The invisible bill: what inaction on psychosocial risks really costs

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 the story of almost every company that pushes psychosocial risk management down the priority list. The cost of inaction never arrives as a single invoice. It builds quietly, line by line, until it becomes impossible to ignore.

The cost you eventually see

Turnover is the most measurable consequence, and the most expensive. In Canada, replacing an employee costs an average of around $30,000 a year once you add up recruitment, training, and lost productivity during the transition. Nearly one in five employers say that cost actually exceeds $100,000 for certain roles.

And turnover is almost never random. When workload, recognition, or lack of support from managers are never named or measured, they eventually turn into resignations. At the time, though, nobody connects the dots.

The cost you almost never see

There's something more insidious than absenteeism: presenteeism.

These are the employees who show up, physically, but whose focus and energy already left the building. They don't count in any absence statistic. They just do the bare minimum, waiting either to leave or to burn out.

Add to that a workplace culture that quietly erodes: your best people leave first, the rest stay but the company recruits less well than it used to, because a reputation for not managing employees' psychological health always gets around eventually.

The regulatory cost, since October 2025

Since Act 27 came into force, this is no longer just a matter of management common sense. A first non-compliance offence can lead to a fine of up to $20,000, and penalties under occupational health and safety legislation range from $1,000 to $100,000 depending on severity.

Here's the detail many managers miss: CNESST orders are published publicly. So this isn't just an amount you quietly pay. It's a non-compliance record that your future employees, your clients, and your competitors can look up.

Redoing the math

Add up avoidable turnover, presenteeism, a deteriorating workplace culture, and regulatory exposure, and inaction is never the cheaper of the two options. It's simply the one whose bill arrives later, split into several payments that rarely get traced back to the same cause.

Building a structured psychosocial risk approach, on the other hand, isn't a compliance expense you check off once a year. It's an investment that pays for itself in retention, productivity, and peace of mind, well before an inspector ever shows up.

The HR director from Trois-Rivières put it best: "I would have rather paid for a diagnostic in the spring than for three departures in the fall."

Do you know what inaction is really costing your organization?

Mentalia helps you run that math with a clear psychosocial risk diagnostic, built for the reality of your SME. Book a free consultation to talk it through.