland employees each see what is relevant to them, and Benifex’s AI-powered search lets anyone find an answer instantly.

Engineering engagement for a deskless workforce

The hardest group to reach was factory staff without company devices. Instead of mandating the app, the team found the hook that mattered to those colleagues: holiday trading.

By surfacing holiday balances, payslips and trading through the app at exactly the window factory staff cared about, Danone gave them a reason to download it, and once inside, the wider wellbeing content drew them in. Those same colleagues now approach the team unprompted, suggesting new benefits.

Genuinely always-on

Instead of going quiet between annual renewals, the feed changes constantly with weekly articles and up to five rotating campaign banners, timed to whatever is happening across the business. During an internal wellbeing month, the homepage article changed each week to match that week’s theme, from hydration to nutrition. When a carers’ network launched, the benefits supporting carers were spotlighted alongside it.

From reactive to preventative

Claims and absence data pointed clearly at where to act, with musculoskeletal (MSK) health at the top of both lists. Danone is tackling the cause, launching an AI-powered MSK assessment and consolidating all health cover with Bupa to sharpen pricing and claims insight. The UK is now the pilot market for a global Danone preventative-health project, aiming, as Rob Johnston, Director of Reward, puts it, to “find the cause rather than just treat the symptoms.”

Leveling up the core offering

The platform sits on top of a strong core benefits offering. Danone consolidated its health benefits with Bupa and enhanced the package to a full-refund PMI plan carrying just a £100 annual excess, added critical illness cover, and extended coverage to include neurodiversity.

Alongside annual health assessments, dental cover and healthcare cash plans, the flexible range spans the four pillars, from the Wellhub fitness and mindfulness platform to financial wellbeing support including newly added mortgage advice. Recognizing that wellbeing means different things to different people, the offer ensures core protections are in place and then flexes to the individual.

Results

Engagement rose across the board

• At the 2025 enrollment, 76% of employees logged in, compared with 60% on the previous platform – a 27% increase in login engagement.
• Benefit selection rose by 29%, from 35% to 45%.
• 69% of the deskless workforce logged in, and 58% of those colleagues went on to select a benefit.
• Danone funded 550 Wellhub licenses (around half the eligible population) at launch. Demand exceeded the allocation within weeks, prompting further investment.
• 84% of employees have logged in since launch. And 29% now use the platform monthly, delivering the strategy’s “always-on” mission to support employees at the moment they need it.

Employees say their benefits now meet their needs

• In the 2025 Danone People Survey, 83% agreed that “the employee benefits (beyond pay) I have meet my needs” – a six percentage point rise year on year.
• The numbers are matched by what employees say. One wrote, on returning from maternity leave: “I wanted to say a HUGE THANK YOU… it was clear that the maternity leave policy Danone offers was one of the best.” Another summed up the strategy’s intent simply: “I feel so supported working for Danone, and I know that you go above and beyond to help us feel like this.”

Admin down, speed up

• Automated payroll integration gives new starters access to benefits and wellbeing support within seven days, a process previously managed manually via spreadsheets.
• In-house content publishing has replaced a vendor change-request model that cost around £2,500 per change, so the team can now publish a timely article (on hydration during a heatwave, for example) instantly.
• Vendor consolidation has improved costs, reporting and the employee experience in one move.
• Self-service resources and the Benifex support desk now handle routine queries, freeing the lean benefits team to focus on prevention and strategy.

Danone has turned wellbeing from a scattered collection of benefits into a connected, preventative and genuinely inclusive strategy. With the UK now shaping Danone’s global preventative-health approach, this is more than a successful platform launch; it is proof of purpose in action.