Elmo Asked How You're Doing. We Ask What You Need.
Long before TikTok explained food insecurity or mental health in 30 seconds, Sesame Street taught generations of kids what it means to grow up in a world that doesn’t treat every zip code — or every family — the same. Elmo might have been asking how you’re doing today, but the show was quietly asking a bigger question: What do people need to thrive?
The secret? Community.
Sesame Street isn’t just a show. It’s a neighborhood built to reflect the real world in all its diversity — economic, cultural, emotional, and otherwise. It teaches kids about friendship, fairness, and feelings. But it also tackles big ideas: homelessness, hunger, disability, incarceration, grief. And it does so with a simple but powerful message: when someone is struggling, the community shows up.
That belief sits at the heart of something public health experts call social determinants of health (SDoH): the conditions in which people live, work, learn, and grow that shape their overall health and well-being¹. SDoH includes things like:
access to healthy food,
stable housing,
transportation,
education,
childcare,
social connection,
and safety.
This is not just a healthcare concern. It’s a workplace one.
Why employers need to care about SDoH
When someone is navigating unstable housing, a childcare crisis, or mounting medical debt, those stressors don’t disappear when they log into work. Instead, they follow them — affecting how focused, present, and productive they can be throughout the day.
Here’s what the data shows:
Social determinants of health account for 30–50% of all health outcomes — a far greater impact than clinical care, which makes up only about 20%².
Presenteeism — when employees come to work but are too distracted, sick, or stressed to function at full capacity — costs U.S. companies an estimated $255 per affected employee. And in many organizations, it accounts for up to 60% of all health-related productivity loss³ ⁴.
Work-related stress and unmanaged personal hardship contribute to 120,000 deaths annually in the U.S., along with rising rates of burnout, absenteeism, and chronic illness⁵.
These factors don’t just affect individuals — they affect performance, morale, team dynamics, and ultimately, profitability. An overwhelmed employee is more likely to miss deadlines, withdraw from collaboration, or leave the workforce altogether. Multiply that across a department, and the cost to the business grows quickly.
But it’s not just about dollars. It’s about dignity.
No one does their best work when they’re running on empty — physically, emotionally, or financially.
The good news is employers care and are designing benefit strategies to provide support. The Business Group on Health’s 2025 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey found that SDoH is the top benefit area of focus for 59% of large employer respondents in the next 3–5 years — the largest category of all those measured, by 26 percentage points⁶.
Where Humankind fits in
At Humankind, we believe people bring their whole selves to work. And it is our job to support the whole person.
When an employee benefit doesn’t cover a real-life challenge — like relocating unexpectedly, affording groceries for a growing family, or even just helping people understand and engage with the benefits they already have access to — we step in. We work directly with individuals to identify what’s missing and connect them to the right resource, service, and/or support system. Sometimes that’s a government program. Sometimes it’s a local nonprofit. Sometimes it’s just someone who knows how to navigate the maze.
We’re here to lighten the load.
To make life easier.
To make life work better.
And that’s not just a tagline — it’s the outcome.
When Humankind steps in, we take the friction out of the equation, freeing people up to focus on what really matters: their work, their families, their health, their growth.
We don’t just check the boxes of benefit utilization — we help people actually use the support that’s available. We connect the dots between what your company offers and what your people need. And when there’s a gap, we fill it with human-first solutions that reflect the complexity of real life.
The takeaway?
Sesame Street is right: people thrive when they feel safe, supported, and connected to something bigger than themselves.
And while you can’t control every outside factor your employees face, you can create a workplace that functions more like a neighborhood — one that offers more than a paycheck. One that offers partnership.
At Humankind, we help employers do just that.
Because when employees feel like someone’s got their back, they show up stronger, stay longer, and have more to give — to their work, to their teams, and to their lives beyond the office.
References
¹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Social determinants of health: Know what affects health. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/social-determinants/index.htm
² World Health Organization. (2024). Social determinants of health. https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health
³ Loeppke, R., Taitel, M., Haufle, V., Parry, T., Kessler, R. C., & Jinnett, K. (2009). Health and productivity as a business strategy: A multiemployer study. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 51(4), 411–428. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181a39180
⁴ Gifford, B., & Zoller, M. (2022). Presenteeism: At work—but out of it. Society for Human Resource Management. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0308covstory.aspx
⁵ Goh, J., Pfeffer, J., & Zenios, S. A. (2015). Workplace stressors & health outcomes: Health policy implications. Behavioral Science & Policy, 1(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1353/bsp.2015.0009
⁶ Business Group on Health. (2024). 2025 Large Employer Health Care Strategy Survey. https://www.businessgrouphealth.org