Click on "Comments" to see prior comments and leave one of your own.

What is your most important asset? Your house? No. Your car? No. Your investments? Probably not.

Your ability to work is more important than any other asset.

Do you insure your house? Sure. What about your car? Of course. Do you minimize risk to your investments? Probably Yes.

Insuring your ability to make a steady income is crucial. If you get sick or are injured and cannot work, you are in big trouble.

I was having a coffee today with a new colleague who advises on employee benefits. With no prompting from me, he stated early in our chat that  Disability Insurance is the core of any benefits program. Life insurance is important, health insurance is also important, even here in Canada. Other coverages have their place, but only Disability Insurance is crucial. 

I was so pleased to hear him say this, since I have been preaching the same message to my friends, colleagues and clients for years.

Getting the right Disability coverage is not without pitfalls, and getting good advice is important. There are important questions to ask, and decisions to be made, and tax considerations can have a big impact on the design of the plan.

Managing financial risk has been a hot topic in the last few years. Getting Disability insurance right is one way of managing one of the most essential elements of financial health.

If you are an employee, check your benefits program – carefully. If you are an employer, think about the coverage you offer –Disability Insurance is not sexy, but it says volumes about you as a responsible employer.

Click on "Comments" to see prior comments and leave one of your own.

Pension plans in small companies are an endangered species. Companies aversion to pension plans is understandable – classic defined benefit pension plans put the financial risk on employers, and all registered plans require a level of administration that can be time consuming and expensive. So employers are reluctant to sponsor pension plans of any sort.
 
Saving for retirement, nevertheless, is crucial. The public plans – Old Age Security and the Canada/Quebec Pension Plan – are important, but are not adequate except for those with the most minimal pre-retirement earnings.

Pension plans in our parents’ day provided retirement income, but they did more. They removed the need for employees to plan much. The company, simply by setting up the pension plan, did the planning. All our parents had to do was stay with the same company for their entire career –which most people did.
 
As companies withdrawal from pension plan sponsorship, they have also created a new need for financial planning.
 
When employees are on their own to save for retirement, they need better knowledge and guidance. Very few employees are equipped to know how much to save (assumptions are usually too small), and how to invest successfully (ill-informed choices are common).
 
Employers may not wish to take on the costs and risks of sponsoring a pension plan. They should consider taking on some responsibility for financial education of their employees. Employers should encourage saving for retirement, and help their employees understand and plan. The cost of financial education would be modest and predictable. Employees would appreciate its value as an employee benefit. It would enhance the company’s reputation as a prime employer.
 
Senior executives often enjoy company-provided financial planning – but there is a real need for everyone. 
 
Helping employees plan their finances – a winning strategy in the effort to attract, retain and motivate the best employees.

Click on "Comments" to see prior comments and leave one of your own.

Finding The Best People
Did you ever hire an employee who didn’t work out? If you answered No, you are either a very skilled or very lucky manager. And you are part of a very small group. Almost everyone finds that staffing successfully is time consuming, risky and expensive. 

This is important. Hiring, motivating and retaining good people is what Human Resources is all about – all HR functions, in one way or another, serve to provide staff who will help the organization succeed.

If the process is not a success, the shiny new candidate leaves prematurely or is a disaster and has to be fired – you are back to square one and you have wasted a lot of time and money.

Staffing can be less onerous, and success more likely, by following a simple formula.

Interview Effectively

Interviewing skills are learned – no one is a born interviewer. At least, read a book on interviewing. Better yet, get the help and advice of someone who has interviewing skills

The core skill is to listen. A classic interviewer mistake is to talk too much. Your job is listen and observe. 

A second person should also interview the candidate. An HR specialist can help, but at least use someone who can interview effectively and provide you with a significant opinion.

Reference Checking

This is crucial. Ask the candidate to provide at least three reference names. At least two should be former bosses, and none should be relatives or non-business contacts. Checking reference requires many of the same skills as interviewing. Look for evidence that the candidate will fit into your organization. What was the candidate’s style of doing business with colleagues, clients, senior management? 

As in interviewing – your job is to listen.

Psychological Testing

There are a variety of online psychological profile services that are inexpensive and very effective. These reports are surprisingly accurate and usually insightful. They should confirm the information and feeling learned from the interviews and reference checks.

Ideally, all three sources of information will tell the same story – if not, head for cover, and look again.

Planning and a professional approach to hiring will save time and money for your organization – and stress and headaches for you.

This post is a synopsis of a longer article that you can see at

Click on "Comments" to see prior comments and leave one of your own.

Québec Pay Equity – the compliance deadline passed on December 31, 2010, and there are still some companies who have not complied.

La Commission de L’Équité Salaraile has noticed, and we are now seeing advertisements inviting employees to ask whether or not their companies have done the work required by the law.

The urgency is greater now, of course, and if you have not completed the exercise, now is the time to get at it. The Pay Equity Act provides for substantial fines for companies who have not complied – but our experience is that La Commission is not waiting to say “gotcha”. They are, it seems, more interested in seeing that the law is respected. That means starting the process, and finishing as soon as possible.

Québec Pay Equity is not as daunting as it seems. For small companies, the steps are clear, and the requirements fairly simple. The area that most of our clients find complex is the evaluation of job catagories. While job evaluation is not rocket science, most companies have little or no experience with this type of work, and the process takes more time than they want to allocate from busy schedules.

Outsourcing the complaince work can be a cost effective decision for companies who do not have the skill, experience or time to handle this file. Larger companies with internal HR skills can easily take on this work, and to assist La Commission has excellent guides. They also have software that takes a little learning, but once mastered, is quite good.

Click on "Comments" to see prior comments and leave one of your own.

No business I know of operates without people, and managing people is a top priority and challenge for success.

It is often true that tiny businesses with 2-3 employees can be run in an informal way. The boss can usually keep track of everything; all issues that come up can be addressed by using common sense.

Once a business grows to 8-10 employees, managing employee issues gets more complex. In addition, legal issues often become more formal as the company grows. As the organization grows, issues of cost and fairness become more important.

Developing Human Resource Policies has some important advantages. Uniform policies -

* usually lead to fairness.
* help control costs.
* minimize problems with legal issues.
* are to some extent automatic. When a policy is in place and known by everyone, questions should not come up often, and some aspects of management become self-managing.
* Uniform policies improve employee relations.
* Uniform policies can also help create a culture of accountability.

Employees know that if there is a policy regarding some aspect of their job, then they can be held responsible for performing and acting in accordance with that policy.

Policies should be written to fit the organization. Most smaller organizations can work well with 15 - 25 policies, depending on how complex is the organization.

A second question that comes up almost immediately is what form do policies take, and where do they reside. How do employees get at the policies?

We often advise our clients that communications is one of the areas that are most important when working with employees. Part of the budget should be allocated to communications - no one likes to be in the dark, and we cannot hold employees responsible for rules they do not know.

There are a variety of ways of assuring that employees can access the policies.

* Employee handbook.
* Dedicated section on the employee section of the web site.
* Periodic newsletters - in print or electronic.
* Employee meetings.
* Training - lunch and learn etc.

Our approach to Employee Handbooks is to organize them roughly into the natural lifecycle of the employee.

The Handbook will cover all aspects of the human side of the business, including recruitment, integration of new employees, managing ongoing performance, recognizing and rewarding employee achievements, and reinforcing a culture that will attract and retain good performers.  The policies in the Handbook will provide consistency while still allowing the organization some flexibility to manage effectively.

A well-designed Handbook provides a convenient, easily accessible place where employees and managers can find answers to most of their questions. For managers, the manual is the library of information that otherwise would not be clearly and regularly communicated or that might be forgotten, misinterpreted, or incorrectly communicated.

Creating a Handbook provides a structure for presenting operating rules and company procedures and is a source of information for employees and managers alike. This resource is a good way to promote an environment of fairness and consistency - and it is an effective communication vehicle. It is a tool for managers to handle the day-to-day questions, as well as the unique issues that arise.

What format?

A Binder is obvious.

Depending on the company's business and culture, an Employee Handbook or Policy Manual can be web-based.

Make It A Project

Developing an Employee Handbook is an opportunity to review existing policies, update them, and assure that they continue to be legal, competitive and cost effective.

We generally recommend the following steps:

* Gather any existing policies and practices and review them to ensure compliance with relevant legislation and company organizational and strategic requirements.
* Draft a Table of Contents, which will outline the current and any additional policies to be included in the Handbook. Review the list with representatives of all stakeholders to assure that nothing important has been missed. It is sometimes a good idea to create a committee to provide input to the process.
* Identify the information and decisions required for the development of each policy.
* Gather the individual policies into a Handbook format. This need not be a sophisticated book printed in four colours. At a minimum, a 3-ring binder can be adequate, and this type of presentation has the advantage of being easy to revise and update.
* Plan the introduction to employees. Consider employee meetings with a presentation, particularly if there have been changes to existing policies.