Beyond the Paycheck · 2026-05-05 · 27 min
Summary A company rolls out a $200/month wellness stipend with the best of intentions. It lands in employees' paychecks alongside everything else. Nobody changes their behavior. Claims don't go down. The intent was real, but without structure, there's no return. In this episode, Kelsey Willock sits down with Trice Stevenson-Wright, VP of People Operations and Total Rewards at Alma, for a sharp conversation about what happens when benefits design has the right intent but the wrong rigor. Trice has spent her career overhauling benefits programs at companies where the spend was high, the utilization was low, and nobody had connected the two. She walks through why employees gravitate toward the most expensive plan when a less expensive one would protect them just as well, how shifting from unlimited PTO to flexible PTO with actual parameters got people to take more time off, and why AI is quietly transforming the white-glove moments in benefits administration - like parental leave - that used to require a dedicated person.
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The Benefit Almost Nobody Uses, and Why It Pays Off75 / 100
The Missing Conversation in Every Open Enrollment69 / 100