Company offers employees wellness benefits, only for employees to discover it's practically impossible to use them: ‘Barely anyone actually succeeded'

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
May 2, 2026 9:45 AM EDT

"The only people who know how to handle bureaucracy are the people inside it."

This phrase is the perfect way to describe the desperation some people might feel after they try to fill out forms, talk to customer service, or do any bureaucracy-related things that usually end in failure. You can follow everything by the book, complete every step of the way, and still be told that you did something wrong and have to start all over again.

Which is why people say that the only way you can get through bureaucracy is by knowing someone on the inside of it.

The employees in the story below didn't think they needed someone on the inside to be able to use their company's new wellness benefits. It's a simple $75 monthly wellness stipend; how hard can it be to use it?

Apparently, it's quick and hard, since only a fifth of the employees managed to use it. The rest were stuck between one form and another, either unable to upload the right receipt or get a signed-off approval from their manager to actually use that thing. At some point, it doesn't seem like it's worth all the effort…

But what are the employees supposed to do? This is probably the only time their company is ever going to "reward" them, and they can't even use it. So should they keep wasting time and energy until they finally manage to use that $75 stipend, or is all that wasted effort not worth this benefit, which is actually a curse in disguise?

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  • Cheezburger Image 10628311296
    via Compagnons

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • My company introduced a "wellness stipend" but the process to claim it is so intentionally broken that most people just give up

    last year our company sent out this big excited email about how they're investing in employee wellbeing. $75 a month wellness stipend, use it for gym memberships, meditation apps, whatever you want. sounded great
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • to actually claim it you have to: upload itemized receipts to a portal that half the time just errors out, get your direct manager to sign off, then it goes
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • to HR, then finance, and they only run reimbursement cycles on the 1st and 15th. miss the window? wait till next time, your problem
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • i tried for literally 3 months straight. kept getting denied because my Planet Fitness receipt apparently wasnt "properly itemized." i eventually just gave up and used some extra money i had to pay out of pocket for it myself
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • talked to people on my team and turns out barely anyone actually successfully claims it. like maybe 1 in 5 people. and yet this benefit is listed front and center on our Indeed page and our company LinkedIn
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • my manager had the nerve to mention our "industry leading benefits package" in an all hands last week. nobody said anything. we all just sat there
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • the broken process isnt an accident and we all know it. its a benefit that exists entirely on paper
    via Efficient_Mind4383
  • wintermute24 So, do you feel well after that experience? See? You're obviously not fit for a stipend. /s
    via wintermute24
  • ITstaph Boss makes a dollar, you make a dime. That's why you submit your wellness stipend on company time.
    via ITstaph
  • Diamond_Sutra You should just spend 3 hours of work time per day doing nothing but processing the data/paperwork for this reimbursement. Tell your coworkers too. Portal down? Keep retrying, do NOT just go back to your work and "check later".
    via Diamond_Sutra
  • Maybe they'll streamline the process when they realize they are losing hundreds or thousands of dollars of productivity to pay out seventy five bucks...
    via Diamond_Sutra
  • personofshadow If they want to contribute to employee wellness, they could give them a raise
    via personofshadow
  • Cheezburger Image 10628311552
    via Andrej Lišakov

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • ZayneDarmoset That's not a stipend then. Stipends are given regularly to employees with the intention the sum will be used towards a certain expense. What you've described sounds more like a convoluted reimbursement program!
    via ZayneDarmoset
  • Beneficial-Whole-531 the real wellness problem was thinking the stipend would actually work
    via Beneficial-Whole-531
  • KangoHR When a company offers a wellness stipend but makes it hard to claim, people notice right away that the benefit looks better on paper than it feels in real life. In my experience, employees care less
    via KangoHR
  • about flashy perks and more about whether a company means what it says. The best reward programs are simple, easy to use, and built so people actually get the benefit without a fight.
    via KangoHR
  • freethnkrsrdangerous Its work related, no? Spend all your time on this until it goes through.
    via freethnkrsrdangerous

  • We don't think the employee should give up without a fight. If the company is using this “benefit” to make itself look good, at the very least, every employee should be able to enjoy it. If enough of them rally up and talk to someone in HR, they might find a way around the bureaucracy and get what they are owed…

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boss workplace-stories employee manager job bureaucracy overworked-employees workplace benefits company
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