Wellness has long been central to employee life at Lakeside Process Controls Ltd. in Mississauga, Ont. That long-standing commitment led to the company’s win for best health and wellness program for an employer with fewer than 1,000 staff at Benefits Canada’s 2017 Workplace Benefits Awards in Toronto last week. Every year, Lakeside Process Controls develops a […]
Millennial workers are more likely than their older colleagues to report having experienced mental illness, according to a new survey commissioned by the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace. Fifty per cent of employees aged 18 to 34 say they’ve experienced depression, compared to 39 per cent of generation Xers and 29 […]
Hey Dan, wanna walk down to the boardwalk again?” It’s a muggy June night in New Liskeard, Ont., where my boyfriend is working for the summer, and we’re on a final stroll before my overnight bus ride back to Toronto. I still haven’t packed or eaten dinner but I’m desperate to keep walking. According to […]
A consultant’s role was historically a passive one, says Martin Leclair, who recently left a role at Toronto-based consulting firm Proteus Performance Management. The consultant’s role centred on the various aspects of developing pension and benefits plans for employers, from choosing fund offerings and implementing target-date options and automatic enrolment to decisions about formularies, step […]
From encouraging open discussions around mental health in the workplace to reintegrating workers once they return from disability leave, a lot of information is available on how to support employees. But what are employers’ responsibilities before they even hire someone? “Certainly, mental-health conditions can be a concern for an employer if it impacts on the […]
For legal software company Clio, employee engagement is crucial — so much so that it has revamped its five administration roles as employee engagement specialists. “Ultimately, [engagement] pays dividends,” says Rian Gauvreau, co-founder and chief people officer at Clio. “I think that people nowadays have a lot of options in terms of where they choose […]
Former Sears Canada Inc. employees are already feeling the impact of the company’s restructuring proceedings as they receive letters informing them of cuts to severance payments and health benefits along with bad news for those looking at commuting their pensions. In one letter, the company informed an existing employee that “no further payments are going to be […]
Bob Bellamy started working as a handyman in 1947, when he was just 16 years old. Over the next 70 years, he moved up through the ranks at real estate development company Armel Corp. in Guelph, Ont., and continues to work there today as a construction manager. “He used to work for my father, and […]
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 […]
In 1977, when Benefits Canada published its first group benefits providers report, the industry was much more crowded. The big companies on the scene today weren’t yet the massive entities that now dominate the market. More U.S. insurers had their hats in the ring. And the big players had yet to acquire some of the […]