"In healthcare, employee experience is totally intertwined with patient experience," says Carrie Davis, VP of Employee and Patient Experience at Hanger, Inc. "Healthy, happy employees create positive experiences for patients. So putting a priority on our employees really puts a priority on our patients as well."
For Hanger Inc., a leading provider of orthotic and prosthetic patient care services, this philosophy is operational, not aspirational.
In 2023, Hanger conducted an engagement survey to hear directly from employees about how they were doing post-COVID. When that survey revealed increased stress levels and a decreased satisfaction with work-life balance, Hanger not only acknowledged the feedback but transformed it into an incredibly successful well-being program. The survey provided Hanger with the opportunity to focus on initiatives that better aligned Hanger’s internal culture with the compassion they extend to their patients.
"We want the best for our employees so that they can give the best to our patients," Davis explains. "Our HR team designed [Healthy Hanger] to take care of the total employee, including all of the elements that really impact their experience: financial, physical, emotional, and social well-being."
Within weeks of receiving survey results, Hanger launched a dual-track strategy that would become a model for rapid, responsive organizational change.
At the local level, managers received training and tools to share results transparently with their teams and collaboratively create action plans. This represented genuine dialogue about what each team needed to thrive, not mandated, top-down conversation.
At the organizational level, senior leadership moved with unprecedented speed. Within just four months, they implemented four major well-being initiatives:
But this was just the beginning. In 2024, Hanger launched "Healthy Hanger," a comprehensive well-being ecosystem offering support across multiple dimensions. The program included partnerships with Spring Health for mental health support, Calm for stress management, and Omada for physical wellness. Responding directly to employee feedback about healthcare costs, they also introduced a lower-cost medical plan and enhanced their bereavement policy.
Many organizations launch well-being programs only to see them fizzle out after initial enthusiasm wanes. Hanger has taken a different approach by using Perceptyx's AI-powered platform to create a continuous feedback and improvement loop.
"Recently launching [Perceptyx’s Employee Activation Agent] for our team was an easy decision," Davis notes. "We want to empower our managers to create great work environments locally, and then as an organization, create a great work experience for all."
The Employee Activation Agent serves dual purposes. First, it pushes organizational strategy and objectives to all leaders, ensuring alignment across Hanger's distributed workforce. Second, it captures ongoing employee feedback about local teams, enabling managers to continuously refine the employee experience.
"We're using the [Activation Agent] to first validate that what we are doing is what the employees are asking for," Davis explains, "and then taking new opportunities to enhance those elements of the Healthy Hanger program based on what employees are telling us. It's a validation of what we're doing, and it's also the opportunity for us to enhance."
After launching behavioral nudges at the end of August, this approach has transformed well-being from a static program into a dynamic, responsive system that evolves with employee needs.
The impact of Hanger's listening-led approach has already been dramatic, with adoption rates that surpass industry benchmarks:
Program Adoption:
Employee Sentiment:
Business Impact:
The whole EX transformation and its accompanying world-class business outcomes were perhaps best captured in employee comments, with one noting: "After the last survey there was change...Talk backed up by action, even if incremental, feels empowering!"
Hanger's success reveals a fundamental truth often missed in corporate wellness initiatives: the best programs are co-created with employees, not designed in boardrooms.
"The Healthy Hanger Program strengthens the employee experience by letting our employees know that, A, we are listening, and B, we are acting on their feedback," Davis says. "It is specific. It is targeted. Whatever they tell us they need, we want to be the organization that responds to that."
This approach ensured that what could have been just another generic, check-the-box wellness offering became something employees actually wanted and used. The record-breaking adoption happened because employees eagerly used effective programs that addressed their actual needs.
Building buy-in at the leadership level proved straightforward once the connection to outcomes became clear: "When you look at what the program can do for individuals and for individual teams, plus the organization at large, it was an investment that was easy to make for our people."
Hanger's journey offers several lessons for organizations looking to improve employee well-being:
For healthcare organizations especially, the connection between employee and patient experience makes well-being initiatives a strategic imperative. As Hanger has proven, when you truly listen to and support your employees, everyone benefits — staff, patients, and the bottom line.
Ready to transform employee feedback into measurable well-being improvements? Schedule a demo to see how Perceptyx's listening and activation platform can help you achieve results like Hanger's. Explore more success stories from organizations driving real change through employee listening at our Customer Stories hub.
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