Case Studies
Helsana Group is Switzerland’s leading health and accident insurer, dedicated to promoting health, wellbeing, and quality of life for individuals and businesses nationwide. Headquartered in Dübendorf, the company serves over two million customers with a comprehensive range of insurance products, preventative health services, and innovative digital tools. With more than 3’400 employees, Helsana combines deep expertise in healthcare with a strong commitment to customer-centricity, prevention, and sustainability, working to ensure accessible, reliable, and future-ready healthcare for all.
At Helsana, supporting employee wellbeing and sustainability is central to the company’s culture. However, when it came to commuting, their existing mobility offering no longer aligned with their vision for a modern, flexible, and eco-friendly workplace. Previously, employees had access to more traditional solutions, which provided limited flexibility and were less adaptable to the diverse commuting needs of a hybrid workforce.
Helsana wanted to introduce a benefit that not only encouraged sustainable travel choices, but also felt innovative, engaging, and relevant to employees’ everyday lives. The aim was to inspire staff to choose greener commuting options, such as public transport, cycling, or shared mobility, while still giving them the freedom to decide how to use their allowance.
The challenge was to replace a static, one-size-fits-all system with a modern, dynamic mobility concept that could cater to different lifestyles, enhance the employee experience, and reinforce Helsana’s commitment to environmental responsibility.
Urban Connect partnered with Helsana to launch a fully digital mobility budget solution, replacing their previous system with a modern, flexible, and sustainability-focused benefit. Under this arrangement, Helsana pays a set fee, and Urban Connect distributes the allocated budgets directly to employees via a secure virtual payment card.
The solution is powered by a robust admin platform that gives Helsana full control over where and how the budget can be used, ensuring funds are spent exclusively on mobility-related services such as public transport, bike rentals, or shared mobility. User groups can be created to tailor budget allocations based on specific criteria—most notably, employment percentage. Employees working at a 100% employment receive a higher budget, while part-time staff receive a proportional amount.
Helsana became the first Urban Connect customer to integrate the SCIM interface, enabling automatic onboarding and offboarding of users without manual intervention. This also ensures employees are automatically assigned to the correct user group based on their work percentage, with changes reflected in real time.
The program was rolled out across all +3’400 employees in Switzerland, ensuring that the entire Helsana workforce has access to the new benefit. To support adoption, Urban Connect hosted webinars in three languages to guide employees through setting up and activating their virtual cards while introducing the concept and its benefits.
Since its launch in April 2025, Helsana’s new mobility budget program has seen strong engagement and measurable impact among its all employees across Switzerland.
Within the first few months, great success and strong usage have been noted among employees. Notably, more than 60% of the spending went toward public transport, highlighting employees’ commitment to sustainable mobility. The remaining budget was primarily used for on-site parking or for a wide range of other mobility options, including bicycle shops, taxis, and service stations. This broad variety of spending points highlights the flexibility of the mobility budget and demonstrates how it successfully accommodates the individual mobility needs of all employees.
In addition to this, the responsible HR team reported a reduced workload, as the digital processes significantly decreased manual administration. Overall, the new mobility budget program has proven effective in simplifying internal operations while empowering employees to make sustainable and flexible mobility choices that fit their daily lives.
👉 Get in contact with our team to discuss your mobility needs: sales@urban-connect.ch
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