Monday evening, stuck in traffic on Highway 20. An SME owner from Boucherville has the radio on in the background. Today's topic? Mental health in Quebec businesses. On 98.5, an HR expert is talking about Act 27 and what changes on October 1. Prevention program, health and safety committee, work overload… He turns up the volume. Then one line makes him smile. In the field, the guest explains, many business owners mostly see the law as "a burden, as extra paperwork" (Paméla Bé

Tuesday, 4 p.m., in a meeting room at an 80-employee company in Sherbrooke. The HR director has gathered eight people around the table for a focus group on workplace climate. She opens with her first question: "How is everyone finding the workload right now?" Four seconds of silence. Then someone answers: "It's fine. Busy, but that's normal in September." Three people nod. The session will run 90 minutes and produce four pages of very, very polite notes. She did nothing wrong

The first week of September, at a 70-employee SME in Drummondville. The HR director walks through each department with her coffee. “Welcome back! How are things?” Everyone gives the same answer: “Good, good. Everything’s fine.” Vacation is over, projects are restarting, and morale is high. Three months later, in December, she will receive two medical leave notices for burnout in quick succession. Looking back at her notes, she will realize that the warning signs were already

Tuesday morning, 8:47 a.m. A team lead at a professional services firm in Longueuil notices that Marc-Antoine, usually the first one in and the last to leave, has been dragging for two weeks. He skips team meetings, answers in one-word replies, and his Sunday night email ("just wanted to finish this before Monday") didn't go unnoticed. The manager has two options: ask a quick "how are you really doing, Marc-Antoine?" between two files, or wait for things to sort themselves ou

On a Friday afternoon in March, the HR director of a manufacturing company in Saint-Hyacinthe gets a call she wasn't expecting: a CNESST inspector wants to schedule a visit in the coming weeks to review how the organization manages psychosocial risks (PSR). She hangs up, takes a deep breath, then turns to her filing cabinet of HR documents and wonders: where do I even start? This scene is playing out more and more often in Quebec SMEs. Since October 6, 2025, Act 27 has requir

An HR director at a 90-employee company in Trois-Rivières told us about her logic last spring: "We knew Act 27 was coming, but we had two open positions, a delayed ERP project, and a tight budget. Psychosocial risks could wait." Six months later, she lost three key employees in two months, including a manager she had spent three years developing. Nothing to do with psychosocial risks, she thought at first. Until the exit interviews all landed on the same word: burnout. That's

Behind every company are people, experiences, and, more often than not, an idea that evolves through learning. Mentalia is no exception. Our story is that of a team that has learned to listen, challenge its assumptions, and turn every experience into an opportunity to build a more useful solution for organizations. A Journey That Began at Concordia Our entrepreneurial journey began at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, where we developed our interest in en

In a context where mental health and workplace well-being are taking center stage, Quebec's Bill 27 imposes specific obligations on companies to prevent psychosocial risks. As an HR manager, it is essential to understand these requirements to ensure a healthy, safe, and compliant work environment. In this article, I offer a clear and structured guide to improving your compliance with Bill 27, while promoting organizational well-being. Bill 27 compliance: why is it crucial for