'We’re at the intersection where actual solutions are available,' says expert
Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a bigger role in reshaping how employers design, deliver and finance plans as they head into 2026, according to one expert.
“We’ve been talking about AI for a while, but I think we’re at the intersection where actual solutions are available and are implemented,” says Daniel Drolet, senior partner at Normandin Beaudry.
For HR and benefits teams, there are two immediate payoffs: quicker, more accurate information and service to support employers and their employees, and cost savings, he says.
“They’re expecting their providers to be able to leverage this into actual savings because there’s still cost pressures on the plan.”
Macroeconomic pressures
At the same time, macroeconomic pressures are forcing leadership to look harder at benefits spending. Drolet says inflation is between 2% and 3% in a lot of the countries, while benefits are increasing at 8% to 10%: “So, it’s triple, quadruple the consumer price index and the inflation, the general inflation.”
That gap is drawing finance directly into HR’s world. “CFOs are looking more into benefits than before because costs are increasing,” he says. “If I spend 10% more in the benefits, tell me what’s in it for us as an employer.”
Drolet argues that AI will be central to answering those questions, by making it quicker to gather the data and analyse it. But he also warns there is a bottleneck because insurance company systems are “not evolving quickly” and AI needs to be a solution “as a layer on top.”
For HR, that means pushing vendors on data access, analytics and AI capability will increasingly become as important as negotiating rates and coverage, says Drolet.
Sean O’Brady, assistant professor at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, describes the cautious mindset guiding many Canadian employers as they plan compensation for 2026 this way: “If you are going to ‘trim the fat,’ you have to be very careful because you know that this is very temporary and any cuts you have may jeopardize your footing for after it ends.”
ROI of benefits
At the same time, Drolet stresses that employees have a high expectation about their benefits plan, while employers are becoming more selective about what they add.
“What we’re moving towards—from the employer perspective—is support but with purpose,” he says. “What can we do that will have an impact, that will have an ROI, that will support our employees. But we want efficiency. We want productivity on the other end.”
Drolet notes that traditional methods of assessing ROI are under strain.
“It’s hard to measure ROI because when you invest in something then you measure one year, two years later,” he says, but companies don’t have two years to wait. “They invest 10% more in their benefit spending, they don’t want to wait two years to measure that ROI.”
AI‑enabled analytics, he argues, can compress those timelines, giving HR leaders more timely insight into whether investments in areas like mental health, disability management or weight management are reducing claims, shortening absences or improving productivity.
“When we're thinking about benefits and value, you have the tension between recruitment and legal risk,” Oren Barbalat, employment lawyer at Littler in Toronto, previously told Canadian HR Reporter.
