Canadian HR Reporter

INSIDE Gender discount Women with MBAs earning less than men page 3 HARD BARGAINING AHEAD Our exclusive roundtable on the future of unions in the private sector page Tweet this, 'Like' that 5 firms share secrets to HR social media success page 12 16 Corporate Outplacement Services Greener pastures How HR leaders plan to keep talent as economy improves page 20 CMScareers.ca Leaving made Easier January 27, 2014 Regulation that barred employers with criminal records removed BY LIZ FOSTER THE FEDERAL government has announced further reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in its ongoing efforts to ensure neither the program nor the workers hired through it are abused. A regulation that prevented employers with criminal convictions — in human trafficking, sexually assaulting an employee or causing the death of an employee — from applying for workers under the TFWP was recently removed as part of the reform. Labour groups have criticized the announcement — made on New Year's Day — as a watering down of regulations intended to protect vulnerable workers. "That does raise suspicion because when the original regulations were proposed, there was quite a lot of fanfare," said Angella MacEwen, senior economist at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). "Then they quietly, over the holidays, remove some of them. This is a tough-on-crime government going soft on corporate criminals." The TFWP's regulations continue to include a condition requiring employers to make reasonable efforts to provide a workplace free of abuse. The clause concerning employers with criminal con- CHANGES > pg. 10 It's all about where you work Commute times, physical office space can be tipping point for jobseekers BY LIZ BERNIER ATTRACTING TOP talent is always a priority, and every employer has its own strategy. But it's easy to underestimate just how much an organization's physical location and office space can influence recruitment. Many employees are no longer willing to trade a long, gruelling commute for their dream job, according to a survey of 2,009 office workers by Oxford Properties and Environics Research Group. Accessibility and a reasonable commute time were identified as the most valuable attributes of a workplace, found the survey, which clocked the acceptable commute time for most respondents as 30 minutes or less. "Top talent in many industries means that 25- to 40-yearold knowledge worker, that next generation of leadership, and we wanted to tap into what those people want. And one of the things that we learned is they want short commutes," said Andrew McAllan, senior vice-president and managing director, real estate, at Oxford Properties in Toronto. "Commuting is so important to them that, all things being equal, they will in fact go work somewhere else." Of course, what's acceptable will largely depend on regional differences, said Hilary Predy, EMPLOYERS > pg. 10 CANADA'S TOP-PAID CEO Hunter Harrison, CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway, was paid $49.1 million in salary, stock options and bonuses in 2012, which put him at the top of the compensation heap when it comes to the CEOs of the top 100 Canadian companies listed on the TSX. The lowest paid of the bunch was Lino Saputo, CEO of the Saputo dairy firm in Montreal, who earned $3.85 million. To find out how long it took a top Canadian CEO to earn the average annual salary of a worker, see page 4. Credit: Mike Cassese (Reuters) Ontario public sector execs could see compensation cap But austerity won't attract the best, brightest: Experts BY LIZ BERNIER IT'S CERTAINLY NOT the first time Ontario's public sector compensation has become a hotbutton political issue. (It won't be the last time, either). But soaring salaries for the province's top-level executives have dominated headlines, political debate and watercooler chatter in recent months. In November, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath introduced a proposal to cap public sector executives' salaries at $418,000 — twice the premier's annual salary. The bill failed, but Ontario's ruling minority Liberal government has vowed to present its own wage restraint legislation this spring. But imposing arbitrary hard caps on public sector salaries may not be the best solution, according to Hugh Mackenzie, economic consultant at Hugh Mackenzie and Associates, based in Toronto. "I don't think it makes sense just to arbitrarily pick a number and say, 'If you're working in a schedule one agency or in the direct public service, your salary is going to be capped at X,"' he said. "I really don't think that makes a lot of sense. I think it does make sense for the provincial government to take some direct responsibility for levels of compensation in the broader public sector that it controls." Public vs. private sector compensation When considering public sector compensation, it can be useful to see how salaries stack up against similar senior executive roles in the private sector. The general trend? High-level executives in the public sector tend to make less than their private sector counterparts. "The general conclusion from a number of studies, some of them based on public data and some of them private studies… tend to show that at the bottom of the pay range, the public sector tends to pay more than the private sector. In the middle, it's sort of even. And at the top of the pay range — the top third to top quarter — the private sector compensation tends to exceed public sector compensation," said Mackenzie. "On a like-to-like comparison, senior leaders in the public sector are paid less than senior leaders in the private sector. That tends to vary a lot from place to place. Where there is direct competition for talent — for example, where the public-sector employees are involved in the investment business — those differences tend to be a little narrower. In other areas, they tend to be quite wide." Despite these sometimes dramatic pay differences, the two sectors do not operate in a vacuum. "If you look back at the history of Ontario Hydro, the biggest impetus for increases in compensation… was the effort to fix the industry up for privatization under the Harris government in the late 90s," said Mackenzie, adding the private sector tends to put pressure on public-sector wages. "(This) speaks to the role that private-sector compensation has in putting upward pressure underneath the compensation of senior leaders in the public sector." RISKS > pg. 11 PM40065782 RO9496 Foreign worker program given another tweak

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