Unsimple Truths: Wellness at Work with Wealthsimple

A company’s mental health policy and approach can, quite literally, make or break its reputation in 2025. Companies with unfeeling or non-existent mental health policies are easier to spot than ever. Glassdoor reviews and “gone-viral” social media posts allow anyone to spot a company’s glaring red flags or brilliant green flags before taking the time to apply. 

For any company, those potential benefits of their policy aren’t just reputational. Unsurprisingly, a strong mental health policy supports employees and the business at the same time: stronger employee retention, reduced burnout, and higher rates of individuals realizing and exceeding their potential. 

To put it bluntly: good mental health policy = happy employees. A simple formula. 

Canadian fintech powerhouse Wealthsimple nails that formula. Recently recognized as one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers, Wealthsimple’s all-encompassing approach to mental wellness at work sets the modern standard for what workplace wellness should look like. 

We sat down with Caylyn Adamko (co-leader of Wealthsimple’s Mental Health Employee Resource Group) and Lydia Burnside-Hughes (HR Program Manager) for this deep dive into the history and development of Wealtshimple’s leading approach to mental wellness. 

The Collective Benefit of ERGs 

“Your mental health follows you when you go to work,” Caylyn explains. “We aim to change the narrative and provide a space where employees feel supported.” That idea is at the core of Wealthsimple’s approach to mental health and wellness, and most explicitly manifested through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). 

While ERGs are nothing distinctly new, Wealthsimple’s focus on investing in, encouraging, and taking seriously what ERGs uncover is not the norm. 

Caylyn is co-lead of the Mental Health ERG; a powerful and central example of the potential of these groups. “We aim to change the narrative around mental health at work by providing a space where employees feel supported,” explains Caylyn.

The ERG is centred around a dedicated Slack channel with opportunities for open conversations and resource sharing. Unique to Wealthsimple, however, is their safe space channel. Exactly what it entails (a safe space), this dedicated channel includes auto-deleting messages to accommodate and ensure trust during sensitive conversations around mental health. 

Of course, the risk with any ERG or internal “community initiative” is “all talk and no action” — a lip-service solution that employees have become keenly aware of noticing and identifying. 

What’s striking about Wealthsimple’s approach to ERGs is the thoughtfulness and, in some ways, “formality” brought to the process. 

Each group must have clearly defined pillars related to career, culture, community, and company alignment. While that might give the sense of rigidity, instead it results in ERGs that actually drive impact and prompt conversations, policy adjustments, and action on a company-wide level. To both empower and recognize the importance of ERGs at Wealthsimple, ERG leaders are given a stipend as part of their ongoing commitment, and a dedicated planning, learning and development day with fellow ERG leaders and external speakers.

Wealthsimple’s commitment to ERGs could constitute an entire article in itself, yet the learning to take away from their success is applicable across any mental health initiative at any company: invest, create things genuinely, and take the learning and implementation process seriously. 

Take Health Days, Not Sick Days. 

If ERGs represent a fairly involved undertaking to tackle mental health at work, another of Wealthsimple’s most impactful actions is remarkably simple — a core value the company lives by. 

The very idea of “sick days” is restrictive. Despite Wealthsimple and any company employing, you know, adults, there’s a slightly condescending and juvenile hint to that phrase “sick day.” Were you *really* so sick you couldn’t work? Does a “mental health day” count as a sick day? How do you differentiate mental unwellness versus the physical? 

To solve this, Wealthsimple rebranded “sick days” as “health days.” I myself had a “why didn’t I think of that” moment when I first heard this — it makes absolute sense. Any “sick day” is actually a health day; a day or series of days to return to a certain baseline of health whether physical or mental. Nomenclature aside, that subtle shift has had profound impacts. 

“This shift acknowledges that mental health is just as important as physical health,” Caylyn emphasizes. “It helps reduce stigma and normalizes taking care of yourself.”

Of course, sometimes returning to that baseline of health takes longer than expected; a reality that Wealthsimple also seeks to dismantle stigma around. If anyone at Wealthsimple takes 10 consecutive health days in a row, this will prompt a discussion about the possibility of taking a short-term disability leave. 

And since Wealthsimple does have a long and short-term disability policy, the objective is to not instill fear or anxiety, but instead reinforce that anyone has options and support in returning to their baseline state of wellness. 

The contrast between major initiatives and subtle changes like re-labelling is indicative of Wealthsimple’s all-encompassing and big picture approach to mental wellness. As Lydia notes, leadership buy-in is a critical component of the company’s flourishing mental health program: “When leadership prioritizes wellness, it sets the tone for the rest of the organization.” 

Individually and collectively, mental wellness is not a “set it and forget it” process. Neither is it purely “top down” or “bottom up” — it’s a complex yet compounding combination of both. There’s no “silver bullet” to “solving” mental health in the work place. On a micro and macro scale, it’s the commitment and details that matter — right down to the words used to talk about it. 

Building the Whole Package

Just as a good mental wellness policy can’t be attributed to a single thing, neither can a company’s ability to develop a culture and workplace rife with (for lack of a better phrase) happy employees. 

Any good HR professional will understand the importance of handling and preventing burnout. It’s a complex issue that, again, can be attributed to a range of factors. And while a solid mental health policy is key in preventing burnout, it isn’t the only one. 

An employee who feels like an unseen cog in the machine won’t last long (and it’s unreasonable to expect them to act or feel otherwise). 

While factors like ERGs and health days can mitigate those feelings, Wealthsimple fosters a culture of ownership through stock options for permanent employees. The result is a company-wide sense of shared responsibility and compensation. Wealthsimple has gone so far as to create a dedicated company core value (“We are maker owners”) to thread that idea of ownership and accountability into the very fabric of the company. 

Yet “reward for a job well done” only gets you so far. An employee-retention strategy based solely around compensation will only get you so far (just imaging a company with best in class reward policies yet with worst in class vacation or parental policies and you’ll get the idea). 

As such, flexibility and boundaries play a key role in Wealtsimple’s approach to employee wellness and retention. Parents are free to adjust schedules as needed for school pickups, while clear boundaries between work and personal lives are encouraged and discussed during onboarding. And, again, that’s not a lip serviced commitment — Lydia herself adamantly and proudly keeps work apps off of her phone to prevent the “just one or two Slack messages” impulse that can happen to anyone outside of work hours. 

As she puts it, “clear boundaries help prevent burnout and allow us to bring our best selves to work.”  

Unsimple Conclusions and Takeaways

If there’s one key thing to take away from Wealthsimple’s approach to company-wide mental wellness, it’s that there’s no “one trick” for making it all work. There is no playbook or quick-wins.

The words used, onboarding practices, leadership commitments, feedback practices, community support — the small and vast details matter, and no one single thing rises to the top. And it takes a lot of time, experimentation, and failure to break through and get there. 

Yet if there’s one takeaway to consider about Wealtsimple’s approach to this complex issue, it’s this: the ability to reflect, be flexible, and adapt. 

As the world changes, so do the ways companies operate. The longer businesses remain, well, in business, the more the need to adopt policies that meet employees on their level — their needs, expectations, problems, boundaries, and dreams. 

In Lydia’s words, “supporting mental health isn’t just about helping individuals—it’s about building stronger, more resilient teams.” 

A key part of resilience is adapting to change. And it’s Wealtsimple’s ability to thoughtfully reflect and adapt in the face of so many complex, changing factors surrounding wellness that — maybe —  is the simplest truth behind its success.