U.S. public sector defined benefit pension plans that have switched to a defined contribution model have experienced negative cash flows and increased costs and employee turnover, according to a new report by the National Institute on Retirement Security. The report analyzed five public sector pension plans including those in Alaska, Michigan and West Virginia. It […]
Meridian Credit Union Ltd. is continuing to support employee financial wellness by raising its guaranteed hourly wage to $23.74. In 2022, the financial company became the largest employer to be certified by the Ontario Living Wage Network and is adjusting its compensation to reflect new guidelines that were updated last month. Current economic conditions and […]
Canadian employees who are experiencing conflict in the workplace lose an average of 55 workdays in productivity each year, according to Telus Health’s latest mental-health index. The survey, which polled more than 3,000 employees, found workers who have been diagnosed with anxiety (21 per cent) and depression (14 per cent) reported a loss of 55 […]
Justin Ryan Horton has two jobs. When he’s not working 24-hour shifts as a firefighter, he’s working as an administrative assistant for a local community college from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. Firefighting isn’t a work-from-home kind of job, so when the community college position gave him the choice to clock in remotely, he […]
Nearly all Canadian employers that have implemented a four-day workweek report increased employee happiness (96 per cent) and say they’d continue with this schedule indefinitely (93 per cent), according to a new report by York University. The report, which analyzed responses from around 30 Canadian companies across the public and private sectors that have moved […]
Ahead of Giving Tuesday, nearly two-thirds (61 per cent) of U.S. employers say they’ve seen an increase in employee volunteer activities this year, according to a new survey by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals. However, despite this increase, the survey also found corporate social responsibility professionals have struggled to get participation levels back to a pre-pandemic […]
Two-thirds (65 per cent) of U.S. employees rank flexible work options as the No. 1 component of compensation beyond salary, down from 71 per cent in 2022, according to a new report by the Conference Board Inc. The survey, which polled more than 1,500 workers, found employees in hybrid (68 per cent) and fully remote […]
When tall poppy syndrome is left to manifest in the workplace, it can have an adverse effect on an organization’s culture and lead to issues with employee mental health and productivity, said Rumeet Billan, a leadership, emotional resilience and mental-health expert, during the keynote session at Benefits Canada‘s 2023 Healthy Outcomes Conference in October. She cautioned […]
There’s a lot going on in the world right now. Across the globe, geopolitical tensions are more elevated than they’ve been in decades, while the day-to-day lives of average people closer to home continue to be upended by the overarching threats of high inflation and interest rates, as well as the unrelenting cost-of-living crisis. The […]
While Portugal is the latest country to jump on the four-day workweek bandwagon, with 39 private sector businesses participating in a five-month program ending this month, a similar program conducted in the U.K. last year has yielded some interesting results. Of the 61 companies that participated in the U.K. pilot from June to December 2022, […]