Domtar Corp. hosted its first total reward week at its Canadian head office in Montreal at the end of September to help employees understand their benefits offering.
“We felt that employees didn’t fully understand their benefits, pension or even compensation,” says Etienne Tougas, manager of pension plans at Domtar. “We even included employee discounts, employee service awards and that kind of stuff. It was a means for them to understand and ask questions.”
The total reward week was part of a broader communications strategy that included a fair where the company’s suppliers set up booths and answered questions from employees. It also offered two lunchtime learning sessions for employees and one-on-one meetings with a certified financial planner through its provider, Great-West Life Assurance Co. “We opened 20-minute spots and we filled them all here in Montreal,” says Tougas.
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“It was a total success. Our VP of HR was very pleased, and we had a lot of feedback from employees. Now, we are at the step of strategizing to see when and where we’ll do it again.”
Domtar also undertakes a communications effort for its pension plan every three years. A representative from the company and from Great-West Life visit all locations at least once, with each communications campaign focusing on a different theme.
“This current rollout, we’re doing more . . . retirement readiness,” says Tougas. “We are also including one-on-one sessions as we did during the total reward week. We noticed the one-on-ones with the certified financial planner are extremely popular.”
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In Canada, Domtar has about 1,800 unionized employees in a defined benefit pension plan and 1,000 salaried employees are in a defined contribution arrangement. For the defined contribution plan, the employer matches employee contributions across three brackets that depend on age and service.
“The lowest bracket is 3.5 per cent, the next is 5.5 per cent and the highest is at 6.5 per cent,” says Tougas. “We are currently looking at it to see if we should redesign it.”
For the pension communications rollout, Domtar is focusing on four or five locations this year, in addition to its Montreal total reward week. Next year, it will focus on three Canadian locations, as well as a few in the United States.
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