No, Canada’s P&C workforce won’t talk about mental health

Not only are P&C professionals declining to take time off for themselves or others, they also don’t want to share their mental health concerns with their leaders, or even their peers.

“My health is none of my colleague’s business,” one industry professional tells a recent Canadian Underwriter survey on mental health. “There are a lot of things that are none of my colleague’s business.”

In all, 836 P&C insurance industry professionals answered CU’s inaugural 2024 Mental Health Survey, which was fielded in August 2024 – just as four separate NatCats resulted in 220,000 claims for the industry over a four-week period. The survey was made possible by Allstate Canada.

About half (47%) of those polled say they’d either feel uncomfortable (26%) or very uncomfortable (21%) discussing their mental health with leaders in their organizations.

Many people who feel uncomfortable say it’s because the company’s leaders have power over their employee’s careers.

When it comes to expressing concerns to leadership, many say the stigma of ‘weakness’ attached to mental health distress is alive and well.

“I would never discuss my mental health with my management or peers, ever,” says a respondent. “I don’t want to be seen as weak or not capable, or held back for promotions. It’s a career-limiting maneuver.”

 

Not walking the talk

One industry professional cites misalignment at the senior leadership level between words and deeds.

“There is a surveillance performance culture [that] quickly attaches a stigma to individuals,” the person comments in the survey. “Corporate culture [renders] meaningless the words, ‘We have an open-door policy, if you see something say something.’

“When someone has done so in the past, there were punitive actions against the individual that they [consider to be] the problem. This corporate culture operates to suppress discussion, given the hypocrisy of the corporate speak or words, versus the retribution or punitive action.”

The survey finds a bit less reticence to discuss mental health concerns with peers in the office. One-third of those surveyed say they would feel either uncomfortable (22%) or very uncomfortable (12%) talking to peers about their mental health concerns.

One major barrier to sharing is how mental issues are perceived in cutthroat work environments where everyone’s trying to get ahead, say several respondents.

“Often management will view individuals that struggle to cope with mental health as a liability,” says one.

Another barrier is privacy. “I am a private person,” says another P&C industry professional. “I am uncomfortable discussing [these issues] with my spouse, let alone management and peers.”

Still another barrier is a sense that concerns will simply be ignored. So why disclose?

“Management doesn’t care about mental health,” says a respondent. “They just care that they have someone to assign an overabundance of claims to. They guilt and gaslight employees into thinking that our inability to cope with work stress is a ‘motivation’ problem, or a ‘coaching opportunity,’ when in reality it’s a systemic workplace culture problem.”

 

This article is excerpted from one appearing in the October-November 2024 print edition of Canadian Underwriter. Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/t_kimura