At the centre of every pension plan is a team of professionals—actuaries, administrators, governance officers, consultants, trustee managers—who are commissioned to weave a tapestry that will lead to a picture of retirement health. Not everyone agrees on plan or principle, but there’s one thing they have in common: they look to the industry for object lessons, wisdom, advice and case studies—and for better ways of tackling tried-and-true methods that work best for their employee populations.
When tactical plans lead to success, the rewards are sweet, but when they falter, the outcomes can be crushing.
That path to success is just one of the themes explored in depth in Leigh Doyle’s feature story on John Poos, global director of pensions and benefits at George Weston Ltd. The profile frankly depicts how Poos, through his career, finds himself in the throes of fixing notorious pension plans that at one time were at the leading edge. From Stelco to Nortel and now CCWIPP, the obstacles haven’t been easy, but Poos demonstrates that impediments are not insurmountable if you have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish.
Another theme is leakage, of which Poos has a profound dislike. If he were to give us an elastic description, he’d probably say it’s that thing you do when you end up “bolting everybody on” and no one really knows what the strategic position is or what the hidden costs of administering a program is.
At the professional level, he is known to be fearless and forceful. “His experiences have shaped how he sees the pension world, risk and the importance of strong communication. These are the pillars of effective pension and benefits design,” said one of his peers. Poos seeks engagement, and building relationships is a massive part of what his work entails, he says. And, along the way, he’s worked with managers who have done extraordinary things for free and who were over and above what they were contracted for. Those are the kinds of relationships that he fosters and wants to develop outside of meetings.
In the process of telling us about his approach to his work, Poos shared a whole lot more about what matters to him on the inside. His team player message is reassuring, and so it’s fitting to let him have the last word: “I don’t care whose idea it is, and I don’t care who takes the credit for it, I just want the best.”
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