On one of the top floors of a non-descript building in downtown Toronto, Morneau Shepell Ltd.’s care access centre representatives are fielding intake calls, the first step in helping Canadian employees get help through their employee assistance program. Visually, it’s a typical call-centre environment, but the “magic happens on the phone,” says Lynn Pike, vice-president […]
While employees want good benefits, finding ways to effectively convey information about the plan can be a challenge, particularly when today’s workforce is far from homogeneous. Employees are different ages and at disparate stages of life. They may be from various ethnic backgrounds and speak different languages. Another distinction is union versus non-union settings where […]
Over the next decade, employers will have to create workplace programs that recognize employees’ careers beyond retirement, speakers on a panel at an event in Toronto suggested on Wednesday. “Stats Canada still ends [the definition of] working-age Canadian at age 64, and yet we know that people are working well beyond that age,” said Lisa […]
While the revitalized United States economy and strong financial markets are part of the story, the biggest factors affecting American employees’ financial optimism are tied to their personal situations, a study from Bank of America Merrill Lynch has found. The majority (87 per cent) of employees are optimistic about their financial future, including 48 per […]
Both plan sponsors and plan members are expressing an interest in personalized medicine that offers a targeted approach to prescribing based on patients’ genetic makeup, according to the 2017 Sanofi Canada health-care survey. These tests are becoming more accessible and more affordable, said Paula Allen, vice-president of research and integrative solutions at Morneau Shepell Ltd. […]
As social media feeds flood with click bait and half-baked stories and reporting from respected American media institutions comes under fire as fake news by anyone who disagrees with it, there’s an important lesson for plan sponsors. People want the truth. They crave trustworthy content and want information but they often struggle with how difficult it can be […]
The top drivers for using benefits technology include reducing costs (36 per cent), better control or management of benefits data (35 per cent), improving benefits communications (29 per cent) and providing a better experience for employees (27 per cent), according to new research by the business research organization LIMRA. “. . . One of the biggest […]
Millennials make up the largest cohort of the workforce, at about 37 per cent of Canadian employees. For information technology consulting company Capgemini, however, its millennial workforce is almost double that percentage. “We have a fairly significant population,” says chief executive officer Sanjay Tugnait, citing the 61 per cent of the company’s 190,000 employees around […]
We’re living in a society with a new generation of employees who also happen to be digital natives. Generation-Y and millennials learn, act and understand very differently than the generations that came before them. They take a different look at their careers, the work environment and even retirement. In the age of defined benefit plans, […]
When employees are young and often working remotely, and when the wellness budget is non-existent, human resources managers have to be creative to ensure employees get a healthy balance at work. The vehicle history company Carproof, for example, began its wellness program in 2012 with a weight-loss contest, said Heather Coy-Robinson, the company’s human resources […]