Almost half of HR professionals now name burnout as their number one business risk for the year. Global employee engagement just hit an all-time low, sitting at 20%. And only 27% of workers say mental health is genuinely prioritized at their organization, with action and resources behind it, not just a statement on a careers page.

Those three numbers alone tell you where things stand. But the harder part isn't seeing the risk, it's catching it before it costs you.

That’s why we're excited to launch our 2027 Corporate Wellness Report. The timing feels right: leaders are being asked to make wellness budget decisions, often without the data to back it up, and we wanted to give HR and people leaders something they could actually use to set their priorities, grounded in numbers instead of guesswork.

"Quiet burnout" makes this harder to see and catch. Across the workforce — not just among high performers — employees are showing up functional while running on empty. Nearly half of CHROs cite maintaining morale as their top challenge. (SHRM, 2026)

The financial side of this is not small either. Presenteeism, where people show up but underperform, now accounts for 55% of total mental health costs in Canada. Absenteeism adds another 41%. Together that's 96% of the entire mental health burden employers carry, and most of it is invisible until you go looking for it.

Here's the number that changes the conversation for a lot of leaders we work with: Organizations that invest in prevention see a 27% burnout rate. Organizations that don't sit at 47%. For a 500-person team, that gap translates to roughly 1.7 million dollars in potential annual savings. Replacing a burned-out employee costs somewhere between 50% and 200% of their salary. Prevention is simply the cheaper path.

The report also digs into a few areas that don't get talked about a lot, even though they're seen in annual benefits premiums. GLP-1 coverage has moved from a pharmacy trend piece to a line item employers are actively debating. Menopause support is still offered by only 15% of organizations, despite 84% of women saying they want more of it from their employer. And employees are now naming AI directly as a stressor alongside cost of living and job security, a pressure most 2026 wellness strategies weren't built to account for.

None of this means starting from zero. It means building a plan that treats mental health, physical health, and team connection as one system instead of three separate line items, and putting it in place before your team hits a breaking point rather than after.

This is exactly why HEAL Corporate Wellness exists. Our programs are written and run by practitioners with real corporate backgrounds, not junior admin staff and not an algorithm. That's part of why organizations see the engagement they do with us, and why the clients who stick with us longest, two years or more, are the ones seeing the strongest results. Every program is customized to the organization it's built for, and the systems behind it are simple enough that HR can hand it off and actually see it through, instead of managing wellness on top of an already full plate.

We put all of this, the full data set, the cost breakdowns, and what the organizations pulling ahead are doing differently, into the 2027 Corporate Wellness Report. If you're building your wellness strategy for the year ahead, or trying to make the case for one internally, this is the resource to start with.

If you haven’t already, fill out the form below and we'll send the full report straight to your inbox.

‍