With so much emphasis on AI in the workplace, it is easy to forget the real driver of organizational performance: the people.

Most business outcomes trace back to how effectively an organization supports, retains and develops its workforce. In an increasingly uncertain market, the companies that get this right will outperform those chasing the next technology investment while neglecting the humans operating it.

That is why forward-thinking organizations are recognizing that employee wellbeing, financial security and workforce resilience are not HR programs. They are business performance strategies.

The Business Case for Wellbeing

Wellbeing has traditionally been positioned as a perk. Something that sits in the HR budget and gets trimmed when times get tight.

The evidence says otherwise. Employees in supportive work environments lose 27 days [2] per year to mental health challenges. Those in unsupportive environments lose 55. Same workforce. Same economy. Same uncertainty. The only variable is whether the organization invested in support. Deloitte Canada found that every dollar invested in workplace mental health returns $1.62 [3], rising to $2.18 for programs sustained beyond three years. And J.P. Morgan has independently validated the connection between employee wellbeing and financial outperformance in four separate research notes.

These are not wellness metrics. They are investment returns.

Meanwhile, the cost of inaction is compounding. Financially stressed employees lose over three hours per week to distraction. 42% of Canadians [4] say economic uncertainty is directly harming their mental health, the highest level ever recorded. 70% say [5] it is already reducing their productivity. And 42% of employee turnover [6] is preventable.

Employee wellbeing is not adjacent to business performance. It is a direct input.

Using the Data

The challenge is that most organizations cannot see the full picture. Benefits data lives with the carrier. RRSP participation lives with the retirement administrator. Engagement scores live with HR. Disability claims live in a quarterly report nobody connects to anything else.

When RRSP participation drops, mental health claims rise, engagement hits a multi-year low, and type 2 diabetes medication prescriptions accelerate, all in the same cohort, within the same quarters. You are not looking at four trends. You are looking at one workforce in distress, written across four systems no one is reading together.

Organizations that connect these data sets stop reacting to problems that already happened and start seeing problems that are about to happen. The shift from disconnected reporting to connected insight is where smarter strategy begins.

Six Strategic Imperatives

Organizations cannot control every challenge their employees face. But they can address the six areas where the evidence shows the highest return:

Financial Education

Financial stress is the number one source of anxiety for 49% of Canadian employees [5]. Over 50% of Gen Z report mental health challenges driven directly by financial stress. 98% of employees [7] say they would use a financial advisor if offered at no cost. Only 25% do. The gap between wanting help and getting help is where productivity goes to die.

Mental Health Support

39% of Gen Z [8] currently report moderate to severe depression. Chronic disease drug claims among this cohort are growing 2 to 3 times faster [9] than any other age group. For women, mental health scores are six points lower [5] than men across Canada, and unmanaged menopause symptoms are now appearing in disability and chronic disease claims data. This is not a niche issue. It is a cost driver hiding in the claims experience.

Benefits Communication and Personalization

73% of employees [10] say they would stay for better personalized benefits. Yet most organizations deliver their benefits message once, during onboarding, in a booklet nobody reads. The gap is not coverage. It is communication. Organizations are paying for wellbeing. Their employees are not experiencing it.

Succession Planning and Knowledge Transfer

4.4 million Canadian workers [11] are over 55. A record 1.2 million over 65 are still working, the highest participation rate since 1976, many because they are not sure they can afford to stop. Research shows that financially anxious employees approaching retirement do not mentor freely. They protect and disengage. A two-hour retirement financial planning session does more for knowledge transfer than two years of asking.

Manager Capability

70% of the variance [12] in team engagement is determined by the manager. Yet 73% of organizations [13] recognize the need to reinvent the manager role while only 7% are making progress. Employees whose managers score high on visibility and candor are 72% less likely [14] to lose productivity after a disruption. The manager is the delivery mechanism for every other investment on this list.

Costs with a Capital C

A 10% benefits renewal triggers the instinct to cut. Cap paramedical. Tighten disability qualification. Increase deductibles. That saves $200,000 on paper. But nobody asks why claims are accelerating. The clinical pathway from financial stress to anxiety to sleep disruption to chronic disease to a GLP-1 prescription crosses five data sets. Cut the early intervention and the downstream claims cost multiples more. The plan renewal is a $200,000 conversation. The workforce condition underneath it is a $2 million conversation.

These six priorities are interconnected. Financial stress drives mental health decline. Mental health decline drives disability claims. Poor communication means employees never access the support that could have intervened. Untrained managers cannot deliver what the organization has invested in. And without connected data, leadership never sees the full cost of inaction.

Working with a strategic benefits advisor who can connect these dots, build the business case in language a CFO will fund, and design interventions that reach the right people at the right life stage is the difference between a benefits plan that costs money and a wellbeing strategy that produces a return.

Investing in your people is not a soft decision. It is the highest-return capital allocation most organizations are not making.


Faizal Mitha is Vice President of AI Sales Innovation for global insurance brokeragee Hub International, responsible for scaling AI-powered sales practices across HUB's Commercial Lines, Personal Lines, Private Client, Retirement & Private Wealth, and Employee Benefits lines of business in the U.S. and Canada. He is a Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS), holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary and an executive MBA from Simon Fraser University.

[1] http://www.hubinternational.com/
[2]
https://questbehavioralhealth.com/mental-health-and-work-productivity/
[3]
https://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/press-releases/articles/significant-roi-for-workplace-mental-health-programs.html
[4] https://www.mhrc.ca/findings-of-poll-23
[5]
https://www.benefitscanada.com/news/bencan/canadian-workers-mental-health-declining-in-2025-due-to-burnout-financial-stress-report/
[6]
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx
[7]
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx
[8]
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/27/gen-z-workers-arent-feeling-great-whats-the-problem/
[9]
https://www.sunlife.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/announcement/gen-z-leads-all-age-groups-for-mental-health-challenges-and-chronic-disease-rates/124046/
[10]
https://riskandinsurance.com/benefits-disconnect-new-study-reveals-73-of-employees-would-stay-for-better-personalized-programs/
[11]
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/9132-record-number-canadian-seniors-worked-2025-here-are-some-reasons-why
[12]
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/395210/engage-frontline-managers.aspx
[13]
https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/about/press-room/deloitte-report-aims-to-help-leaders-navigate-complex-workplace-tensions.html
[14] http://www.designfax.net/news/stories/feature-7.asp