Canadian HR Reporter

PM40065782 RO9496 May 1, 2017 INSIDE Rigged for mental health A mental health campaign at Hibernia, off St. John's, garners results — and an award — in supporting isolated workers 'Perfect storm' Stressed worker faces extra work, staff cuts page 5 Get moving Feds aim to combat sedentary behaviour page 6 Millennial council Employee resource group hopes to bridge the gaps page 15 page 11 Former RCMP officers Janet Merlo, left, and Linda Gillis Davidson embrace on Oct. 6, 2016, after learning their two lawsuits against the force alleging sexual harassment would proceed as class actions. Credit: Adrian Wyld (The Canadian Press) Subscribe today at hrreporter.com/canadian-hr-newswire SIGN UP FOR CANADIAN HR NEWSWIRE Bombardier outcry highlights challenges of executive compensation ' is is every director's worst nightmare' BY MARCEL VANDER WIER CANADIAN aerospace and transportation giant Bombardier offi cially delayed a portion of its executive compensation in April, following two weeks of public outrage. The outcry came after a pay hike for Bombardier's top six ex- ecutives, on the heels of a US$1- billion bailout in 2016 — courtesy of the Quebec government in ex- change for a 49.5 per cent stake in the company — and an additional $372.5 million loan from the fed- eral government in February. e money was intended to uplift the company's struggling CSeries and Global 7000 aircraft programs. Public relations foible aside, providing the controversial bo- nuses was a necessary play for Bombardier, according to Jeff rey Gandz, professor emeritus at Western University's Ivey Business School in London, Ont. " ey're on a lifeline and look- ing for a turnaround," he said. "They need executives of the (Alain) Bellemare quality. I feel for the board of directors, who are in that position saying, 'Geez, we have to have a top-notch execu- tive team, otherwise we have no future. ese are the people that are going to lead us out of the wil- derness.' But the shareholders sure aren't going to see much until the turnaround is done." " is is every director's worst nightmare. What do you do when you have to attract and retain top- class people — and, one could ar- gue, never is that more important than when you're trying to turn a company around — when the re- sults to shareholders are not going to look good for quite a while, if at all?" Background The announced $32.6 million in executive compensation was nearly 50 per cent more than what the employees had earned in 2015, though many of them had just started with Bombardier and hadn't worked a full year when awarded their initial bonuses. POOR > pg. 8 Cutting employee benefi ts no easy task for HR Postmedia looks for cost savings with changes BY SARAH DOBSON IT WASN'T exactly an announce- ment as the news was leaked, but Postmedia told employees in March the media company was making considerable changes to their benefi ts. "Across Postmedia, we currently have numerous and varied benefi t programs, pension plans and other human resources policies like vaca- tion that apply to various employee groups. In order to both achieve harmony across our operations and to ensure the aff ordability of these programs going forward, we are making changes that will apply to everyone," said a memo outlining the changes on www.j-source.ca. "Once complete, Postmedia will have a harmonized program that is aligned across the organization." While not an unusual practice, downgrading benefi ts and pen- sions is more common with a challenging economy, according to Glenn Kehrer, president of Group Benefi ts Consulting of Canada in Winnipeg. "Everybody looks at their ben- efi t line and says, 'What is this as a percentage of our overall salary costs? Is it fi ve per cent, six per cent?' If you've got a for- mal pension plan, it might be 11 or 12 per cent, so that's becom- ing a big number on the bottom line. And so I think everybody is looking and saying, 'How can we save money without negatively impacting the morale and losing employees to the competition that's out there?'" And in western provinces such as Alberta, where there have been mass layoff s, many employees are just happy to have a job, he said, "so it is a good time to look at the overall program and say, 'Were we too rich on the benefi ts side and if so, what can we do to tweak it and do some cost-containments?'" Background e changes at Postmedia include having one defi ned contribution (DC) pension plan while the de- fi ned benefi t (DB) pension plan accruals will stop in August. And participation in other DC plans, group RRSPs and the deferred profi t-sharing plan will cease. CONSTRUCTIVE > pg. 16 Sexual harassment 'national crisis' With focus on RCMP, expert panel highlights challenges, solutions BY MARCEL VANDER WIER FOR Const. Janet Merlo, the ha- rassment began in basic training. Having joined the RCMP in 1991, she found out offi cers were expect- ed to say "1974" — the year women joined the force — when their drill corporal asked for the worst year in RCMP history. Her experience only got worse, with supervisors forcing Merlo to stand beside life-size blow-up dolls for physical comparison, fol- lowed by harsh, unwarranted criti- cism when she was placed on light offi ce duty during her fi rst preg- nancy. When Merlo would point out safety issues to her supervisor, she would be accused of being on her menstrual cycle. Fearing their own careers would be stunted, colleagues were too afraid to speak up in her defence. "Nobody said anything, basical- ly," said Merlo, speaking at the Hu- man Rights and Accommodation Conference in Toronto in April. CONFIDENTIALITY > pg. 10

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