The second episode of Benefits Canada’s new podcast, Human Resourcefulness, continues this week with a look at The Office‘s Dwight Schrute and Jim Halpert. Dwight cares a lot about his company, but his suspicion and lack of humour make him a difficult colleague to work with. Jim seems like a great guy to grab a beer with […]
Canada is facing a $13.4-trillion retirement savings deficit by 2050, up from a $2.7-trillion shortfall in 2015, according to a new report by Mercer. Among all eight countries included in the report — Australia, Britain, Canada, China, India, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States — the current gap between aggregate savings and expected annual retirement […]
Canadian pension plan solvency has been fairly flat so far this year, but the numbers are up over last year, according to Mercer. At 93 per cent, the median solvency ratio of Mercer’s pension plan clients remains the same as the beginning of the year. Plans are in a significantly better position than they were a year […]
Jim Keohane couldn’t help but laugh when he recently got his hands on a copy of the 1975 annual report for the Ontario Hospital Association’s pension plan. The plan, an ancestor of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan that Keohane now leads, dated back to 1960 and had accumulated total assets of about $300 million […]
As part of its celebration of its 40th anniversary, Benefits Canada followed up on research undertaken five years ago into plan sponsors’ attitudes towards their pension and benefits plans. How do the results today compare to the 2012 findings? It’s no surprise that, according to Benefits Canada’s research, plan sponsors find costs the biggest challenge […]
As we celebrate Benefits Canada’s 40th anniversary, it’s a good time to look ahead to the next 40 years. Looking ahead, I see the inevitable trend of health benefits moving to a defined contribution approach from a defined benefit one. I expect the trend to mirror the developments in the pension area over the last […]
While today marks the one-year anniversary of Ottawa reaching an agreement with most of the provinces to expand the Canada Pension Plan, the future of the Quebec Pension Plan remains up in the air. While the enhanced CPP will take effect in 2019, there’s still uncertainty around what Quebec will do with the QPP. The […]
Organizational redesign is everywhere, but human resources departments aren’t ready to handle it, a new study from Mercer has found. While 93 per cent of executives are planning structural overhauls, only a third (35 per cent) employ a service delivery model that includes the three components Mercer suggests are necessary for excellence: centres of expertise, […]
While 37 per cent of Canadian employees expect their workplace to focus more on employee health in the coming years, health and well-being ranked in the bottom three on employers’ list of their top talent management priorities this year, according to new research by Mercer. Its 2017 global talent trends study also found flexible working arrangements […]
Girls are “made of sugar and spice and everything nice — and gunpowder and Cubans and bourbon, no ice.” So sang Columbia Business School students in a 2014 parody music video about gender representation in their industry. But while many women now do the same jobs as men, their employment patterns remain distinct and, as […]