Happy Bike to Work Day, the kickoff event for Bike Month, which runs May 29 to June 30. How can employers motivate their employees to start peddling to and from the office? Benefits Canada caught up with a crew of intrepid bike commuters to get their perspectives on what really works and what’s really needed […]
Employees who cycle to work are less likely to die prematurely than their colleagues who don’t have an active commute, says a recent study published in the BMJ, a British medical journal. “The findings, if causal, suggest population health may be improved by policies that increase active commuting, particularly cycling, such as the creation of […]
With more older workers staying in the labour market, the challenge of accommodating chronic diseases will only grow, a researcher told Benefits Canada’s Chronic Disease at Work conference on Thursday in Toronto. In 1997, there were 1.8 million Canadian workers aged 50 to 64 and 86,500 workers aged 65 and older, Peter Smith, a senior scientist […]
While Ontario’s proposed solvency changes for defined benefit pension plans may help plan sponsors with funding obligations, they may put plan members in a more precarious position, says Michael Mazzuca, a partner in the pension and employee benefits group at Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto. “There’s obviously a suggestion that, in addition to the emphasis on going […]
Starting on Thursday, a Toronto restaurant will add a three per cent surcharge to each bill in order to cover its new employee benefits program. “We needed to bring in more money to pay for the benefits,” says Heather Mee, co-owner of Emma’s Country Kitchen. “It’s either raising our prices or [the surcharge, and] for us, this was a […]
Lisa Danker has just a few months to go to reach her milestone. Once October hits, she’ll have been at her company — UrbanGrowth NSW in Sydney, Australia — for 10 years. And that makes her eligible for long-service leave. It provides three months of paid leave, or six months at half of her pay, […]
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 […]
A person will bleed out quickly from a severed carotid artery. But in 1989, when a rogue skate slashed Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk’s artery — injuring his jugular vein in the process — his trainer pinched off the blood vessels until doctors could stabilize him. Malarchuk ended up losing a third of the blood […]
From 2011-16, as the first baby boomers turned 65, Canada saw its senior population increase by 20 per cent, newly released census data from Statistics Canada shows. The growth was much faster than that of the overall population, which increased by five per cent. “Many aspects of Canadian society are being shaped by the fact that the first […]
When reaching out to men as part of mental-health efforts, it can helpful to frame them in particular ways by making the issue more about productivity and less about yoga mats. And setting up the program through the workplace can be a good way to start. “I think men are just hard to reach,” says Geoff Soloway, co-founder and […]