Mental health emerges as a top concern for Canadian employers: report

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A new report shows that mental health has emerged as a top concern of Canadian employers, ranking alongside more obvious threats such as labour shortages and COVID-19.

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Prior to the pandemic, Canada businesses tended to express worry about more tangible risks: an office fire that could destroy essential documents; a flood that could short-circuit expensive equipment.

But now, the biggest threats facing Canadian businesses are invisible, and trickier to manage, according to insurance company Aviva Canada’s annual Risk Insights Report, which draws on interviews with 1,500 business leaders to rank the things that keep Canadian business leaders awake at night.

COVID-19 ranked as the biggest threat; no surprise, given it caused an epic global recession in 2020 and continues to torment businesses around the world. The second item on the list, cyber-security, also was on the radar of executives a few years ago, even if relatively few were unsure about how to guard against malicious hackers. Labour shortages and supply disruptions – fourth and fifth, respectively – have been widely reported as the driving forces behind a troubling burst of inflation for more than a year.

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The biggest surprise might be the risk at No. 3 on Aviva’s list: mental health, which was rarely discussed as an economic issue ahead of the pandemic. That’s changed. Employee satisfaction declined when COVID-19 hit and employees began working remotely. Experts believe Canadians are living with low-grade trauma from the events of the past two years, which, from a purely business perspective, increases absenteeism and adds to costs associated with treating mental health.

“The impact of lost productivity on our economy from new mental health challenges since COVID measures in the billions,” Akela Peoples, chief executive officer of Mental Health Research Canada, wrote in an op-ed published last week in the Financial Post.

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Essential workers continued to work with increased restrictions during the pandemic, while other employees began working from home, isolating them from co-workers and increasing the risk of loneliness and depression. This initial transition, as well as the return to work, has created a great deal of anxiety. Overall, 45 per cent of businesses saw an impact on employee wellbeing and mental health, according to the report.

While some staff enjoy working from home, there are definite “downsides to the pressures of working from home and the stress of being ‘always-on,’” the report said.

Not all business sectors are equally concerned about mental health. Businesses that are dependent on face-to-face client interactions, such as real-estate, retail, and the service industry are more inclined to fret for employees’ wellbeing.

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Peoples said in her essay that front-line workers are among the hardest hit in the ongoing mental health crisis. “Many will experience PTSD, a challenging issue that can manifest months after a trauma subsides,” she wrote.

“Putting aside the human element, we have an economic rationale for continued focus on mental health,” Peoples said. “Our data indicates that eight per cent of the school or working population are losing days every week to mental health issues.”

The risk to businesses is not negligible. But most of the smaller companies surveyed by Aviva were still reeling from the impact of the pandemic, and said they were focused on staying in business rather than mitigating risks like mental health.

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Small businesses are already adept at risk management, whether they realize it or not, said Susan Penwarden, chief technical underwriter at Aviva Canada, the local unit of London-based Aviva PLC. “Small businesses do risk management every day, because risk management is basically running your business, and being aware of all the things that are going on that you have to manage.”

As the pandemic continues, the way Canadian businesses view risk is changing. In moving business operations online, the pandemic increased the potential for cyber-security threats, and has created new challenges for employees with regard to mental health. It has also made supply chain vulnerabilities painfully clear.

“We need to be able to see beyond the next curve in the road and identify future risks before they’re already upon us – because we know they’re coming,” Jason Storah, CEO of Aviva Canada, said in the report.

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Some might argue that it is impossible to accurately predict what the next 5 or 10 years may hold, and concerns about mental health will pass. However, there is reason to doubt that work will return to normal. Protiviti, a global consulting firm with an office in Canada, predicts that the risks of 2031 could include managing the hybrid work environment, keeping up with the breakneck speed of innovation, and more.

“COVID-19 has fundamentally challenged how businesses assess, manage and mitigate risk,” the Aviva report said. “However, they’re meeting those challenges head-on and with clarity.”

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