“The same way we had occupational health legislation \u2014 that was great because employers need to assess\u00a0and\u00a0mitigate that risk, and it benefited\u00a0countries\u00a0and it\u00a0also benefited employers,\u201d she says. \u201cThe same is happening, but not as quickly in Canada as we would like, for psychological risk.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
In TELUS Health’s\u00a0Mental Health Index\u00a0for the first quarter of 2026<\/a>, 27 per cent of respondents said their physical health needs were not being met by their employer, and\u00a0close to 25 per cent said the same for mental health. Those\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0abstract metrics. They translate directly into talent acquisition<\/a> and retention costs, and into the competitive value of the total rewards package, says Allen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking the language of the boardroom\u00a0<\/p>\n Even when the data exists, communicating\u00a0benefits\u00a0value upward\u00a0remains\u00a0a persistent challenge.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0often 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Allen’s recommendation is to frame the conversation in the language of risk management \u2014 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 \u2014 that’s one thing. I’m just framing it in terms of risk management.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Benchmarking adds weight to the argument, says Allen, noting\u00a0that younger employees are acutely sensitive to employers who fall below market on\u00a0benefits\u00a0and the cost of losing them is quantifiable. “How long does it take to recruit? How many lost candidates do you have?\u201d\u00a0she\u00a0says. \u201cWhen\u00a0you’re\u00a0doing feedback\u00a0and\u00a0when you hire people, find the things that made a difference for them\u00a0\u2014\u00a0ask\u00a0did your benefits make a difference or not? And if not, what else have they seen in the market?”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The same way we had occupational health legislation \u2014 that was great because employers need to assess\u00a0and\u00a0mitigate that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16178,17,48120,25910],"class_list":["post-148556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-benefits","tag-canada","tag-measuring","tag-roi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}