Would you leave your job for better mental health support?
We know that lawyers face high rates of psychological distress. According to data from the 2022 National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants for Canadian Legal Professionals:
Alberta data from the National Study were released last Friday, October 11th, just in time for Thanksgiving. I am thankful that Alberta lawyers are relatively inline with our Canadian counterparts (and that we are not doing worse!) But Alberta has so many advantages. I hope that we can work together to make our legal community the strongest and healthiest it can be.
I am still working my way through the Phase 2 Omnibus Report and the Alberta data, but do not fear data geeks: an upcoming blog will address these!
But today, I want to talk about another important Canadian study released earlier this month which considered whether Canadian employees would leave their jobs for opportunities with better mental health benefits. This study was conducted by GreenShield, which explains that it is Canada’s only non-profit health and benefits provider. Yes, they have a vested interest in reaching potential new clients who may want to provide a more fulsome benefits package. And yes, non-profit organizations have targets that they like to meet or exceed, but profits are at least plowed back into their programs.
However, their data are compelling:
- 1/3 Canadians would leave their current jobs in order to get more comprehensive mental health benefits, and younger generations of employees would do so at a higher rate. Almost 2/3 of 18 to 24 year olds would do so.
- About 57% of members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community would do so as well.
- More than 2/3 experienced a mental health challenge in the last 12 months (including stress and anxiety which are increasingly common in our society.)
- 85% are concerned about confidentiality of mental health services.
- 62% expressed that having a counsellor who understands their cultural perspective, language or religion is important.
- ¾ want easy access to professionals and an easy claims process.
These are issues that Canadian employers, including law firms and legal employers, will want to consider.
However, Alberta law firms and legal employers have access to a wonderful resource that other Canadian employers cannot provide: Assist.
We know that lawyers experience high rates of psychological disruptions—see the chart above. So, the issue of providing mental health benefits is important.
In Alberta, lawyers, articling and law students, and members of their dependent families are eligible for free, professional and confidential counselling services—4 sessions per person, per issue, per year. The “4 sessions per year” is the secret sauce for our program. Many programs provide a fixed number of free sessions to be split among a family, but because we allocate sessions based on each issue, we recognize that people often face more than one issue in a year. Because everyone gets a fresh allocation per issue, we can generally cover the counselling needs of members of our community.
In fact, the average number of counselling hours per issue has hovered between 2 and 2.25 over the last several years. Pre-Covid, our average was in the range of 1.8 hours per issue, but we know that the pandemic added a new lawyer of stress that has continued to impact us. Seeing a counsellor does not mean weekly appointments delving into your childhood. We provide short-term counselling which is a research-validated modality with proven effectiveness.
The GreenShield Study highlighted that mental health benefits are critical for employee retention purposes. We know that recruitment, onboarding and getting new lawyer hires up to speed is expensive. The most recent data I have seen suggested that the cost of replacing an associate had five zeros, and that was pre-Covid.
Alberta lawyers and students do not have to rely on their employers for good mental health benefits. Assist is free to all of us, regardless of the size of our employer or whether they provide mental health benefits at all.
This is not to suggest that Alberta law firms and legal employers should stop providing mental health benefits altogether. However, given that lawyers and students have access to top-quality professional counselling, perhaps employers should focus on providing benefits which do not duplicate what Assist already provides. (And law firms could consider diverting the cost saving from not providing redundant counselling services utilizing less-experienced counsellors as a donation to Assist where we can maximize the benefits for everyone.)
Assist is, technically, a Member Assistance Program, a subspecies of an Employee Assistance Program. But we are a different animal in many important respects:
- All of our counsellors are Registered Psychologists or Registered Social Workers (for certain types of therapy) with Masters degrees or PhDs. The head of our program screens potential counsellors by where they received their clinical training.
- Our counsellors have, on average, at least 10 years of clinical experience before joining our program, while many EAPs staff their programs with provisionally registered counsellors (the equivalent of articling students, and they are supervised) and junior practitioners.
- We attract senior practitioners because we pay a reasonable hourly rate. The rate that we pay is lower than these counsellors’ private counselling rates (i.e., we have negotiated a discount!) because there is no administration associated with our clients and because sometimes lawyers become private clients with long-term relationships with the counsellor.
- A senior counsellor confided the rate that an EAP was offering, and I was shocked. While there are excellent counsellors working for EAP providers for a variety of reasons, many are very junior. Lawyers are busy people—whose time is literally money due to our billing model. We do not have time to be part of someone’s training program.
- Assist counsellors work extensively with lawyers, accountants and other professionals. They understand the stressors and the components of what law involves—you won’t have to explain what a chambers application is! Lawyers who have had poor experiences with EAPs repeatedly report counsellors suggesting that they leave law since it is so stressful. We didn’t spend 7 years in university plus articling to have someone suggest leaving when stress descends. We need strategies to manage our stress, and the stressors ingrained in our profession, which Assist counsellors can provide
- Assist’s counsellors have long term relationships with our provider. This is important because lawyers can develop long-term relationships with a counsellor as opposed to seeing a new person each time an issue arises.
As law firms and legal employers consider their retention and succession strategies, ensuring that young lawyers have access to trusted mental health resources is critical, which can be accomplished by promoting Assist and our services.
And law firms and legal departments who want to achieve their EDI hiring goals will want to know that their provider can meet the specific needs of the 2SLGBTQ+ community as well as ethnicized and racialized lawyers. If you are a lawyer seeking professional counselling services, please advise our intake worker that you are looking for a counsellor with a particular characteristic or life experience. We have an extensive roster of qualified counsellors to meet your needs.
Just a word re confidentiality from my many years working in conjunction with employee medical issues: EAPs respect confidentiality and their counsellors have professional confidentiality obligations. But at Assist, I consult on confidential complex case management issues. I can give you an unqualified commitment that Assist does not report personal information to employers or the Law Society. If someone is in danger of imminent harm, we call 911.
In my dream world, law firms would encourage their lawyers and students to use Assist as their primary counselling program. We are a program designed by lawyers with high-level management services provided by a lawyer with a wealth of experience dealing with workplace mental health issues (me!)
Continuing my dream, law firms would make regular donations to Assist instead of paying per capita fees to EAP providers for their lawyers and articling students. We could reduce our perceived financial dependency on the Law Society (but we are very grateful for the sustainable funding they provide.) And we could develop even more proactive programs to benefit lawyers and students.
Lawyers and students: not all programs are created equal. If you are interested in counselling services and are deciding between an EAP and Assist, please ask your EAP how many years their counsellor has been practising, how long they have worked for that program, and how much of their client portfolio are professional services providers.
The GreenShield Study I have cited is restricted to whether Canadian employees would leave their jobs for jobs that provide better mental health benefits. It is also important for all employees, not just lawyers, to consider whether their job itself poses mental health challenges. That is a topic for another day. But if you are concerned that your job or workplace is harmful to you, please call Assist. We can help.
Loraine