The results of its annual report, Best Employers in Canada, reveal that offering more flexibility leads to higher engagement. Depending on the specific program, the improvement in employee engagement can range from two percentage points to seven percentage points. The average employee engagement for those organizations identified as the year’s 50 Best Employers remains unchanged from last year at 77%. Employee engagement is at 58% for other participants in the 2008 study.
“Employee engagement—which measures an employee’s degree of emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization—might have been expected to decrease as the demand for labour begins to exceed supply,” says Neil Crawford, Hewitt’s leader of the study. “However, that hasn’t happened. What we are seeing is that many employers are increasingly focused on how to sustain and increase the engagement of their employees.”
He says employers are committing significant resources and time to listen carefully to all segments of their workforce—and adjust the work environment, their expectations of managers and leaders, and their human resources programs in response to what employees are saying.
The 50 Best Employers are generally more successful at offering the appropriate flexibility and balance than other organizations, especially those at the top of the list.
The top 10 employers in the country are: EllisDon Corporation, Wellington West Holdings, PCL Constructors, Bennett Jones, Edward Jones Canada, JTI -Macdonald, Farm Credit Canada, Envision Financial, Intuit Canada and GlaxoSmithKline. —Craig Sebastiano
Workers’ mental health and stress affecting business results Despite their profound impact on workplace productivity and business performance, mental health issues and increasing stress levels are not being addressed by Canadian employers, according to a report. Watson Wyatt’s 2007 Staying@Work Canada report found that mental health issues are the leading cause of both longand short-term disability claims (72% and 82%, respectively). In spite of the prevalence of these claims, just 15% of responding companies conduct mental health risk assessments and less than 20% say that addressing the stigma associated with mental illness is a priority. “Lost productivity at work due to health-related matters can cost an average Canadian organization up to $10 million each year. And much of that is attributable to mental health and stress,” says Joseph Ricciuti, Watson Wyatt’s Canadian healthcare practice leader. “Unless organizations and society in general start doing a better job addressing the major causes of time away from work, these hidden costs will only get worse.” —C.S. |
Online tool calculates cost of lost productivity
Employers in the United States are using a free online tool to estimate the cost of employee health problems on their organizations. The tool, Blueprint for Health, takes a company’s unique employee demographics and quantifies an array of costs, including health expenses, work absences and lost productivity. Employers simply fill in an online questionnaire and the tool will generate reports for them, complete with charts and graphs. More than 700 companies have used the online calculator, according to one of the companies that helped develop it, Riedel & Associates, a health and productivity management consulting firm. The tool is available at blueprint.hhcfoundation.org.
Court upholds workplace drug testing The Alberta Court of Appeal recently ruled to uphold the right of employers to test workers in dangerous jobs for drugs. The court’s decision overturned a lower court judgment that found Kellogg, Brown & Root Co., one of the largest construction firms in the world, guilty of discrimination when it fired a man from an oilsands project after he tested positive for marijuana. The court said the company should have treated the man the same as someone with a drug addiction, which is considered a disability in human rights case law. The Appeal Court disagreed, saying that Kellogg, Brown & Root had the right to presume that a person who uses drugs is a safety risk in an already dangerous work environment. “We see this case as no different than that of a trucking or taxi company with a policy requiring its employees to refrain from the use of alcohol for some time before the employee drives one of the employer’s vehicles,” the justices wrote. |
Union releases green workplace guide
A new environmental guide shows members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the country’s largest union, what steps they can take to make their workplaces environmentally sustainable. The booklet, Healthy, Clean & GREEN: A Workers’ Action Guide to a Greener Workplace, discusses climate change, waste reduction and environmental rights, among other issues, and explains what CUPE members can do at work and in their communities to combat these environmental problems. Copies of the 24-page, free booklet can be ordered on the union’s website.
Off the shelf In her book The Business of Kindness: Creating Work Environments Where People Thrive (Fairwinds Press, ISBN #0-9682149-9-1), corporate consultant Olivia McIvor makes a case for creating respectful and caring workplaces as a way to enhance employee wellness and business success. She teaches readers the “12 Character Building Traits” that, she says, produce positive, productive and profitable work environments. |
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