iA Financial Group’s Ryan Baker argues most workplace programs confuse awareness with action and employers are paying the price
According to Aflac’s 2026 WorkForces Report, money now outranks health and relationships as a leading source of stress among workers – a pattern Canadian employers are notably contending with, too, as financial strain increasingly follows employees through the workplace door.
At last week’s CPBI Western Conference held in Kelowna, BC, Ryan Baker argued that most workplace financial wellness programs are stuck at the awareness stage, while the gap between knowing and doing is where billions in productivity disappear.
Baker pointed to published data from FP Canada that found 43 per cent of Canadians identify money as their leading source of stress, adding financial stress is now estimated to cost approximately $74 billion each year in lost productivity for Canadian employers, according to National Payroll Institute's 2026 Annual Survey of Working Canadians.
"Each statistic measures this issue from a different perspective, but together they tell us something really important," said Baker, senior education strategist, group benefits and retirement solutions at iA Financial Group.
"Financial stress is not confined to an employee's personal life. It can affect how they focus, how they participate, and how they perform at work. Now, assuming that these findings are broadly true for your own organization or that the clients that you deal with, how many employees are carrying financial stress with them during their workday?" he added.
While the data paints a broad picture, Baker believes the real question is what those numbers look like inside any single organization, noting many employers run separate initiatives targeting engagement, retention, and absenteeism without recognizing that financial stress may be feeding all three.
"An employee who is worried about paying bills, managing their debt, or affording a home simply isn’t leaving those concerns at the door when they come to work," he said.
The pressures themselves vary widely, ranging from housing affordability, day-to-day expenses, debt, retirement readiness, but Baker cautions against lumping them together. For example, a first-time homebuyer and someone five years from retirement aren’t solving the same problem, and he suggests a program that treats them identically will fall short for both.
To that end, Baker identified six patterns that undercut otherwise well-funded programs: generic messaging that ignores age and circumstances, "one-size-fits-all" education, communication that drops off after enrollment, an outsized emphasis on retirement, information overload, and a lack of measurable outcomes tied to behaviour. Yet, he suggests none of these are technology failures or budget shortfalls but rather, engagement failures.
Why well-funded financial wellness programs still fall short
The core issue, in Baker’s view, is that most organizations confuse awareness with action. Employees know the plan exists. They receive the emails and the enrollment packages. But knowing a resource is available does not mean using it. Barriers sit between the two, unclear calls to action, intimidating platforms, poorly timed messaging, and content that feels disconnected from what an employee is dealing with right now.
"Financial wellness becomes much more effective when we stop treating employees as one group and start recognizing that different employees require different types of support," said Baker, adding that awareness isn’t the problem. Rather, the challenge plan sponsors face and need to tackle is acting on it.
"If awareness alone created better outcomes, every employee who attended one of my education sessions would immediately improve their financial situation. But we know that's not how behaviour works," he said.
"So the question becomes, what does real financial wellness actually look like? Financial wellness is not what the employees know. Financial wellness is what employees do. Do they take action? Did they increase a contribution? Did they create an emergency fund? Did they create a budget? That's why financial wellness requires a shift from informing people to empowering people," Baker added.
Building a financial wellness ecosystem, not another program
Baker argues that financial wellness shouldn’t be treated as a uniform experience, as a 29-year-old saving for a first home and a 58-year-old planning retirement, for example, are facing fundamentally different problems, and the support that moves one forward may be irrelevant to the other.
The goal isn’t to produce employees who are well-informed but to produce employees who are confident enough to act, said Baker.
That kind of outcome, he contends, also can’t come from a single program or a single campaign. It demands an ecosystem. One that consists of benefit programs, retirement programs, communication, education, and behavioural support working together, each serving a distinct function. Strip any one element out and the overall experience weakens as employees often need relevance, accessibility, and support tied to their actual circumstances.
That misalignment, Baker argues, also explains why financial stress remains stubbornly high even in organizations that spend heavily on wellness programs.
“When employees don’t see themselves in the solution, even the best communication can feel irrelevant,” he said.
He frames the fix around a shift from delivering information to driving behaviour.
“Financial wellness is not what the employees know. Financial wellness is what employees do,” he said, underscoring plan sponsors should design programs around specific employee challenges rather than around products.
From financial awareness to advocacy
Baker proposes an engagement ladder that moves employees through five stages: awareness, interest, engagement, commitment, and advocacy. The conditions that drive movement up the ladder are relevance, personal impact, interaction, and a practical next step.
"Content answers the question, what do I need to know? Interaction answers the question, what does this mean for me?" he said.
He pointed to the First Home Savings Account as one example of connecting a program to a goal employees already hold, noting Canadians aged 25 to 34 represented 57 per cent of FHSA contributions in the program’s first year, according to RBC data.
That figure, he suggests, signals younger workers are actively searching for solutions tied to homeownership and employers who offer group FHSA access gain an engagement channel that retirement messaging alone cannot provide.
Additionally, measurement, Baker underscored, needs to shift alongside strategy, noting too many organizations track activity - emails sent, webinar attendance, resources posted - rather than behaviour. He points to digital tool usage, contribution-level changes, post-interaction outcomes, and employee pulse surveys as more meaningful indicators.
Baker’s advice for employers moving forward is a four-prong approach.
"First, identify one employee financial challenge. Second, identify one desired employee behaviour. Third, choose a relevant intervention that achieves this objective. Not 10 initiatives, just one. And finally, decide how you will measure success," he said, adding while employees gain confidence and financial resilience, employers, in turn, see stronger program utilization and less productivity loss.
"When we identify the right challenge, connect the right solution, and measure the right outcome, we create better experiences for employees, better results for employers, and greater impact for advisors."
