ENSURING A HEALTHY AND RESILIENT WORKFORCE - Benefits Together is an annual, multi-city series which highlights current health issues and trends impacting Canadian workplaces

HALIFAX, NS, May 7, 2024 /CNW/ - The annual Benefits Together Conferences led by Medavie Blue Cross wrapped up this week providing a way to connect and share tools to build a committed and resilient workforce focused on healthy employees.

In Halifax, Toronto and Montreal, attendees including speakers, clients, advisors and employees, gathered to share new ideas and methods to continue to build healthy workforce communities.

Experts from across Canada discussed factors impacting our workforce today including:

A panel discussion on how artificial intelligence presents opportunities to relieve some of the pressure on our strained healthcare system, as well as to improve efficiencies and member experience for group benefit plans. The panelists also stressed the importance of balancing the need for data security and privacy, while exploring opportunities that technology can offer us.

Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe and Nathalie Lacombe, experts in their field, led the second session of the day where they discussed how lifestyle factors, symptoms of menopause, stress and chronic conditions impact sleep quality and highlighted how sleep impacts the wellbeing and productivity of today's workforce. Employers play an important role in supporting employees' need for rest and recovery through various life and career events.

Recognizing, preventing and treating burnout was also at the heart of the discussions. With work and life stresses at all-time highs, employers need new ways of supporting the physical and mental health of employees. Resilience experts emphasized simple, yet key steps to empower employees to take charge of their health and build resilience.

We strive to give our partners the tools they need to be successful. Participants left with a well-stocked toolbox to ensure they put all the best strategies in place to have healthy, fulfilled employees at work.

To learn more, visit medaviebc.ca.

If you are interested in speaking with any of our Medavie panelists or special guests, please reach out.

Bernard Lord, CEO, Medavie
Once again this year, our conference series was rich in information. In person only, Benefits Together fosters important conversations. From our panel on AI and our informed discussion on sleep to our closing presentation on employee resilience, we focus on the changing environment in which we all live and work to ensure a healthy and resilient workforce.

Angela Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder, sanoLiving and speaker on the AI panel 
Despite receiving less than 8% of medical research funding, with even less directed toward menopause, women's health needs have been historically overlooked. Today, advancements in AI and virtual health platforms offer women the chance to access reliable information on their own terms and contribute their data, helping bridge this critical knowledge gap. For this potential to be fully realized, it's imperative that organizations commit to complete transparency, ensuring women feel secure and empowered to participate in research that could redefine healthcare for half the population.

Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, Resiliency Scholar and Multi-award Winning Author 
We can run a sleep deficit for a bit, but when it's prolonged, we're going to see substantial and avoidable long-term health conditions. Sleep is one of the most underrated things we can do to improve our health and wellbeing. It's part of the human condition.

Nathalie Lacombe, speaker and partner in health and wellness 
Now that we're aware of the real impact of sleep on our physical, mental and immune health, we're more interested than ever in optimizing it. Considering sleep onset not as a switch, but rather as a dimmer switch, helps us to understand how we need to gradually reduce all forms of stimulation in the hours leading up to bedtime. Sleep hygiene options exist 24 hours a day; for some, the evening routine is more difficult to adapt, but it might be wiser to look at how we spend our first hour awake.

Medavie Blue Cross is a premier all-in-one carrier that provides health, dental, travel, life and disability benefits and administers federal and provincial government-sponsored health programs. Together with Medavie Health Services, we are part of Medavie, a health solutions partner committed to improving the wellbeing of Canadians.

We are in the Hall of Fame of Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures and are certified as a Caring Company by Imagine Canada.

As a not-for-profit organization, we don't have shareholders. Instead, we proudly invest in communities to help address some of Canada's most pressing physical and mental health care challenges.

SOURCE Medavie Blue Cross