Both absenteeism and presenteeism affect employers’ bottom lines and employee morale, but does one have more impact on the workplace? Julie Holden, principal at Holden & Associates Ltd. In many ways, employee absence is a major disruption to the workplace and it has become much more complex over the years. On one hand, there’s the […]
The City of Toronto’s director of pensions, payroll and employee benefits discusses pension changes, data technology and being a soccer dad. Q. What top challenges do you face in your role? A. We’re going through a large transformation in the division and that impacts a lot of areas, so basically looking at the programs, the […]
Group insurers are considering data more intelligently to develop products, services and plan designs that are optimal for plan sponsors, but also engage members by using their own personal health and transactional data to involve them in their own well-being. Speaking at Benefits Canada’s 2019 Halifax Benefits Summit on Sept. 24, Chris Goguen, manager of pharmacy benefits strategy and partnership at […]
Canadian asset and wealth managers are facing increased expectations from clients, according to a poll by RBC Investor and Treasury Services. Those surveyed identified the rise in client expectations as the top challenge for the year, followed by increased regulation, which held the top spot in 2018. As well, about a quarter (23 per cent) […]
Compared to the preceding years, 2019 appears to be the year of steady when it comes to progress on hot topics that resonated in the industry in 2017 and 2018. While no single topic has disappeared from the slate, neither have any new ones risen to become topics of urgency among consultants. “Last year, we […]
Behavioural analytics can be used to detect when employees are suffering from symptoms of burnout, according to a new survey by Gurucul, a global security and fraud analytics technology provider. “By employing behavioural analytics, companies are able to detect when employees’ behaviours breach individual ‘norms’ and can identify when people might be acting in a way […]
The American Association of Retired Persons Foundation and the law firm Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald and Pirrotti have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Yale University employees who are objecting to their employer instituting fines for those who don’t participate in its wellness program. The university’s program requires its 5,000 unionized staff and their spouses to submit to medical […]
Identifying language more commonly used by a certain gender could have bearing on data analysis of socially responsible investment choices. A new metric, formulated by alternative data firm Indexia, measures the relative male- or female-dominated nature of language used by a company. The metric was built through a process of analyzing millions of direct quotations from both […]
Data is everywhere in the fourth industrial revolution, with no industry left untouched by the momentum it’s creating, according to Nikolas Badminton, futurist and chief executive officer of Exponential Minds. For benefits plans and disability management programs, data analytics can offer insight into how decisions are made, but the landscape is evolving as it becomes […]
Just 24 per cent of plan sponsors said they regularly receive claims analyses to help identify disease states in their workplaces, according to the 2019 Sanofi Canada health-care survey. This number rose to 31 per cent for employers with 500 or more employees and dropped to 13 per cent among small employers. It also found […]