The People’s Choice

Business Development Bank of Canada

A company that allows employees to buy and sell vacation time

The Business Development Bank of Canada(BDC)is a perfect example of an organization that understands the critical importance of marrying benefits plan design with communication and delivery. The Crown corporation delivers financial, investment and consulting services to Canadian small businesses, with a particular focus on the technology and export sectors of the economy. It has 1,700 employees across the country.

When BDC decided in 2003 to move to a flexible benefits plan, it used a comprehensive communications strategy to reach its employees in all provinces. Maryse Corbella, director, total rewards, with BDC in Montreal, credits the communications push and the flexibility of the benefits plan for the organization’s high employee engagement scores.

“Prior to flex, we had rather high scores, and other than adding the flexibility, I don’t think we improved things a whole lot,” she says. “But people now understand what they have because they have to make choices about them. Whereas before, they just got it whether they wanted it or not, so I’m not sure they appreciated its full value.”

While BDC tops the list of the 30 employers with the best benefits, the term “best benefits” is one that makes Corbella uncomfortable. “Saying it that way bothers me,” she says. “What we have done is maximized flexibility and leveraged people’s understanding and ability to make things work for them, and that’s what they really, really appreciate.”

Regardless of how it’s phrased, BDC scored universally high on benefits from all demographics. The organization offers flexible healthcare benefits with a health spending account(HSA)and a defined benefit(DB)plan.

Innovative benefits include the ability to buy and sell vacation time. Between 30% and 35% of employees, through the annual flex benefits enrollment, are able to release dollars to buy themselves between one and five extra vacation days a year. “They love it,” says Corbella.

Other ways employees can distribute their excess flex dollars include receiving them in cash, allocating them to their HSA , putting them into an employee savings plan where the funds are matched by BDC , or earmarking them to pay a portion of their pension contribution.

Even the DB plan has some flexibility built in. Employees can choose between two levels: a higher option where they contribute to the plan and a lower option where they don’t. Employees are asked to re-enrol in the DB plan every five years and can switch levels at that time. The company offers access to a comprehensive website that enables employees to simulate what their pension might look like under each option. Ninety-six per cent of BDC employees have opted for the higher contributory plan, another indication of how well the organization communicates its benefits to employees.

Corbella says her biggest challenge with respect to benefits is ensuring that service providers really deliver. Plan members are savvy consumers and expect high-quality service.

“You could have the best design and the best enrollment, then if it all falls apart when employees go to use it, you lose credibility,” she says.

The decision to move to flex was prompted by demographic pressures and the realization that benefits can be an important attraction and retention tool. “We need this edge to hold on to people and retain people,” says Corbella. “I don’t think benefits are a ‘gimme’ anymore. They’re not a throwaway. People do pay attention to them a lot more than they used to.”

Intuit Canada

Throwing a kids’ party? Why not do it at work?

If you work for Intuit Canada and you’re looking for a place to host your child’s birthday party, look no further than the company’s employee lounge, which boasts a pool table and video games. The Edmonton-based software company lets employees book the lounge for children’s birthday parties.

This family-friendly environment also features booster seats and high chairs in the cafeteria, and families are encouraged to use the company’s fitness centre. These benefits are why Intuit Canada is judged by employees to have the best benefits for families, according to research from Hewitt Associates.

“It’s really nice when you have children in your environment. People are always migrating to where the kids are so there are more conversations that happen between employees, whether they know each other or not,” says Jane Sillberg, director of human resources for Canada and the U.K., with Intuit.

The company also makes work-life balance a priority and strives to help employees with day-to-day tasks. For example, employees can drop off their dry cleaning on-site and somebody picks it up and delivers it when it’s done. They can also have their car taken to the local dealership to be washed.

Massage therapists and acupuncturists are on-site at least four days a week so employees can book an appointment and have their treatment at the office. Intuit covers up to $500 a year for each category of paramedical services. The company is also adding a top-up in its new fiscal year so employees who need treatments above and beyond what’s covered won’t go without.

“If it’s for healthcare, if it’s to keep them feeling better, we want to encourage them to do that,” says Sillberg.

The company decided to cover Gardasil, the vaccine that protects girls and young women against four strains of human papilloma virus, which is linked to cervical cancer. Girls need three shots, and at $150 a shot, the vaccine isn’t cheap. Nevertheless, the organization feels the benefits far outweigh the costs.

“We wouldn’t want anybody to not be able to have such an advantage because it wouldn’t be covered,” says Sillberg. “Anytime something new happens, we make sure it’s covered.”

Intuit offers six-month sabbaticals to employees on a case-by-case basis. Sillberg says one employee recently returned from a six-month work stint in Africa. “The way people rally around that and have conversations about it is so valuable to an organization,” says Sillberg. “What you give up from a business perspective is not having this really great person there for six months, but now that he’s returned, he feels so good for the work that he did and he’ll continue being a very committed, productive employee.”

Each employee gets four paid days off a year to do volunteer work. Eighty-eight per cent of employees take advantage of this benefit. “That has a really big impact on the culture,” says Sillberg.

Farm Credit Canada

Opting out of a health spending account does not mean fewer health benefits

Farm Credit Canada(FC)is the country’s largest provider of business and financial services to farms and agribusinesses. It ranks No. 2 on the list of organizations with the best benefits. The Crown corporation has 1,300 employees spread over 100 offices.

Through its healthcare plan, the company offers employees core benefits, optional benefits and personal allocation accounts. Core benefits include life insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, core healthcare, dental, out-of-province/ country coverage, emergency travel assistance and vacation entitlement.

Optional benefits include enhanced healthcare, optional dental, optional life insurance for employees and their families, optional accidental death and dismemberment insurance, and the option to buy or sell vacation days. Employees who have more than three weeks of vacation can sell vacation days for cash.

“The vacation purchase is definitely regarded as a great benefit, and a lot of people take advantage of it,” says Del Robinson, director, core services, human resources, with FC in Regina.

The personal allocation accounts include a health spending account, a lifestyle account and a group retirement savings plan.

The company provides the core benefits. “If an employee opts out of core healthcare, they receive credits per program year. Likewise, if they opt out of dental, they also receive credits.”

Robinson says her ongoing challenge is to ensure that employees understand the programs offered to them so they can maximize the advantages of the benefits package. To address that challenge, FC is planning a marketing campaign to promote the advantages to employees of funding their HSAs with bonus funds(a program which began in 2006, the organization offered employees the opportunity to allocate a portion of their bonus to fund their HSAs.

Family-friendly benefits include a topup allowance to 95% of base salary for employees on maternity leave or parental leave. “Professional mothers benefit from the program, and we’re definitely seeing growing numbers of male staff take advantage of the parental leave,” says Robinson.

Additional benefits that promote both employee and family wellness include an employee and family assistance program, flex hours, compressed work schedule, educational leave, special leave, leave without pay and a formal recognition program.

As for retirement benefits, FC offers a defined benefit(DB)plan and a defined contribution(DC)plan. New hires can go into either the DB or the DC plan. Employees in the DC plan are allowed to switch to the DB plan once over the course of their career.

Getting employees to understand their pension and its contribution to their overall retirement-planning needs is an ongoing challenge. To meet this challenge, FC offers online services, telephone service, financial planning seminars and access to periodic pension bulletins.

“Based on recent surveys of employees, we’ve been able to determine that they’re aware of the strong pension benefits that FC provides in comparison to our competitors,” says Robinson.

Sleep Country Canada Committed to its people

Mattress retailer ranks No. 27 on list of Canadian companies with the best benefits.

A basket-weaving class isn’t exactly a conventional benefit but if you work at Sleep Country Canada, the company will pay for half the cost of the course as part of its tuition reimbursement program.

“Our tuition plan allows them to use 50% of their tuition money for personal development,” says Stacy Panek, human resources manager at Sleep Country Canada in North York, Ont. “If they want to take basket-weaving or scuba lessons or golf lessons—whatever they want to do to better themselves outside of Sleep Country, they can do that now.” The benefit is even available to part-time employees.

Sleep Country Canada—a mattress retailer that employs about 1,000 people at 142 stores and 11 distribution centres across the country—ranked No. 27 on Benefits Canada’s list of 30 Canadian companies with the best benefits.

Panek says the company strives to create a personal culture where employees feel valued. “We listen to employees. They don’t feel their suggestions are lost,” she says, citing the example of an employee who suggested a change to the wording on the company’s delivery trucks. The company agreed and paid him for his suggestion.

In addition to standard health and dental benefits and disability insurance, the company offers various levels of coverage for other products and services, including paramedical services, orthopaedic shoes, vision care, visual motor therapy, cataract surgery, home nursing care, and semi-private hospital rooms.

The company uses Meditrust, a mail-in pharmacy owned by PharmaPlus. Employees don’t have a drug card; they pay the cost of their prescription and then submit their claim for reimbursement. Panek says employees sometimes question why they don’t have a drug card.

“That’s the biggest challenge we have,” she says. “The other problem that we do have is our age group within our company is all over the place. We have really young people and older people who all have different needs. The coverage suits 80% of them most of the time but there’s that 20% you hear more about.”

The company has never officially surveyed employees about the benefits plan, something it hopes to remedy this summer. “We renew our plan every August so we’ll do it closer to our renewal time,” says Panek. “At the end of the day, the plan is for employees and we can’t change it if we don’t have the input from our associates.”

And while everyone’s heard the phrase ‘you’ve made your bed, now lie in it,’ at Sleep Country, it might sound more like ‘you’ve bought your bed, now lie in it.’ Employees can purchase beds at cost through interest-free loans from the company. The loan is then repaid over the course of eight pay periods.

The company also offers a group registered retirement savings plan and a deferred profit sharing plan. Getting people to join the plan is Panek’s biggest challenge. The plan’s not mandatory so employees don’t necessarily see its value. “We don’t have the participation rate we would hope for,” says Panek. “It’s low and it always has been low but every year we’re getting more and more people to join.”

Wellbeing account new perk at Envision

Credit union ranks No. 11 on list of Canadian companies with the best benefits

Envision Financial takes employee health seriously. And not just physical health, but emotional and social health as well. Not only does the company have a full-time wellbeing specialist, it also introduced a new taxable benefit this year called a wellbeing account, through which employees can get reimbursed for items such as spa treatments, veterinary expenses, and hockey tickets.

Envision Financial—a financial services company that employs approximately 800 people in B.C.—ranked No. 11 on Benefits Canada’s list of 30 Canadian companies with the best benefits.

Through the wellbeing account employees can be reimbursed for expenses related to three areas: physical wellbeing (fitness club memberships, weight loss programs, organized sports fees, for example), emotional wellbeing (things such as spa treatments, child and/or eldercare expenses, veterinary expenses), and social wellbeing (entertainment tickets, ballroom dance lessons, expenses you might incur while volunteering, for example).

“We really wanted to provide an alternative way for employees to spend excess flex dollars,” says Jane Campbell, manager of human resources, with Envision Financial in Langley, B.C.

Envision employees also have a special incentive to volunteer. Under its employee volunteering recognition program, the company will donate $100 to the charity of the employee’s choice for those who volunteer 40 hours in a calendar year. In addition, the employee’s name is entered in a draw to win up to one week of paid time off. The company offers a mandatory defined benefit pension plan, which is also open to its approximately 150 part-time employees. And while Campbell says providing a bit more portability with regards to the pension plan might be nice, it’s not a priority for employees. “Younger people aren’t thinking about long-term retirement,” she says. “Those in their early twenties and mid-twenties, the interest in retirement’s just not there.”

SPOTLIGHT

CNC Global Ltd.

Location: Toronto
Business: IT Staffing Firm
Rank: 29

Challenge: Communication. “We’ve been a fairly young company, historically speaking. And as the demographics change and people have kids and those kids grow up and need orthodontics, for example, and our plan isn’t set up to cover that, we do get some complaints,” says Jennifer Tatone, HR generalist.

AstraZeneca Canada

Location: Mississauga, Ont.
Business: Pharmaceuticals
Rank: 9

Challenge: Educating employees on maximizing their benefits coverage. “Employees still tend to automatically choose the highest level of coverage in the company’s flex plan, even though they might not need it,” says Bev Haines, manager, lifestyle solutions. “We encourage them to look at what our plan offers and what their spouse’s plan offers and consider flexing the AstraZeneca plan. By reducing coverage, employees have excess lifestyle dollars they can use elsewhere in the plan.”

National Bank of Canada

Location: Montreal
Business: Financial Services Firm
Rank: 10

Challenge: Cost increases. “When we make decisions on employee benefits, whether it’s healthcare, wellness or pension, we also look at how we can limit the anticipated increases in the future due to ageing population,” says Suzanne Paiement, director, employee benefits. “For any additional burden that could be put on the plans, such as the increased cost of medications, we also consider them by putting some figures into our planning so we can build programs that will limit the increase in our costs.”

EllisDon Corporation

Location: London, Ont.
Business: Construction
Rank: 6

Challenge: Keeping up on new drugs. Drugs are 100% covered by the company’s plan, with employees covering the dispensing fee. When new drugs come out “we go with an average of what other companies are doing,” says Sandra Wilson, manager, compensation and benefits. So some new drugs are covered, while others are not. Na tional ba nk of Ca nada EllisDon Corporation

How the List Was Chosen

We turned to our research partner, Hewitt Associates, to help us select Canada’s 30 Best Pension and Benefits Plans. Building on its nine years of selecting the Best Employers in Canada, Hewitt drew from its extensive employee research during the last year among more than 150,000 Canadian workers at more than 200 organizations to identify those whose employees expressed high levels of satisfaction with their benefit programs. To be eligible, organizations also had to meet a minimum level of employee engagement in their organization, so it is no surprise that many on our list were also recently named to the list of 50 Best Employers in Canada.