Ask ten employees what their benefits cover and you will get ten versions of “I think so.” Most people do not think about their plan until the day they need to use it, and by then they are digging through a booklet they never opened or emailing HR a question the booklet was supposed to… Continue reading Nobody Reads The Benefits Booklet. Here Is What Employees Actually Use
Most Canadian tech companies don’t insure short-term disability. They pay for it themselves, which in practice means continuing an employee’s salary for the weeks or months they are off work. Self-funding is a reasonable financial decision for a growing company, but it quietly creates a second job that rarely gets discussed. Someone has to decide… Continue reading Why Your HR Team Shouldn’t Be Deciding Disability Claims
Burnout is one of the most discussed problems in Canadian workplaces and one of the least consistently measured. Most of what circulates is borrowed from American surveys, and most of what gets recommended in response is a communications campaign. The Canadian data says something more specific. It points at plan design, not messaging — and… Continue reading Burnout In Canadian Tech: What The Sector’s Own Mental Health Data Says About Plan Design
Alberta’s Bill 11 is being reported as a two-tier health care story, and that is the part making headlines. But the part that affects you sits in your benefits plan, and it reaches well beyond Alberta’s borders. If you employ even one person who works in Alberta, this applies to you, and it makes no… Continue reading Bill 11 And Your Benefits Plan: What It Means For Any Employer With Staff In Alberta
When Canada Life disclosed its cyber incident this spring, I paid close attention, and not only as an advisor. My own information was caught up in it. It was initially reported that the incident exposed the personal information of up to 70,000 people, most of them employees of a single large corporate client, however, Insurance… Continue reading The Canada Life Breach And The Data The Headlines Overlooked
The numbers are in! Each year, the employee benefits industry waits for the annual ranking of Canada’s top group benefits providers, and the 2025 figures offer another window into where the market is heading. The big names held their ground, the smaller carriers kept climbing, and the cost pressures shaping every plan in the country… Continue reading Canada’s Top 20 Employee Benefits Providers — 2025
Vision Care Has Been Quietly Treated as a Throwaway Benefit For most of the last decade, vision care has been the line item nobody on the benefits committee fights about. A flat allowance every two years for an exam, frames, and lenses. Predictable, low-cost, rarely revisited. Most plans on the market today were designed when… Continue reading Vision Care Is Moving Toward Prevention — But Plans Haven’t Caught Up Yet
GLP-1’s Are No Longer a Fringe Benefits Issue For a while, GLP-1’s looked like a fringe benefits issue—expensive, high-profile, and easy to file under “we’ll deal with it later.” That’s no longer the case. For Canadian employers, especially fast-growing tech teams, GLP-1’s are becoming a real plan design decision. Not because every company suddenly needs… Continue reading GLP-1’s Are About to Become A Bigger Benefits Conversation, Not A Simpler One
If 2025 was the year employee benefits shifted from a nice-to-have to a strategic imperative, 2026 will be the year that reality shows up in budgets, boardrooms, and renewal conversations across Canada. Costs are rising faster than many employers anticipated, employee health and well-being needs are growing more complex, and benefits decisions are more about… Continue reading 2026 Canadian Employee Benefits Outlook: Rising Costs & Bigger Decisions
For a while, the future of work felt settled. Hybrid wasn’t perfect, but it was working. Flexibility had proven itself, commutes shrank, calendars loosened, and employees quietly reorganized their lives around more autonomy. Wellness stopped being something people talked about and started becoming something they actually practiced. Now, that balance is shifting again. Governments are… Continue reading Return to Office Is Coming Back. But It’s Not the Same Workplace It Left.
