Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation full force, half a million Canadians missed work each week due to mental health issues.1 Now, with workplaces beginning to bring employees back into the office, employees have the additional anxiety associated with a return to the workplace. Worse, 14.5% of Canadians over 12 years old — or 4.6 million individuals — don’t have a regular healthcare provider.2

These conditions have major implications for employers, who will see greater turnover without providing support to employees for their physical and mental health. That points to the need for delivery platforms and benefits to help improve employee physical and mental wellness.

As the return to the workplace gets closer, it’s clear that simply offering an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) won’t be enough to ensure their employees’ wellbeing. Instead, employers need to find ways to integrate their mental health support with their other health benefits.

Insurers have been focusing on making connections between different buckets of data such as data from EAPs, drug plans and disability insurance.3 Today, technology is bridging the information gap between sources, allowing for employers to better understand employee behaviour — and benefit the employee as well.

A digital health ecosystem

The tech solution for improving wellness through existing benefits? It’s a digital platform on which employees can access all health-related benefits. This digital system allows employees to access their healthcare information through their personal computers, smartphones and tablets, using an app or single website.

An integrated digital health platform can offer access to virtual medicine through telehealth, as well as a personal care coordinator. In navigating their benefits, employees often don’t know where to start and may quit in frustration, no matter how great their needs. An integrated platform often will feature a personal care coordinator helps employees navigate the maze of benefits to find the resources they need.

There are other benefits that a digital health platform offers organization and employees:

  • Improved access to care. Unable to see a physician in person, workers may have let their healthcare slide during the COVID-19 pandemic or didn’t take advantage of virtual visits. Employees are much more likely to use telemedicine as part of an integrated platform that makes it easy to schedule visits and see doctors.
  • Increased productivity. Each year, absenteeism and “presenteeism” cost organizations hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity. An integrated health platform combats absenteeism and presenteeism because it directs employees to get help immediately to address health issues, improving wellness and productivity.
  • No searching for help. Simply bombarding employees with information about benefits during onboarding overwhelms them — by the time they’re looking for help, they’re unlikely to remember where to find it. A centralized system allows employees to get the health benefits information they need, while saving valuable time for HR teams.
  • Improved ROI. Currently, only 11% of Canadians use their EAP.4 That’s likely because of a lack of ongoing communication. With a platform that employees can use on their smartphones, tablets or personal computers, they’re not only going to have better information, but are more likely to use the mental health resources available to them.

It is no longer enough to offer a benefits solution just to check the box. Today’s employers need to offer an integrated solution to attract employees coming back to the office and make them comfortable – or risk losing those employees.

Contact a HUB International employee benefit specialist to learn more about integrated digital healthcare solutions like HUB Care Concierge — and all other aspects of employee benefits and benefits delivery.

1Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Workplace Mental Health: A Review and Recommendations, January 6, 2020.

2Statistics Canada, “Primary health care providers, 2019,” October 22, 2020.

3Sanofi Canada, The Sanofi Canada Healthcare Survey 2018, accessed August 3, 2021.

4Benefits Canada, “2021 BPS coverage: Effective EAP must put plan members front and centre,” May 28, 2021.