Get to know the TELUS Health team: Luc Bourgeois

Luc Bourgeois leads a team whose goal it is to ensure that TELUS Health’s end users understand the benefits available to them. Learn more about Luc’s role with TELUS Health and the importance of benefits utilisation for employee and organizational health.

Interview with Luc:

Q: What is the main focus of your role within TELUS Health?

A: I lead the Communication and Change Management Solutions team at TELUS Health. We function as an in-house agency, partnering with internal business units to develop communication strategies, engagement plans, and creative assets—including videos, websites, and other communication materials for our customers.

We primarily serve Retirement and Benefits Solutions (RBS) clients, with a growing practice in TELUS Health One (EAP) and mental health services awareness. Our specialties include communication strategy, employee engagement, benefits and mental health communications, and organizational change management.

Q: Why is your communication and change management team so critically important to supporting employee wellbeing?

A: My team addresses the massive disconnect between what organizations offer and what employees know exists.

The Mental Health Index reveals a significant awareness gap: only 45 per cent of Canadian workers say their employer offers an EAP and 31 per cent say they don’t have one, when in actuality they do. This trend occurs across other countries as well.

This gap represents employees potentially missing out on care that they need. It also represents organizations paying for benefits that employees don’t know exist.

Q: What is your vision for the future of the communication of workplace wellbeing within organizations?

A: I would like to move beyond employees having “basic awareness” of their benefits to seeing employees have meaningful engagement with the solutions their employer provides them to support health and wellbeing.

For me this is a 3-step process:

Layer 1: Engage employees and build basic awareness.

Layer 2: Educate with personalized and targeted communication.

Layer 3: Motivate by removing barriers to accessing support.

In the future, I would like to see mental health benefits be known, trusted and used by those who need them. I’d like to see organizations see wellbeing as integral to performance as opposed to optional. I’d like to see communication strategies that are sophisticated, personalized and barrier focused. Most importantly a workplace culture needs to normalize support seeking.

Q: What emerging trends in employee health technology are you most excited about, and how is TELUS Health preparing for them?

A: The most exciting trend I see (maybe I'm a tad biased) is personalized navigation of health experiences. As communicators, we've talked about personalizing materials for years. AI's integration into health platforms now lets us do it more much effectively, and at scale. The key is balance: research shows that pairing this technology with human connection reduces dropout rates nearly threefold.

In the TELUS Health ecosystem, users will be able to create wellness journeys tailored to their own characteristics. All resources are expert-backed, with human touchpoints at the moment of need. It's integrated wellbeing (physical, mental, financial, and social) in one frictionless experience. Our product teams have worked hard to get this right. We've released the first wave, and there's more to come.

Q: How do you measure the success of a health and wellbeing program beyond traditional metrics like participation rates?

A: I’ll answer with the assumption that an organization is introducing a program like TELUS Health One. As a behavioural scientist, I tend to focus on intentional behaviours once participation has begun. Are people moving from intention to action and are those actions becoming habits? We like to see escalating journeys that span from our digital tools to human support like coaching or counselling. That's the ladder of behaviour change.

We also like to see sustained engagement. Not a January spike, but consistent activity throughout the year. We have found that users who engage with one feature are much more likely to explore and that’s my ultimate measure of success. Of course business metrics like increased productivity and reduced absence are important, but those are a given when we see users engage with our ecosystem the way we hope that they do.

Q: What would be your core message to organizations when it comes to cultivating employee wellbeing?

A: Create a culture of wellbeing. I recommend that organizations integrate wellbeing messaging into every existing touchpoint. This means performance management communications, pay raise announcements, annual enrolment materials, holiday communications and more.

Add a line about well-being services, about how much you care about the EAP, about the rest of the benefits, to all HR communications. It could be as simple as “remember: EAP is available to you."

Start simple. Be consistent. Integrate wellbeing into everything.

Q: What’s the number one way you support your own wellbeing?

A: I like to think that I practice what I preach about intentional micro-behaviours. I focus on small, sustainable actions rather than grand wellness gestures. It’s what has actually allowed me to stick to healthy habits. It might be boring, but I try to avoid interruptions to my morning routine and walk my dog every day. Most importantly, I make sure that I connect with loved ones as often as possible. I’m lucky that I have the ability to care for myself in a way that works well for me. I’m also lucky that I have an employer who provides benefits, resources, and tools that satisfies just about any need when external support is most helpful.