From Fitness to Family Finances: What Employees Signal They Want from Their Benefits at Every Career Stage

The first in a four-part Signals by Evive series exploring how the workforce stage shapes employee interests and health priorities.

HR teams are responsible for benefits programs that must serve employees across dramatically different moments in life. One person may be paying down student debt and commuting to their first full-time job. Another may be balancing childcare and college savings. A third may be preparing for retirement while helping care for an aging family member.  

A central challenge is finding ways to offer benefits that work for all these different populations. But an even bigger challenge is helping each employee recognize what is relevant to them now.  

That is where Evive^® provides a valuable signal. 

Evive is bswift’s personalized recommendation engine. It delivers year-round, data-driven nudges designed to guide employees toward cost-conscious decisions and healthier outcomes. Each logic-backed recommendation triggers timely, relevant messages that drive action, whether encouraging preventive care, supporting condition management, increasing financial health, or improving benefits utilization. 

Evive draws on millions of data points, including claims and spending behavior, enrollment and eligibility data, employee-selected preferences, and patterns across employee interactions over time. Together, these inputs help Evive personalize engagement with greater precision, making each interaction more timely, relevant, and better aligned to individual needs. 

One source of those employee-selected preferences is Evive Profile Builder, an experience that allows members to identify the interests and health topics they care about most. Those selections add another layer of context to the broader data Evive uses to determine which content and resources are most relevant to each member. 

For this analysis, the Signals by Evive data team examined 370,260 interest selections made by approximately 137,000 members who used Profile Builder. 

The chart below shows interest selections by career stage and age bracket.

Selections were grouped into three workforce stages: incoming generation, under age 35; peak career, ages 35–54; and seasoned workforce, age 55 and older. 

The analysis reflects active Profile Builder selections as of July 1, 2026. Accordingly, the findings represent a point-in-time snapshot of what Evive members selected. They are not intended as fixed statements about what every employee in a particular age group will prioritize.

Five priorities span the entire workforce

The chart below captures what we found. 

Despite the differences between these groups, the same five interests comprised the top five across every career stage: 

• Fitness 
• Retirement 
• Nutrition 
• Stress management 
• Sleep 

The order changed somewhat across cohorts. For example, fitness ranked first among incoming-generation and peak-career employees, while retirement took the top position among seasoned employees.   

Among incoming-generation employees, fitness selections also substantially outpaced student loans, underscoring that life-stage-specific financial concerns are only one part of what younger employees say they want from their benefits. 

That combination of consistency and variation creates an opportunity for benefits teams. Shared priorities can anchor broad campaigns, while personalization helps connect employees to the resources and guidance most relevant to their individual circumstances. 

The real differences appear after the top five

Below that shared core, career-stage priorities begin to separate more clearly. 

Incoming-generation employees showed greater interest in student loans and commuter benefits. Peak-career employees shifted toward college savings and childcare. Among seasoned employees, senior care and savvy shopping became more prominent.  

The broader research reinforces the same life-stage progression. For example, Federal Reserve data shows education borrowing is most concentrated among adults under 45, supporting the prominence of student loans among workers under 35.

Meanwhile, childcare and college savings rise during peak-career years. According to 2024 U.S. Census Bureau data, four in five U.S. family households headed by someone aged 35–39 included a child under 18. The College Board also reported that average full-time undergraduate budgets for 2025–26 ranged from $21,320 at public two-year colleges to $65,470 at private nonprofit four-year institutions. 

Later in employees’ careers, senior care becomes more prominent. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving reported in 2025 that 63 million Americans were family caregivers, seven in ten10 were employed, and half reported a negative financial impact. 

Together, Evive data and broader evidence illustrate how employees’ secondary interests evolve alongside their financial and family responsibilities, from student debt and commuting early in a career to childcare, college savings, and senior care later on. 

For HR leaders, these preferences reveal the range of pressures employees may be carrying. But turning that insight into action requires more than grouping employees by age or career stage. It requires understanding what matters to each employee and delivering guidance accordingly. 

What this means for benefits engagement

The most important finding is the combination of consistency and variation. 

Employees across every career stage share a common set of priorities around physical health, financial security, stress, and sleep. At the same time, the interests beneath that core will shift alongside changing financial pressures, family responsibilities, and life decisions. 

For benefits professionals, that creates a valuable opportunity to make the same benefits program relevant in different ways. The broad themes may be familiar across the workforce, but the resources, guidance, and next steps that matter most will vary from person to person. 

Personalization helps bring those differences into view. By understanding both the priorities employees share and the interests they identify for themselves, employers can create a benefits experience that feels connected to what is happening in each member’s life now.  

Evive makes that individualized, year-round relevance possible at scale.