As a business owner, your employees are your greatest asset. You strive to provide them with the best support possible, including comprehensive healthcare benefits. However, when it comes to mental health, traditional insurance plans may fall short. That’s where a Healthcare Spending Account (HSA) steps in, offering a powerful solution to bridge the gap and […]

Benchmarking is the practice of comparing a company’s business processes, performance metrics, or offerings to those of other businesses, especially the best practices from industry leaders or direct competitors. In the context of Employee Benefits and Group Savings, benchmarking involves analyzing the benefits and savings plans that your organization offers against what other companies in […]

Whether you’re an employee or self-employed, you are required to contribute to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), recently you may have noticed that the amount you’re required to contribute has been slowly climbing. What many don’t know, is that there is a second stage of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) expansion, which entails further increased […]

What is it? A benefit that will provide dental care to children under 12 years old, who don’t have access to private dental coverage. Who is Eligible? Children under 12 who have no access to private dental coverage. There are additional household income criteria that determines the amount of coverage the child can receive: For […]

What is changing? The federal government will extend EI sickness benefits from 15 to 26 weeks effective December 18th, 2022. What decisions and actions do employers need to take? While there is no requirement to align to the 26-week EI sickness period, employers still have a choice they can make. There are two main paths […]

The Ontario governments recently enacted Bill 27, “Working for Workers Act” requiring employers (with more than 25 employees), to have “a written policy in place for all employees with respect to disconnecting from work”. Bill 27, Working for Workers Act requires a policy, not necessarily a requirement to allow employees to disconnect. The Employment Standards […]

With kids returning to class in September and an increasing number of large employers announcing a requirement for employees returning to work to be fully vaccinated, smaller employers are starting to contemplate what a return to the workplace might look like in the fall. Unfortunately, Ontario’s Employment Standards Act has not been updated and the […]

To remove some of the financial burden of staying home with Covid19 symptoms or taking time off to get tested, the Ontario government has passed legislation to provide paid sick-leave to those workers that don’t already have a program in place with their employer. While the federal government does offer the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit […]

We’ve seen EAP (Employee Assistance Program) usage jump more than 200% throughout the pandemic. In most years we expect the usage statistics for most plans to be about 8% of the workforce. During 2020, usage spiked for most plans to well over 20% and in many cases over 30%. While EAPs weren’t necessarily designed with […]

Employees who worked from home more than 50% of the time over a period of a least four consecutive weeks in 2020 due to the pandemic will be eligible to claim the home office expenses deduction for 2020. There are two options for employees when claiming these expenses on their 2020 tax return. The temporary […]