In our November 17, 2010 issue, The Conference Board of Canada reported that “Four in five Canadian organizations surveyed by offer employees incentives – such as variable pay, performance bonuses, and annual incentives – to motivate them to achieve performance goals.”  However, according to the board’s report Making Short-Term Incentives Work for Your Organization, most organizations using these types of plans do not measure the effectiveness of their programs on organizational results. Naturally, we wondered why most organizations are not analyzing these programs.

"Engagement" has become the new answer for organizations – but what exactly is the question? Organizations are looking for some panacea to solve workforce issues that have arisen because of the stressful economy and strained resources. At a time when salary increases are next to impossible, but dissatisfied employees are unlikely to leave a secure job, it’s more critical than ever to keep people motivated, committed, productive and creative.

Only about one-quarter of Canadian organizations feel that their organization has developed a comprehensive wellness strategy, and one-in-ten have not done so at all. This despite a large majority of Canadian organizations that say they take the overall health of their employees into consideration in the design of their benefit programs, according to a Conference Board of Canada survey.

“During tough economic times, organizations face pressure to make cuts to programs viewed as non-essential. Often, workplace health and wellness initiatives are among the first to be cut. However, it is in these turbulent times, where stress is high and employee morale is a concern, that workplace health and wellness initiatives are needed most,” says Karla Thorpe, associate director, compensation and industrial relations for the Conference Board.

“Canadian organizations are at different stages when it comes to workplace health and wellness,” she says. “Some struggle with implementing health and wellness initiatives, while others have successfully integrated health and wellness into their overall corporate strategy and identity. The leading-edge organizations are also making issues such as mental health and ‘presenteeism’ priorities in their health and wellness strategy. ”

This report, Beyond Benefits: Creating a Culture of Health and Wellness in Canadian Organizations, discusses the link between workplace health and wellness programs, employee health and greater organizational health and features case studies of Canadian organizations that have implemented innovative health and wellness practices. These organizations include:

• BC Hydro, British Columbia  
• Lighthouse Publishing, Nova Scotia  
• Pfizer Canada, Quebec  
• TELUS, British Columbia  
• The City of Calgary, Alberta  
• The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, Ontario  
• UBC Okanagan, British Columbia

The report also includes tips to help employers that are looking to either develop or improve their workplace health and wellness strategies. For example, the report highlights how organizations can move forward by starting small – focusing on the fundamentals before expanding their programs.

This report is part of a series that contains data collected from The Conference Board of Canada’s inaugural survey of 255 Canadian organizations’ employer-sponsored benefit programs. Additional information on extended health-care plans, dental plans, life and accident plans, and paid time off can be found in the recently released report, Benefits Benchmarking 2009: Balancing Competitiveness and Costs. The third report in this series will focus on the subject of disability plans and casual absences, and will be released in spring 2010.

Click here for more information on the report.

Business headlines declare that for many sectors the recession is nearly over. Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean the purse strings have loosened up any. In fact, for many organizations it means doing more with less and scrutinizing every line on the budget sheet. Employee engagement programs, although not a large expense, have been an easy target to trim as they often lack specific tracking metrics and are hard to measure in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) and Value on Investment (VOI).

The severe contraction in the global economy brought by the economic crisis will have profound and lasting implications for the way organizations use reward to help deliver their business strategy, according to a recent study from the Hay Group. The war for talent has narrowed to three fronts: around high performers; high potentials; and 'mission-critical' roles.