When the return-to-office mandate arrived, 39-year-old Supreet Singh, a corporate communications manager at a bank, didn’t argue, escalate it to human resources or request an accommodation.

After nearly seven years of balancing full-time work with caregiving for an ageing parent and two school-aged children, she resigned. The company had been clear there would be no exceptions to the in-office requirement. “I couldn’t do it anymore. The flexibility that made it possible for me to keep working disappeared — it felt like overnight.”

Supreet’s experience isn’t unique. Across Canadian workplaces, as return-to-office mandates collide with caregiving pressures, hormonal transitions and shifting mental-health needs, many women are discovering the supports that once made work sustainable are more fragile than they realized.

Read: Scotiabank corporate employees returning to office four days per week

The question now is whether benefits design, workplace flexibility, leadership capability and organizational culture can support women across the full arc of their working lives?

Women’s mental-health curve

From both a clinical and workplace perspective, women’s mental-health needs rarely follow a straight line. They tend to intensify at key transition points, with direct implications for benefits plan design.

The fertility years, which often coincide with early career-building, are frequently marked by anxiety, self-doubt and emotional strain. Fertility challenges and pregnancy loss are often treated as medical events rather than psychological ones, leaving many women to manage emotional fallout privately while maintaining professional momentum.

“These experiences don’t happen in isolation from work,” says Mandeep Lalli, a registered psychotherapist and head of employee assistance program solutions at mental-health platform Leena. “Employer support often assumes they do and that disconnect matters.”

Read: Menopause symptoms driving women out of the workforce, costing employers billions: report

That period frequently overlaps with perimenopause or menopause. A 2020 report by the Menopause Foundation of Canada found hormonal changes affect sleep, mood, concentration and stress tolerance, often during peak leadership years. The report also noted menopause remains one of the least understood and least addressed workplace health issues and that, in some cases, these transitions begin earlier than expected, compounding strain at a time when career demands are highest.

For employers, this means women in senior roles — those with deep institutional knowledge — may be navigating significant health changes with little formal acknowledgement or support. “Effective support can’t exist in isolation,” says Lalli. “It must reflect what’s happening across someone’s life, not just at work.”

Where EAPs help, fall short

EAPs often serve as a first point of contact for workplace mental-health support.

At Staples Canada, the EAP provides confidential counselling and coaching, with services addressing childcare and elder-care stress, burnout, relationship and family concerns, neurodivergence-related challenges and hormonal health. Its broader benefits plan includes coverage for psychologists, therapists and social workers, as well as hormone replacement therapy, birth........

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