From Gen Z’s demand for virtual mental health support to boomers’ focus on continuity of care, priorities are diverging fast, argues Sunil Hirjee
There are now five generations that coexist in the Canadian workforce. From pre-boomers still drawing retiree benefits to Gen Z employees who are likely navigating their first group plan, employers face a benefits landscape that no longer works with a single strategy. The old model - one plan with one set of assumptions - is starting to break down.
Still, Sunil Hirjee emphasized plan sponsors still have the important role and the expectation of meeting the needs of all of their members.
“The difference is that you have a much more diverse set of needs and it’s becoming more definitive,” said Hirjee, vice president, group sales and partner experience, Ontario, Western and Atlantic Canada at Beneva. “What we're seeing is that there's a bigger and bigger request from our clients and partners to find ways to solve those flexible needs. And you're seeing increased uptakes in things like modular plan designs, spending accounts.”
Yet Hirjee was quick to acknowledge the constraints workplaces are also facing. Budgets are finite, and the costs tied to existing coverage keep climbing. Before plan sponsors can address new generational demands, they need to lock down cost sustainability through mechanisms like biosimilar substitution and preferred pharmacy pricing agreements, he said.
"Those are the programs that have to be in place for cost sustainability to ensure that I can meet the more diverse needs that are being presented to us today," he said. “If that's in place, then I think you need to have a great way of checking the pulse of your population.”
But even then, trying to cover every need is a losing game. The smarter move, he argues, is to survey the workforce, understand what each cohort actually prioritizes, and build from there.
To that end, Hirjee sees each generation arriving at benefits with a different set of pressures and priorities. For Gen Z, the defining issue is the social media environment, which has intensified comparison, financial anxiety, and feelings of falling short. That’s feeding demand for mental health support, but many younger workers end up relying on medication instead of broader care because psychological services can be hard to access and too expensive out of pocket. He believes this cohort may need a more holistic response than the system is currently providing.
Millennials are also dealing with mental health strain, but from a different direction. Their pressure comes from being squeezed between work, young children, and aging parents, often during the most financially demanding years of their lives.
For them, the real need is broader well-being support and workable solutions around balance. Hirjee suggests the issue is not always the absence of resources, but the fact that many employees are still not fully aware of supports such as employee assistance programs.
For Gen X, the focus shifts toward value, flexibility, and protecting the family. This group is more concerned with income protection, dependent coverage, and plan features that reflect both active family responsibilities and the early realities of pre-retirement planning.
Baby boomers, by contrast, are much more concentrated on continuity of care, long-term health support, specialized medical access, and strong drug coverage, since chronic conditions are more common and costs are higher. Additionally, boomers are looking for retirement planning services and education sessions that help them understand what costs they may face once they are no longer covered by employer-sponsored or provincial health programs.
Virtual health care, meanwhile, registers differently depending on the generation – boomers treat it as a nice-to-have, while Gen Z considers it essential.
Additioanlly, Hirjee pointed to his own personal experience. Despite working in the industry, when a family member needed support late last year, he struggled to find the right resources.
"The lack of awareness that I had personally being a professional in this industry and the lack of support that I was able to find, even doing my own research, was frustrating," said Hirjee, noting that experience points to a real opportunity for plan sponsors to better support more tenured workers. But he’s also quick to acknowledge the constraint that runs through every part of the conversation:
"We still have this very real limitation in terms of what we can afford to provide coverage for," he added.
While every benefits category is under pressure, Hirjee doesn’t see the answer as a sweeping redesign. Rather, he argues the more immediate issue is awareness.
While there may be room to add new supports or adjust plan design in some areas as needed, he argues many of the services employees need – from virtual care and chronic condition support to pre-retirement planning – already exist or can be made available through providers.
The real challenge is making sure the right groups know what is available to them. He suggests that employers will get more impact by identifying which cohorts are missing the message and targeting communication there, rather than assuming the entire plan needs to be rebuilt.
"Sometimes it's not so much that the coverage doesn't exist or the support doesn't exist. Sometimes it's more focused on the awareness of what exists," he said. “There is also this reality that cost sustainability needs to be managed efficiently. And if there's one area that I would say plan sponsors can focus on is making sure that they're partnered with providers that have that sustainability at the forefront of everything they're offering.”
To that end, Hirjee argues Beneva has built out several ways to help plan sponsors respond to a workforce with sharply different generational needs. That includes a team focused on workplace health strategy, which works with employers to improve overall well-being, identify which programs are likely to matter most to different age groups, and measure whether those efforts are actually having an effect over time.
Beyond that, he points to more specialized offerings for particular needs, including areas such as virtual health care, chronic condition management, and critical illness coverage. Those options, he suggests, may be especially relevant for older cohorts approaching retirement, where chronic disease and longer-term health concerns become more pressing.
“We’re well positioned to address the needs that we're seeing as being very specific based on the generations that exist in our workforce,” said Hirjee.
