“The same way we had occupational health legislation — that was great because employers need to assess and mitigate that risk, and it benefited countries and it also benefited employers,” she says. “The same is happening, but not as quickly in Canada as we would like, for psychological risk.”
In TELUS Health’s Mental Health Index for the first quarter of 2026, 27 per cent of respondents said their physical health needs were not being met by their employer, and close to 25 per cent said the same for mental health. Those aren’t abstract metrics. They translate directly into talent acquisition and retention costs, and into the competitive value of the total rewards package, says Allen.
Speaking the language of the boardroom
Even when the data exists, communicating benefits value upward remains a persistent challenge. There’s often a gap between the HR function producing benefits analysis and that analysis landing with a chief financial officer in a form they can act on, says Allen.
Allen’s recommendation is to frame the conversation in the language of risk management — a framework that resonates across the C-suite. “The most common and observable, expensive risk is disability,” she says. “If you can draw a line between your patterns of disability and where you’re investing the most, and you have measures to say that people are using benefits appropriately and surveys showing employees are getting the value they need — that’s one thing. I’m just framing it in terms of risk management.”
Benchmarking adds weight to the argument, says Allen, noting that younger employees are acutely sensitive to employers who fall below market on benefits and the cost of losing them is quantifiable. “How long does it take to recruit? How many lost candidates do you have?” she says. “When you’re doing feedback and when you hire people, find the things that made a difference for them — ask did your benefits make a difference or not? And if not, what else have they seen in the market?”