When employees have caregiving responsibilities, the workplace has a duty of care too

By Karen Stone, CHRE

As the workforce ages, the general body of health and wellness knowledge increases and the lines between professional and personal life blur ever further, the concept of a support system has become part of our day-to-day lexicon.

It is likely a term you use yourself, and it is one of the first things we seek out when a health issue (physical or psychological) arises.

Best practices for avoiding age discrimination throughout the employment cycle

By Adrian Ishak

With the inevitable aging of Canada’s Baby Boomers, a large segment of our population hovers around the cusp of retirement. As a result, there are a number of pertinent factors that HR professionals and employers ought to be aware of, including age-related discrimination concerns; employees’ rights; employer obligations; and how to respond to the greying workforce in a way that limits exposure to potential claims of discrimination.

Why employers need to be thinking about eldercare

By Sarah B. Hood

In the middle of a busy workday, you get an unexpected call. Your frail grandmother has suffered a fall – or perhaps your elderly father is exhibiting stroke symptoms. Either way, you hastily rearrange your plans, find someone to cover your most urgent responsibilities and rush to the hospital. Your colleagues and your boss are understanding and supportive through the emergency, but that’s just the beginning.

What employers need to know

By Chris Bonnett and Allan Smofsky

Being told that you or someone close to you has cancer is devastating. But two facts may surprise you: first, there were over 810,000 Canadians in 2009 with a cancer diagnosis over the ten previous years who were still alive. Second, this matter to employers because 43 per cent of all cancer diagnoses occur in working-age Canadians, including 70 per cent of all breast cancer diagnoses. If your company has not yet faced this issue, it is unlikely to be so lucky forever. There is now nearly a 50 per cent lifetime probability of any one of us getting cancer.

Employer-sponsored benefit plans at risk

By Anthea Gomez

The employee landscape continues to change, and because of our vastly improved health care, people are living longer lives. Companies are experiencing the period of the aging worker, and this time of social change is forcing employers to restructure and rethink the cost implications of providing wellbeing support and benefit plans to workers so that they can stay healthy and fit while on the job.

Change how you present your message and up your recruitment game by using corporate video

By Jess Campbell

Imagine it’s the early 1990s. You’re an HR professional at a shiny new dot-com who’s been tasked with the enormous challenge of hiring several people, like, yesterday. But they can’t be chair-fillers; every person you bring on must be The Right Person.

Being the innovator that you are, you present the idea of creating a corporate video for recruitment. Being a shiny new dot-com, the C-level loves it and throws lots of money at you to get the video produced.

Skip the trends and use a values-driven approach to reinforce organizational culture

By Matt Brown

Considering buying a Ping-Pong table or installing craft beer taps to dazzle both current and prospective talent? Think again. While some of these trends are undoubtedly fun, they’re likely to fall flat in the long run if they aren’t consistent with your company’s overall culture. As HR leaders, we always want to tie our benefits to our organization’s overall values to ensure they serve a deeper meaning and exert a positive influence on engagement.

Workers need to continually hone their skills

By Milind Gurjar

The “third platform” – a term coined by the International Data Corporation (IDC) to describe the interdependencies between mobile devices and apps, cloud services, mobile broadband networks, Big Data analytics and social technologies – is driving a significant change in IT infrastructure and IT operating models. This is a profound shift with far-reaching implications for how business is done.

More and more Canadian workers are responsible for caring for aging parents, and employers need to heed the call

By Susan Hyatt

The CIBC report, “Who Cares: The Economics of Caring for Aging Parents,” should be a wake-up call for all Canadian employers. The report was based on CIBC’s Aging Parents Poll, an online survey of randomly selected adults across Canada, taken March 16 to 20 this year.

The 2016 census from Statistics Canada showed that nearly 17 per cent of Canadians are now 65 and older, a dramatic rise that will continue in the coming decade.

People Person

By Lisa Gordon

In her own words, Angela Briginshaw’s career has been an exciting ride – and there’s much more to come.