Employee benefits in Canada have shifted from a back‑office expense to a frontline tool in the fight for talent, as workers demand easier access to care, broader mental health support and more flexible plans tailored to different life stages.
Much of that shift traces back to the early months of 2020. The pandemic did more than strain health systems; it turned private medical decisions into a collective preoccupation and pulled employees into conversations they rarely had before.
Sunil Hirjee (pictured), vice president, group sales & partner experience, Ontario, Western & Atlantic Canada at Beneva, points to that moment as a break with the past. During the vaccine rollout, Canadians suddenly found themselves weighing not only whether to get a shot, but which one.
“I’ve never witnessed a patient being involved in determining which brand of therapy they wanted,” he said.
That level of scrutiny did not end with vaccines. It spread into workplaces, with employees asking detailed questions about what their plans cover, what they don’t and what additional support they can expect. The result has been a more informed and demanding membership base.
Plan sponsors now face a more complex brief: satisfy a wider range of expectations around health and wellbeing while operating under the same financial constraints. Hirjee said that tension is driving the most significant evolution in the market.
Plan members are looking beyond traditional prescription and dental coverage. They want to know what is available for mental health, what preventive resources exist and how easy it is to navigate those options. At the same time, employers are under pressure to run benefits as part of a coherent employment proposition, not a commodity product.
When companies talk about culture and values, the structure of their benefit programs is increasingly expected to reinforce those messages. “Benefit programs that plan sponsors are utilizing, when they are illustrating to their members how important they are for their visions, have to be perceived as valuable but also sustainable,” Hirjee said.
Digital tools sit at the centre of this recalibration. Smartphone apps, virtual care platforms and self‑service portals are becoming standard rather than differentiators.
“The need to be able to deliver an experience to the plan member that is as simple and as accessible as possible is a necessity,” he said. Having “almost immediate access to resources” in the palm of a hand has moved from convenience to expectation.
The technology layer is not only about claims submission or coverage look‑ups. Increasingly, it is the front door to mental health support, coaching, navigation services and other add‑ons that were once peripheral. Digital delivery allows employers to reach people who may never call an assistance line or book an in‑person appointment.
Layered on top of this is a demographic challenge. For the first time, Hirjee notes, many Canadian workplaces employ five distinct age cohorts at once. Those groups differ not only in health profiles but in communication preferences.
“Each of those generations has different needs,” he said. “There’s also a big difference in how they expect to be engaged, how we communicate with them.” Some workers want instant messaging and app‑based interactions; others still look for the option to “speak to someone live on the phone.”
Flexibility, therefore, has two dimensions: the content of coverage and the channels used to reach members. Employers are being pushed to diversify both. That expectation now shows up in procurement processes.
Flexibility “is becoming an ever‑present decision‑making factor when our clients are looking to choose the right provider,” Hirjee said.
The strategic importance of benefits has risen in parallel. Two decades ago, many employers treated these programs as a standard cost category. Today, amid tight labour markets and more mobile talent, they are increasingly framed as part of workforce strategy.
“If I looked back maybe 20 years ago, there could have been a perception that offering a benefits program was simply a cost of business,” Hirjee said. Now, with a “bigger challenge to get the right talent” and persuade people to stay, he sees employers placing programs “more strategically as part of their vision.”
That shift is reinforced by a clearer link between certain types of support and productivity. Hirjee points to mental health as a prominent example. Issues such as caregiver strain, burnout and chronic stress can erode performance long before an absence shows up in official statistics.
“When I start to face challenges where there’s competing priorities, whether it’s taking the role of a caregiver at home, the reality is my mind is split,” he said. That creates “a bigger challenge around presenteeism,” more fatigue and, ultimately, “less production.”
Virtual healthcare is another area where he sees both member value and operational payoff. For employees managing a child’s illness or lacking a family physician, a visit to a walk‑in clinic can wipe out hours of the workday. Virtual access changes that calculus.
It “allows me as a plan sponsor to offer a service that can minimize the amount of time that my plan member may need to be out of work to go deal with a health scenario,” Hirjee said. Having access to a virtual provider “from home, on your schedule” can reduce time away from work while still addressing the issue.
The combination of more informed plan members, multi‑generational workforces and rising expectations around digital delivery is forcing Canadian employers to revisit long‑standing designs. For insurers, the challenge is to support that transition while keeping programs affordable over time.
Hirjee believes the business case is now more straightforward than it once was. “There’s a clearer return on investment from making these investments than might have been in the past,” he said.
