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McCalister and Associates

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McCalister and Associates, LLC provides global health and well-being consulting and project-based services. We act as an extension of your team to improve program effectiveness and elevate individual, team, and organizational performance.

From the Founder

McCalister and Associates was founded as an opportunity to apply my 25+ years of professional expertise in healthcare consulting, workforce management, human resources, and team leadership, to enable companies to achieve their health goals and business objectives. Making a difference in others’ lives is my passion. Collaboration across organizations is what I do best. I enjoy partnering with colleagues, employers, non-profits and suppliers, to improve population health, and create workplace cultures supporting employee well-being and purpose. Well-designed health and well-being initiatives can strengthen employee engagement and help teams and communities thrive. I look forward to putting my experience in strategy, program management, and analytics to work for you and your organization.

-Tre’ McCalister, Ed.D., MA.

What If Burnout Is a Work Design Problem, Not Just an Employee Wellness Problem?

Burnout isn’t only an employee wellness issue. Explore how workplace culture, leadership, belonging, and workload can support healthier, more sustainable work environments.

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By Tre’ McCalister

Employers have spent years building wellness programs: screenings, coaching, mental health resources, incentives, challenges, apps, and campaigns.

Many of those efforts are useful. But research points to something bigger. If we want healthier people at work, we must look at the work environment itself.

What the research tells us

A recent JAMA Network Open study examined more than 14,000 U.S. physicians. Those with a stronger sense of belonging were less likely to report burnout. They were also less likely to plan to reduce their hours or leave their organization.

Another large review examined 88 workplace health reviews and 339 meta-analyzed outcomes. The pattern was clear: interventions addressing mental health, stress, psychosocial factors, and the work environment often showed meaningful impact.

The takeaway: wellness matters, but culture is not a side issue. It is part of the health strategy.

Questions leaders should ask

Before launching the next wellness challenge, leaders might want to ask a few harder questions:

  • Do people feel like they belong?
  • Do teammates have each other’s backs?
  • Do managers create psychological safety?
  • Is the workload manageable?
  • Does the culture support mental health, or just talk about it?

A healthy foundation for workplace well-being

This does not mean we stop investing in physical activity, nutrition, and prevention. Mental and financial health resources and chronic condition support still matter. Those worksite resources still matter.

But these programs work best when they rest on a healthy foundation. They are much less effective when expected to make up for burnout, poor leadership, low trust, or unmanageable work.

Belonging, supportive leadership, psychological safety, manageable work, and healthy team norms are not just “well-being culture” topics.

They are workforce health interventions.

So maybe the better question is not:

“What wellness program or benefit should we offer next?”

It is:

“What about our work environment is helping people thrive, and what is getting in the way?”

If your organization asked employees one honest question about the work environment, what should it be?

References

Carlasare LE, et al. Sense of Belonging, Burnout, and Work Intentions Among US Physicians. JAMA Network Open. 2026;9(3):e264171. Read the study.

Virtanen M, et al. Effectiveness of Workplace Interventions for Health Promotion: A Quality-Informed Horizontal Analysis of 88 Reviews and 339 Meta-Analyzed Effect Estimates. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. 2025.

These are the questions I help organizations explore—identifying the work environment factors, resources, and opportunities that support healthier, more sustainable workplaces.

When More Is Not Better: Rethinking the Digital Health Benefits Ecosystem

More digital health benefits do not always mean better results. Employer interviews and research point to the importance of simpler, more integrated health benefits ecosystems.

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By Tre’ McCalister, with Shelly Wolff

Digital health benefits have expanded rapidly. But more options do not necessarily make care easier to access or improve health outcomes.

Many employers now manage large ecosystems of health, well-being, navigation, and condition management vendors. A 2026 survey of 106 employers with at least 1,000 employees found that more than 40% manage eight or more specialized health service providers. Sixty percent spend $2.5 million or more each year on these providers. Nearly 80% spend at least five hours a week managing vendors. This administrative work can offset the intended value (Solera Health).

The 2026 Business Group on Health “Trends to Watch” survey identifies similar concerns. These include fragmented employee experiences, disconnected data, duplicative services, inadequate clinical coordination, and unnecessary costs.

What employers told us

To better understand vendor ecosystem challenges and employer practices, we interviewed HR and benefits leaders at six self-insured, multistate and global employers in July and August 2026. Together, they represent more than 350,000 employees across high tech, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and retail.

The challenges extend beyond the number of specialty vendors and the complexity of managing them. Two clear themes emerged:

  • HR and benefits leaders are not looking for another point solution.
  • They want more effective specialty vendors, easier program access, a better employee and member experience, and stronger financial impact.

Why the issue matters now

Healthcare costs continue to rise. Mercer projects that employer health benefit costs will rise 6.7% in 2026, exceeding $18,500 per employee. Business Group on Health projects a median 9% cost trend for 2026, reduced to about 7.6% after plan design changes.

The central question is whether the full ecosystem is easy to use, well managed, and delivering enough impact to justify the investment.

Research on digital interventions also offers useful context. Two meta-analyses—Digital mHealth Interventions for Employees and Digital Wellness Programs in the Workplace: Meta Review—suggest that these specialized services may improve wellness and health outcomes. However, more research is needed to establish their effectiveness and cost benefits.

Key takeaways and practical implications for employers

  • Vendor sprawl is an ecosystem architecture problem. The issue is not merely the number of vendors. Capabilities overlap, data remain disconnected, and employees face multiple entry points. Impact may be counted more than once across vendors, while accountability is divided across organizations.
  • The employee and member experience has to be easier. More options can create confusion when employees face multiple logins, unclear eligibility rules, or disconnected handoffs. Test the employee experience before broadly expanding services.
  • Total cost and impact should be quantified. Assess vendor fees, claims impact, and employee experience alongside administrative burden. Include staffing, consulting, implementation, integrations, eligibility feeds, communications, privacy and security reviews, reporting reconciliation, and governance time. Use integrated dashboards to improve performance insights and assess cost and quality.
  • Simplification should preserve differentiated value. Specialized vendors should remain when they address meaningful needs, show credible outcomes, and fit within the broader ecosystem. Consolidation should not eliminate useful services simply to reduce the vendor count.
  • Innovation does not always mean adding something new. It may mean improving integration, navigation, and communication. Employers told us that the next innovation may come from making current solutions work better together. Before adding a service, ask whether better integration, clearer navigation, or stronger communication could meet the need.
  • Cost pressure is making value harder to ignore. With 2026 employer health cost projections generally ranging from about 6.7% to 9%, employers have less tolerance for duplicative programs, weak utilization, unverified savings, and excessive administrative expense.
  • Wellness is still not clearly understood. Employers use “wellness” to describe mental health, financial well-being, chronic condition support, and lifestyle programs. Define what wellness means, then connect each program to a specific need, population, and business objective.
  • Use AI with caution and clear purpose. AI may support navigation, personalization, reporting, and service. But its presence is not proof of value. Ask where AI is used, how it is governed, and what measurable problem it solves.

Closing summary

Making existing health and well-being investments more effective directly supports The Health Project’s mission: “To promote organizational practices that translate into measurable operational impact.”

Do not let the digital health portfolio grow faster than the strategy that supports it.

The goal is not to offer more options or simply reduce the vendor count. It is to make the right options work better together in a way employees and members can use—and employers can sustain.

Overwhelmed worker covering their face at a desk surrounded by paperwork

Building a Thriving Workforce: The Role of Work Environment

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What if workplace culture enabled employees to be their best and do their best every day?

Employers have spent years building wellness programs: screenings, coaching, mental health resources, incentives, challenges, apps, and campaigns.

Many of those efforts are valuable. But the research—and my own experience—points to something bigger: if we want healthier people at work, we have to look at the work environment itself.

What the work environment can change

I saw this firsthand while working with a high-tech employer to better understand what was driving employee absence and lost productivity.

We started by looking at the available data, but I also spent time interviewing leaders and talking with employees about their day-to-day experience. What emerged in our assessment surprised some of us. Lost productivity was more strongly associated with employees’ perceptions of supervisor support than with illness or injury.

That finding changed the conversation. Instead of asking only, “What wellness programs should we offer?” we began asking, “What is happening in the everyday work experience that may be affecting people’s health and ability to perform?”

Working with the leadership team, we developed a strategy that included training for new supervisors. We also created opportunities for employees to connect with and provide input and feedback to leaders. The goal was not simply to add another program, but to create a more supportive work environment.

That experience has stayed with me because it reinforced something that is easy to overlook: the manager, the team, and the culture employees experience every day can be part of the health intervention.

What the research tells us

Current research increasingly supports that idea.

A recent JAMA Network Open study examined more than 14,000 U.S. physicians across healthcare settings. Physicians with a stronger sense of belonging were less likely to report burnout. They were also less likely to plan to reduce their hours or leave their organization.

Another large review examined 88 workplace health reviews and 339 meta-analyzed outcomes. The pattern was hard to miss: interventions focused on mental health, stress, psychosocial factors, and the work environment often showed meaningful impact.

The takeaway: employee health and well-being matter, but culture is not a side issue. It is part of the people strategy.

Questions leaders should ask

So before launching the next benefits or well-being program, app, or challenge, leaders might want to ask a few harder questions:

  • Do people feel like they belong?
  • Do teammates have each other’s backs?
  • Do managers create psychological safety?
  • Is the workload manageable?
  • Does the culture actually support mental health, or just talk about it?

Sometimes the most important well-being intervention isn’t something we add to the workday.

It’s changing the workday itself.

This does not mean we stop investing in physical activity, nutrition, prevention, mental and financial health or chronic condition support. Those worksite resources still matter.

But those programs work best when they sit on top of a healthy foundation. They are much less effective when they are expected to make up for burnout, poor leadership, low trust, or unmanageable work.

Belonging, supportive leadership, psychological safety, manageable work, and healthy team norms are not just “well-being culture” topics. They are workforce health and productivity interventions.

So maybe the better question is not:

“What benefit program, or well-being solution should we offer next?”

It is:

“What about our work environment is helping people thrive, and what is getting in the way?”

If your organization asked employees one honest question about the work environment, what should it be?

References

Carlasare LE, et al. Sense of Belonging, Burnout, and Work Intentions Among US Physicians. JAMA Network Open. 2026;9(3):e264171. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2847121

Virtanen M, et al. Effectiveness of Workplace Interventions for Health Promotion: A Quality-Informed Horizontal Analysis of 88 Reviews and 339 Meta-Analyzed Effect Estimates. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. 2025.

These are the questions I help organizations explore—identifying the work environment factors, strengths, resources, and opportunities that support healthier, more sustainable workplaces and healthier, more productive employees.

The Power of Meaningful Connections

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“ We live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980’s….”

–Vivek Murthy
Admiral, USPHS, 19th Surgeon General Of The United States,
(2014-2017)

Technology Enabled, but Socially Isolated

We are connected 24/7 through our devices (phones, laptops, wearables) and social media accounts (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram). Despite these digital connections, many of us still feel isolated or alone. A Cigna study reported that 61% of Americans felt lonely in 2019, compared with 54% in 2018.

Social Connection and Well-being

Social connections support our well-being. Feeling connected to family and friends can strengthen our health, happiness, and sense of purpose. Social connection can be physical, behavioral, cognitive, or emotional. Researchers often describe three key components:

  • Structural support or the physical or behavioral presence of relationships in our lives (eg, size of social network, marital status, living alone, frequency of social contact);
  • Functional support or the resources or functions our relationships provide or that we cognitively perceived to be available (eg, perceived or received support, loneliness); and
  • Quality support or the positive and negative emotional nature of our relationships (eg, relationship satisfaction, conflict, strain). The structure, functions, and quality of social relationships each predict the health risk or the health protective effect associated with social connections.

Social Connection and Health

Health related research links social connections with physical, and emotional health as well as cognitive functioning. People who have stronger social networks are happier, less anxious, and less likely to be depressed. However, individuals who report fewer, or poor-quality social connections are higher risk for illness. Loneliness and isolation are health risks. Social isolation is “the absence or infrequent contact with others” (or structural supports deficit), while loneliness refers to “the subjective perception of being alone” (or functional support deficit). Recent studies found that social isolation as a risk factor was similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day; and a greater risk than sedentary lifestyle, alcoholism or obesity.

Social Connection at Work

We spend much of our waking time at work. That makes social well-being particularly important in the workplace. Positive social interactions at work can play an essential role in our well-being, and engagement. Based on a 2017 Gallup survey, close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by 50%, while people with a ‘best friend’ at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged in their work. Employees with stronger social connections at work report greater job and life satisfaction.(Cigna, 2020). At an organizational level, companies with higher employee engagement report lower business costs, improved performance outcomes, lower staff turnover and absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents (Gallup, 2015).

Creating Meaningful Connections at Work

Innovative organizations are looking for ways to boost their focus on social well-being in the workplace. Here are some ideas you can use to create a culture and work environment which supports meaningful connections at the workplace:

  1. Include remote and hard to reach employees in team events and meetings. Ideally, employees should be invited to provide input in how they’d like to participate, to ensure all participants feel they have the opportunity to share their ideas.
  2. Create opportunities for face to face/in-person interaction. If face-to face is impossible, set regular virtual one-on-ones. Personal interaction, eye contact, and being able to interpret voice tone, and body language is important to understanding employee engagement.
  3. Set aside time some time for coworkers and teams to connect. Include networking time and some non-structured time in planning sessions and in meetings so employees have the opportunity to share interests and experiences. Allow for participants to discover commonalities and to relate to each other. Well-being programs are a great place to initiate these “opportunities to connect”.
  4. Supervisors and managers should make attempts to minimize negative interactions between employees. Encouraging mediation and resolution of disputes or differences early on in team member relationships builds a culture of open communication and trust.
  5. Leaders should model and promote an environment of inclusivity and positivity. If leaders set the tone for the culture, employees are more likely to follow.

References:

Cigna Loneliness Study, 2020: https://www.cigna.com/static/www-cigna-com/docs/about-us/newsroom/studies-and-reports/combatting-loneliness/cigna-2020-loneliness-factsheet.pdf
Uchino, BN . Social support and health: a review of physiological processes potentially underlying links to disease outcomes. J Behav Med. 2006;29(4):377–387.
Holt-Lunstad, J, Smith, TB, Layton, JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. 2010;7(7).
Holt-Lunstad, J, Smith, TB, Baker, M, Harris, T, Stephenson, D. Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspect Psychol Sci J Assoc Psychol Sci. 2015;10(2):227–237.
House, J, Landis, K, Umberson, D. Social relationships and health. Science. 1988;241(4865):540–545.
Béland, F, Zunzunegui, M-V, Alvarado, B, Otero, A, Del Ser, T. Trajectories of cognitive decline and social relations. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2005;60(6):P320–P330.
Robles, TF . Stress, social support, and delayed skin barrier recovery. Psychosom Med. 2007;69(8):807–815.
Cohen, S., et. al, (2020) Psychosocial Vulnerabilities to Upper Respiratory Infectious Illness: Implications for Susceptibility to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Lindsay EK, Young S, Brown KW. Mindfulness training reduces loneliness and increases social contact in a randomized controlled trial. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2019;116:3488–3493.
Fredrickson BL, Cohn MA, Coffey KA. Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2008;95:1045–1062.
Steptoe, A., Shankar, A., Demakakos, P., & Wardle, J. (2013). Social isolation, loneliness, and all-cause mortality in older men and women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 5797–5801.
Thomas K M Cudjoe, MD, MPH, David L Roth, PhD, Sarah L Szanton, PhD, Jennifer L Wolff, PhD, Cynthia M Boyd, MD, MPH, Roland J Thorpe, Jr, PhD, The Epidemiology of Social Isolation: National Health and Aging Trends Study, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Volume 75, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 107–113.
“New Cigna Study Reveals Loneliness at Epidemic Levels in America,” PRNewsWire, May 1, 2018, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-cigna-study-reveals-loneliness-at-epidemic-levels-in-america-300639747.html
Gallup, State of the American Workplace, 2017, p. 118, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238085/state-american-workplace-report-2017.aspx
Thoits PA. Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 2011;52:145.
Mayo Clinic, August 24, 2019: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/friendships/art-20044860
Holt-Lunstad, J. (2018). Fostering Social Connection in the Workplace. American Journal of Health Promotion, 32(5), 1307–1312.
Chen L, Hannon PA, Laing SS, et al. Perceived workplace health support is associated with employee productivity. Am J Health Promot. 2015;29(3):139-146.
https://depts.washington.edu/hprc/evidence-based-programs/connect-to-wellness

Integrating Purpose into Well-being Initiatives

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Are your health and well-being initiatives aligned with purpose or “what matters most” to participants? If not, it may be time to rethink your approach.

Why is purpose important?

Employees may see workplace well-being programs as efforts to contain healthcare costs. When cost reduction is the only goal, programs can miss what matters most to participants. By contrast, initiatives that help employees connect with their purpose may support both health and engagement. According to recent MetLife study employees with a strong sense of purpose are more productive, more engaged, and have higher job satisfaction.

How to integrate “what matters most” into health and well-being programming

The concept of “putting meaning back into work” and aligning programs with “what matters most” to employees is not new. Human resource development and organizational development professionals have explored this idea for years. More recently, employers have applied it to workplace well-being programs. How can employers make that connection? Here are four approaches to consider:

  1. Incorporate tools and resources encouraging participants to identify and focus in on their purpose, and “what matters most” as part of their professional development, and company well-being initiative.
  2. Partner with the HR, Career Development or Training organization to sync up messaging and branding around personal/professional development with health and well-being programming. Look for opportunities to ensure people leaders and supervisors are trained to have dialogue with their employees about how their performance goals align with company goals. These conversations can help employees to “connect the dots” to understand how daily progress on individual goals and helps the organization achieve its overarching goals.
  3. Align health and well-being program goals with the objectives of the organization. This will help integrate the well-being programs into the culture of purpose-centered organizations, and it helps employees see how the well-being initiatives can enable them to make progress toward their own professional and personal goals.
  4. Collaborate with your internal Corporate Sustainability, and Community Giving teams to integrate well-being programs (such as challenges) with employee giving or sustainability initiatives. Aligning participation in programs with important corporate sustainability goals or community giving campaigns, fosters intrinsic motivation by encouraging participating in programs for more than just personal gains. Participation in programs aligned with a “greater good” encourages individual and team effort, and can align well-being initiatives with charitable giving campaigns, or company-wide environmental and sustainability initiatives.

It is not necessary that you hire an outside supplier to integrate purpose into your culture and well-being programs- you can do this yourself. However, if you would like more information on purpose offerings through Kumanu and how this supplier helps employers provide resources to help employees “thrive through purpose” access this link.

If you would like to learn more about integrating purpose into your organization’s health and well-being initiatives, in the US or globally please contact us.