Why it pays to be proactive about mental health: Canadian HR leaders share insights

Building a business case with metrics 

Brown says she builds the case for proactive mental health initiatives with metrics executives already recognize. Turnover rates, sick time, short and long-term disability, and exit-survey feedback all feed into her team’s business cases, while engagement surveys add qualitative weight by highlighting whether people feel supported by their managers and whether benefits are actually usable in practice. 

“I work really closely with a leadership team all the way up to our CEO, and they really understand that a healthy team is a high-performing team,” says Brown. 

For HR leaders facing tighter scrutiny from finance, disability and benefit trends are a critical starting point, according to Faye Gagné, Manager of Employee Relations and Wellness at Henry Schein Canada. Gagné says she leans heavily on carrier data to ground the discussion, using objective measures that resonate with finance and operations. 

“We have mainly looked at our disability leave information and benefits usage, such as [employee assistance program] utilization,” she says, adding that after introducing a more structured, prevention-oriented wellness program, “we have seen a nine per cent decrease in [mental health] claims, and also a 10-day decrease in average duration of a mental health claim.” 

Shorter claims, increased productivity 

Fewer disability claims and shorter duration on average of claims can be directly linked to an organization’s bottom line. A recent study in THE Social Science & Medicine journal using the 2022 Canadian Community Health Survey found that productivity losses climbed as self-reported health declined, with workers in poorer health reporting more days absent and more time working while unwell. Health status was “inversely related to productivity losses,” underscoring that mental and physical health are tightly bound to work output.