Customizing and optimizing smart benefits categories and merchants on JOON

One of the benefits of using a card-connected wellness benefits solution like JOON is that People Teams can give their workforces much more freedom and flexibility. “Choose your own benefit” is a refreshing and flexible alternative to restrictive bundles that are only appealing to a small segment of any workforce. Instead of limiting benefits recipients to a specified list of gyms, any purchase from a merchant categorized as fitness is eligible.

Further, JOON’s purchase classifier continues to improve as more purchases are made through the platform. Whenever a purchase is marked as eligible when it shouldn’t be or vice versa, the classifier stores that information for future use.

Read our guide to optimizing your wellness benefits, from configuring an allowance to selecting categories. Below, we outline how to customize and optimize smart categories on JOON:

Standard Categories

JOON comes with smart Standard Categories along with the ability to endlessly customize them to your organization’s values and needs. Here are the available choices:

• Health and Wellness: Promote products and services for physical and mental wellbeing. Eligible merchants include every gym, studio, spa, mental health app, and mental fitness app. Popular purchases include ClassPass, Headspace, Peloton, Fitbit, TRX, Manduka, Talkspace, Calm, Noom, WHOOP, Glo, Beachbody, Soothe, Hyperice, Aaptiv, Strava, and obé fitness.
• Work From Home: Help your employees set up their home for remote work. Eligible merchants include every office furniture supplier, internet provider, and phone provider. Popular purchases include Apple, Vari Desk, Herman Miller, Roost Stand, Microsoft, and Spectrum.
• Learning and Development: Facilitate career growth and learning. Eligible merchants include every professional conference, event, and content library. Popular purchases include Udemy, MasterClass, General Assembly, Coursera, and Codeacademy.
• Family Care: Support and retain talented parents by subsidizing care. Eligible merchants include every childcare facility, fertility treatment, and tutoring service. Popular purchases include Bright Horizons, UrbanSitter, Care.com, Wonder School, WeeCare, Flexable, Altitude Learning, Modern Fertility, Natalist, and Origin.
• Commuting & Metro: Accelerate your return-to-office initiative or facilitate hybrid work. Eligible merchants include every charging station, gas station, paid parking, major metro system, e-scooters, and bikeshares.
• Food & Groceries: Help nourish your team with delicious and balanced meals at their favorite eateries. Eligible merchants include every meal kit, grocery store, and food delivery service. Popular purchases include Whole Foods, sweetgreen, Instacart, Uber Eats, Trader Joe’s, Daily Harvest, Chipotle, Thistle, Sun Basket, Thrive Market, Misfits Market, and Dig Inn.
• Donations: Boost contributions and charitable giving. Eligible merchants include every 501(c)(3), charitable funding, and petition platform.
• Student Loan Repayment: Help your employees eliminate the burden of student loan debt. Eligible merchants include every student loan repayment service and institution.

Customizing and creating categories

Beyond our Standard Categories, People Teams can customize or create their own categories with the following capabilities:

• Inclusion: If you specifically want to make a merchant or subcategory eligible that wouldn’t otherwise be, you can add them to an “included list.” Any purchase with that subcategory or merchant in the name will be marked as eligible.
• Excluded: Alternatively, if you specifically want a merchant or subcategory to be ineligible (or require a receipt showing individual items purchased), you can add that them to an “excluded” or “pending review” list.

Speak with your account manager if you need help customizing a wellness benefits category on JOON.