Employers can no longer treat what happens in their employees' personal lives as separate from what happens at work, according to Mark Spence, vice president, group health and life insurance, Canada at Westland Benefits, who said the pace of pressure facing workers over the past several years has left almost no one unaffected.
Spence pointed to the compounding effect of the past five to six years: the pandemic, a sharp labor shortage that turned into a talent war, then a recession layered on top of persistent inflation. Many employees, he said, are caught in the so-called sandwich generation, managing aging parents while also raising children, often in expensive cities where the cost of living alone is a constant strain.
That combination of financial and family pressure inevitably affects mental wellness, Spence said, and it doesn't stay contained to an employee's personal life.
"If you're not present at work, it'll start reflecting itself in absenteeism, errors, all those types of things," Spence said. "We can not win business if our lead people are exhausted and mentally worn out."
As a result, Spence said employers are increasingly forced to accept that supporting employees through pressures originating outside the office is now a business necessity rather than a discretionary kindness.
"The workplace can no longer ignore that they have a part to play in it," Spence said. "It's unavoidable. Businesses have to realize that it's not a personal issue. Like it or not, it’s an issue for your company also."
Asked if and how benefits help with retention, Spence said benefits function as a tool across an employee's entire relationship with a company, not just as a hiring incentive. A benefits program can help attract someone from outside a company in the first place, and over time, expanding coverage or adding tools like group retirement savings becomes a way of signaling ongoing investment in an employee's life, not just their paycheck.
That signal matters more than employers sometimes realize, Spence said, since most people are naturally inclined to want to stay somewhere they feel supported, rather than job-hop by default.
"When you demonstrate that you're a good employer over time, that you’re making an investment in your workers and their family, physical health, mental health, and financial health, that's the natural human state," Spence said. "They will want to grow with your company, as long as possible."
Despite that, Spence said the biggest gap he sees isn't necessarily how much employers spend on mental health support, but how well employees actually understand what's already available to them.
Compounding that awareness gap is a steep rise in the cost of mental health practitioners themselves, Spence said, driven by a shortage of psychologists and other specialists relative to demand.
"The hourly cost went through the roof," Spence said. "I've seen it go from maybe $100 an hour to $215. The carriers have to increase their R&C’s (reasonable and customary charges for practitioners) to match that reality, but it always appears as increased premiums for an employer."
That price pressure, he said, isn't really evidence of employers deliberately underinvesting, so much as a reflection of inflation hitting every practitioner in the system at once. The real fix, in his view, comes down to consistent, repeated communication rather than a single announcement that a benefit exists.
"You got to check in, do regular updates, do surveys," Spence said. "Some companies are great at it. As long as there is a commitment to keep communicating, you can try to overcome any of those gaps."
On measuring whether a benefits change is actually improving employee wellbeing, Spence said the biggest mistake employers make is expecting results too quickly. Real behavioral change takes time, and a rise in utilization immediately following a new benefit or communication push shouldn't be treated as a warning sign.
"If it goes up, you've actually communicated it the right way. People are using it. Those numbers are actually good," Spence said, adding that employers sometimes misread growing utilization as a cost problem rather than a sign the plan is finally reaching the people it was designed for.
He said the only reliable way to know whether an investment in benefits is working is to ask employees directly rather than assume. Spence pointed to his own experience auditing employee sentiment on behalf of clients, surveying staff about what was happening in their lives and what they wanted more support with, work that has repeatedly surfaced a clear, shared desire among employees for more of a specific benefit once given the chance to say so.
Once an employer commits to a particular philosophy around supporting employees, Spence said, the whole organization, not just HR, needs to stay aligned behind that decision and be prepared to monitor it over multiple quarters rather than expect an immediate, measurable shift.
"It's a cultural shift for some companies," Spence said. "You have to make sure the CFO is aligned with the HR director. When you start to get enough quarters in a row of trend lines, you know if your investment was worth it."
