Transitioning back into the workplace, following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM and joining me as always Colin Rook, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. And as we record this Colin, we are just a few days into phase one of re-opened Saskatchewan, and that was pretty preliminary stuff. But as we move forward through the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more of that re-opening of Saskatchewan, if we can use that terminology, which means people are trying to figure out, what does the new normal look like?
And I know that that’s a question you get to an awful lot about what are the risk in implications? What are the insurance implications of all of this? So you’ve begun to dig into it. So let’s take this expertise that you’ve applied to it with all of the knowledge and the resources at your disposal to put together the checklist. And that’s what you’re really good at is checklists and helping businesses sort through things that could be rocky roads, and you try and smooth them out. So I’m guessing the return to work is topic number one these days.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, it is. And I think like on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about cyber and I make a lot of apologies for why are we talking about cyber again? Well, cyber is just topical. Cyber crime keeps changing, every week there’s something new and when it comes to COVID-19, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s what the insurance companies are talking about. It’s what our clients and prospects are talking about. And so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on resource generation and, I think everyone is just being inundated with information currently. I mean, of course it’s all over the news. If you’re involved in any sort of local or national associations, you’re going to be receiving bulletins and updates.
We’re trying to help our clients and we’re trying to organize a lot of the information and make it, I guess easier to navigate through.
Colin Rooke:
And so, I mean, we’re trying to help our clients and we’re trying to organize a lot of the information and make it, I guess easier to navigate through. And you mentioned, yes, we, we are really good at planning. We are really good at checklists and we’re really good at delivering resources that result from the work being put in to these checklists from our clients and prospects. And so, doing what we do, we’ve got, I’d say at this point, well, dozens and dozens of coronavirus related documents. And so what we’ve done is we’ve compiled a post Coronavirus workplace preparedness checklist. I know that’s a mouthful, but we’ve prepared a document that we can give to our clients or give to any prospect that will help you navigate, what should you be doing? And what have you thought about? What have you maybe not thought about?
Paul Martin:
You raise a really good point there because I’m thinking if I’m a business owner or I’m the general manager of a business, and my responsibility is to try and keep this ship on a course here through this pandemic. I’m navigating through all the government programs and trying to figure out all the rules and qualifications and un-qualifications, and all of the fine print of all of those things. And then just when I get that sorted out, oh yeah. Then they got to go to parliament, actually turn that into law and the legislation gets changed. And so I got to relearn it. I got all of that stuff on my plate. Then I actually got to do business.
And now I’ve just nicely, got everybody settled into where they’re kind of productive working from home. Now we’re going to start saying, “Well, we’ll let them migrate back to the office.” I mean, business owners just simply don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to deal with all of this stuff. And I think that’s probably what you’re trying to do is to say, “Look, here’s a shortcut. I’ll give you the snapshot. We’ll put it all together in one place and save you a ton of time.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I mean, a lot of this information, if you put in the time that we are, you could find it yourself. And that’s why I referenced that everyone’s being inundated with information. There’s certainly no shortage, but there’s just so much on business owners’ plates at the moment. And if we can do anything to just make life easy, that’s where our focus is today. And that’s where this checklist comes in. Some of it would be redundant. Some of it you’d have discussions around, for example, cleaning. Who’s going to do it? How often we’re going to do it? But maybe you haven’t, maybe you’ve overlooked something. And this document is going to highlight any missing step, but then we’ve taken a step further.
So as you go through, it’s a yes, no questionnaire. And if something isn’t applicable, you’d leave it. But as you go through this questionnaire and you’re working through it and maybe you have a few nos, a lot of nos, anything that’s missing, or anything that you want more information around on this checklist, we will have access to something that we’ll be able to help you in that category. So, it’s not just a matter of identifying what you haven’t done yet or pointing out what you may not have thought about. It allows you to come back to us and say, “Okay, we went through the list and this is what we’re concerned about.” We then can come back to you and say, “Okay, this is what you would need from us to further that, to further prepare yourself,” which is why I think this is such a great checklist that we’ve put together. We’re going to fill the gaps for you.
Paul Martin:
That’s really got to be music to the ears of somebody who’s been going for the last 10 weeks on every day is a work day. There’s no separation between weekend and weekday because we’re working from home. And so normally in a, even just psychological where we go to the office and then when we come home that separates it. When you’re working from home, there is no separation. And so I think I’m hearing people use expressions like zoom fatigue, and “I’m just exhausted. At the end of the day, I spend all day in front of a camera, basically on stage all day long and performing. I am pooped out at the end of the day and then I don’t get any weekend to recharge because we’re just, you just kind of, everybody’s gotten into this mode of a 10, 12 hour day.” And you come along and say, “I’ve got this checklist that’s just going to help you shortcut. Then if you missed anything, not to worry because we’ve got it for you. And if there’s a hole, we’ll fill it.”
Colin Rooke:
Exactly. And that was the intent. How can we get all of our resources? Short of sending out dozens of emails with just resource after resource, and then it turns into noise. How can we itemize what we have access to, and then sort of customize what we’re delivering based on an internal assessment. And like, to give an example, like for one of the questions, “Have employees received communication regarding COVID-19 workplace best practices?” If they have, great. Check yes, move on. If you’ve done something and you want more, we’ll provide that. But if it’s no, guess what? We have the document that you can use, that you can send out, and then you can say it was temporarily a no, and now it’s a yes. And Butler Byer’s got that done for you.
Another one, “If using face coverings or masks, have employees been trained on proper procedures?” You can say, “I spent a ton of time outsourcing masks or I created them myself,” however you got them. But do your people know how to remove masks that could be contaminated without self contamination? And yes, you can search and search and search and find that information. It’s available. We found it, but we’re going to give that to you. So if you haven’t done that, well, guess what? We’re going to solve that problem.
Paul Martin:
All right, we’re going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further in some of the nuances that we’re beginning to hear about how businesses are going to have to, well kind of massage these return-to-work programs and one size doesn’t fit all. So I want to dig into that just a bit. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin and joining me is Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. We’ve got to take a little break. Back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, your host, and joining me Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Just before the break Colin and I alluded to some of the nuances I think that business owners and managers are going to have to deal with in the near term. One of those is, will everybody basically come back at the same time? Or are we going to be saying, there’s going to be a voluntary return to work. I’m hearing all these versions from different businesses that how they’re going to approach it, that there isn’t one size fits all in all of this. And I assume each of those brings with it some sort of implications that managers need to take into account.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think depending on what industry you’re working in, I think the plan is going to be very different. And I would say again with the phase one of Open Saskatchewan that a lot of management meetings have, of course, been centered around, how are we going to open? Are we going to open? What is opening look like? How do we communicate this? What is the next three months going to look like, six months? And even conversations around, if you have employees that have been temporarily laid off, will they remain, will you bring some back? And again, we want to help. All the examples I’ve just given now, we will have some resource that will help you navigate through that conversation.
Over the break I was just thinking, if you take this checklist that I’m referring to now, this could be the management meeting. You gather your executives in the room and you work through this, and this is the moving forward plan. And we’re helping to make that easy. And again, it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what have we done well?, What could we do better?” And then reaching out, and then we will help.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing that that has implications as well for, there’s a couple of levels. One is, you are after all in the insurance business. So talking to insurance companies, I assume that if you go through the checklist, they will look upon that favorably. But also there’s, I think we’re going to head into a whole lot of uncharted labor law areas here, as we bring people back, and do we force them, not force them? And then if we want all our people back and somebody doesn’t want to come back, then terminations, all of the stuff that comes from all of that, that you can envision. I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but you can imagine these things happening. I’m assuming that there’s legal stuff, there’s all sorts of health related stuff, and then there’s just the basic HR people stuff that goes into this. There’s a lot of complexity in this stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Yes. And we’ve got resources around all of that. And yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of our time learning about labor laws and working with other legal professionals to answer those questions. What if I say, “Okay, XYZ company is open as of May 25th, but two thirds of the staff don’t want to report back to work, what are my rights as an employer? What rights do my employees have?” And as with anything, it varies based on industry. But we have resources around that. We have resources around what the employer is required to do. Of course, you have a duty to create a safe environment. And that comes with following the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada. And so we’ve got documentation as to what that looks like across most industries. And again, we can help. And we can’t fight the battle for you if you’ve got a segment of your workforce that does not want to come in, but we can certainly explain to you what your rights are as an employer, what you can do to prepare the workplace so then that, you aren’t seen as offside.
And after that, it’s a matter of communication, which again, we can help with as well. And then dealing with anyone that from there may or may not want to come in. And you made another point earlier to just in surrounding return to work. And we also have documentation or guides around alternative working arrangements. I mean, it’s designed to help alleviate layoffs or any temporary layoffs. And we’ve got lots of research around job sharing programs and ideas that maybe some business owners haven’t thought about. And again, yes, there’s just a ton of HR information out there. We’re just trying to condense it and gather it and let our clients and prospects know that they can come to one place and get most of the answers.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing also Colin, that you’d have entertained or explored the differences that will be encountered by different kinds of businesses. What comes to mind for me is if I’m B to C, business to consumer, I’m going to be faced with some different issues than if I don’t have the general public coming into my office every day in a B to B, in business to business. I’m guessing that there are lines there that people are going to have to actually re-design their counter spaces, where they meet with customers, these kinds of things.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. They absolutely will, and the requirements change based on the type of transactions, type of company that you are. And like I said, this checklist, we want our clients and prospects just to think, questions like, “Are your workstations more than two meters apart? Yes or no.” And if yes, great. If no, “Have you put a protective shield in front?” And if you do, we’ll answer the question, “Are you allowed to have workplaces or workspaces, sorry, that are closer together provided you’ve created a protective screen?”
So, you don’t have to run into the office, move every desk around, but if you’ve got that space, great. If you’ve got offices with closing doors, great. If not, again, this is what your requirements are. And it does change based on industry. Questions around automatic doors, “Is the customer going to open the door? Is the employer going to open the door? Who’s cleaning the door?” We’re just trying to help navigate all those questions.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’ll throw a couple of questions and you can tell me whether or not these are in there. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left in our time today. But one of the things that I think people, some businesses certainly are discovering this work from home thing actually has some merit and people are more productive working from home. They may want to embrace it. That’s going to change the way business has its relationship with workers. And I assume that that has implications for insurance and all sorts of things.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. If you have the typical office environment and now your risk is underwritten based on that typical office environment. And then now you say, “Well, geez, only 30% or less are in the office. And I’ve got people spread out all over Canada.” It also turns into, of course, some IT issues, changes to the cyber crime, cyber security. So yeah, lots of questions.
We are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters.
Paul Martin:
All right. Well, I’m going to encourage people, business owners that are listening to give you a call and grab a hold of this checklist that you’ve got. Because man, we are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters. Colin, as always, thank you for joining us and very informative.
Colin Rooke:
Thanks, Paul.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business with Butler Byers. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.
Insurance and Business Implications of COVID-19
What are the insurance and business implications of the global climate during COVID-19?
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM and joining me as always Colin Rook, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. And as we record this Colin, we are just a few days into phase one of re-opened Saskatchewan, and that was pretty preliminary stuff. But as we move forward through the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more of that re-opening of Saskatchewan, if we can use that terminology, which means people are trying to figure out, what does the new normal look like?
And I know that that’s a question you get to an awful lot about what are the risk in implications? What are the insurance implications of all of this? So you’ve begun to dig into it. So let’s take this expertise that you’ve applied to it with all of the knowledge and the resources at your disposal to put together the checklist. And that’s what you’re really good at is checklists and helping businesses sort through things that could be rocky roads, and you try and smooth them out. So I’m guessing the return to work is topic number one these days.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, it is. And I think like on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about cyber and I make a lot of apologies for why are we talking about cyber again? Well, cyber is just topical. Cyber crime keeps changing, every week there’s something new and when it comes to COVID-19, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s what the insurance companies are talking about. It’s what our clients and prospects are talking about. And so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on resource generation and, I think everyone is just being inundated with information currently. I mean, of course it’s all over the news. If you’re involved in any sort of local or national associations, you’re going to be receiving bulletins and updates.
Paul Martin:
You raise a really good point there because I’m thinking if I’m a business owner or I’m the general manager of a business, and my responsibility is to try and keep this ship on a course here through this pandemic. I’m navigating through all the government programs and trying to figure out all the rules and qualifications and un-qualifications, and all of the fine print of all of those things. And then just when I get that sorted out, oh yeah. Then they got to go to parliament, actually turn that into law and the legislation gets changed. And so I got to relearn it. I got all of that stuff on my plate. Then I actually got to do business.
And now I’ve just nicely, got everybody settled into where they’re kind of productive working from home. Now we’re going to start saying, “Well, we’ll let them migrate back to the office.” I mean, business owners just simply don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to deal with all of this stuff. And I think that’s probably what you’re trying to do is to say, “Look, here’s a shortcut. I’ll give you the snapshot. We’ll put it all together in one place and save you a ton of time.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I mean, a lot of this information, if you put in the time that we are, you could find it yourself. And that’s why I referenced that everyone’s being inundated with information. There’s certainly no shortage, but there’s just so much on business owners’ plates at the moment. And if we can do anything to just make life easy, that’s where our focus is today. And that’s where this checklist comes in. Some of it would be redundant. Some of it you’d have discussions around, for example, cleaning. Who’s going to do it? How often we’re going to do it? But maybe you haven’t, maybe you’ve overlooked something. And this document is going to highlight any missing step, but then we’ve taken a step further.
So as you go through, it’s a yes, no questionnaire. And if something isn’t applicable, you’d leave it. But as you go through this questionnaire and you’re working through it and maybe you have a few nos, a lot of nos, anything that’s missing, or anything that you want more information around on this checklist, we will have access to something that we’ll be able to help you in that category. So, it’s not just a matter of identifying what you haven’t done yet or pointing out what you may not have thought about. It allows you to come back to us and say, “Okay, we went through the list and this is what we’re concerned about.” We then can come back to you and say, “Okay, this is what you would need from us to further that, to further prepare yourself,” which is why I think this is such a great checklist that we’ve put together. We’re going to fill the gaps for you.
Paul Martin:
That’s really got to be music to the ears of somebody who’s been going for the last 10 weeks on every day is a work day. There’s no separation between weekend and weekday because we’re working from home. And so normally in a, even just psychological where we go to the office and then when we come home that separates it. When you’re working from home, there is no separation. And so I think I’m hearing people use expressions like zoom fatigue, and “I’m just exhausted. At the end of the day, I spend all day in front of a camera, basically on stage all day long and performing. I am pooped out at the end of the day and then I don’t get any weekend to recharge because we’re just, you just kind of, everybody’s gotten into this mode of a 10, 12 hour day.” And you come along and say, “I’ve got this checklist that’s just going to help you shortcut. Then if you missed anything, not to worry because we’ve got it for you. And if there’s a hole, we’ll fill it.”
Colin Rooke:
Exactly. And that was the intent. How can we get all of our resources? Short of sending out dozens of emails with just resource after resource, and then it turns into noise. How can we itemize what we have access to, and then sort of customize what we’re delivering based on an internal assessment. And like, to give an example, like for one of the questions, “Have employees received communication regarding COVID-19 workplace best practices?” If they have, great. Check yes, move on. If you’ve done something and you want more, we’ll provide that. But if it’s no, guess what? We have the document that you can use, that you can send out, and then you can say it was temporarily a no, and now it’s a yes. And Butler Byer’s got that done for you.
Another one, “If using face coverings or masks, have employees been trained on proper procedures?” You can say, “I spent a ton of time outsourcing masks or I created them myself,” however you got them. But do your people know how to remove masks that could be contaminated without self contamination? And yes, you can search and search and search and find that information. It’s available. We found it, but we’re going to give that to you. So if you haven’t done that, well, guess what? We’re going to solve that problem.
The funds aren’t there. And so that’s why you would see this type of exclusion.
Colin Rooke:
Another issue that again we’re seeing in the industry, and it’s not unique to Butler Byers, but you look at events, special events, large events, small events, and event cancellation policies. Again, the challenge there is that most exclude a communicable disease and/or pandemic. And in fact, I’ll take it a step further. It’s the threat of whether true or not if you’re forced to close due to again, the chances are low. Again, I can’t speak to every policy available in Canada. But just to be broad about it, chances are low that it’s going to pay.
Paul Martin:
All right, we’re going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further in some of the nuances that we’re beginning to hear about how businesses are going to have to, well kind of massage these return-to-work programs and one size doesn’t fit all. So I want to dig into that just a bit. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin and joining me is Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. We’ve got to take a little break. Back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, your host, and joining me Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Just before the break Colin and I alluded to some of the nuances I think that business owners and managers are going to have to deal with in the near term. One of those is, will everybody basically come back at the same time? Or are we going to be saying, there’s going to be a voluntary return to work. I’m hearing all these versions from different businesses that how they’re going to approach it, that there isn’t one size fits all in all of this. And I assume each of those brings with it some sort of implications that managers need to take into account.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think depending on what industry you’re working in, I think the plan is going to be very different. And I would say again with the phase one of Open Saskatchewan that a lot of management meetings have, of course, been centered around, how are we going to open? Are we going to open? What is opening look like? How do we communicate this? What is the next three months going to look like, six months? And even conversations around, if you have employees that have been temporarily laid off, will they remain, will you bring some back? And again, we want to help. All the examples I’ve just given now, we will have some resource that will help you navigate through that conversation.
Over the break I was just thinking, if you take this checklist that I’m referring to now, this could be the management meeting. You gather your executives in the room and you work through this, and this is the moving forward plan. And we’re helping to make that easy. And again, it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what have we done well?, What could we do better?” And then reaching out, and then we will help.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing that that has implications as well for, there’s a couple of levels. One is, you are after all in the insurance business. So talking to insurance companies, I assume that if you go through the checklist, they will look upon that favorably. But also there’s, I think we’re going to head into a whole lot of uncharted labor law areas here, as we bring people back, and do we force them, not force them? And then if we want all our people back and somebody doesn’t want to come back, then terminations, all of the stuff that comes from all of that, that you can envision. I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but you can imagine these things happening. I’m assuming that there’s legal stuff, there’s all sorts of health related stuff, and then there’s just the basic HR people stuff that goes into this. There’s a lot of complexity in this stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Yes. And we’ve got resources around all of that. And yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of our time learning about labor laws and working with other legal professionals to answer those questions. What if I say, “Okay, XYZ company is open as of May 25th, but two thirds of the staff don’t want to report back to work, what are my rights as an employer? What rights do my employees have?” And as with anything, it varies based on industry. But we have resources around that. We have resources around what the employer is required to do. Of course, you have a duty to create a safe environment. And that comes with following the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada. And so we’ve got documentation as to what that looks like across most industries. And again, we can help. And we can’t fight the battle for you if you’ve got a segment of your workforce that does not want to come in, but we can certainly explain to you what your rights are as an employer, what you can do to prepare the workplace so then that, you aren’t seen as offside.
And after that, it’s a matter of communication, which again, we can help with as well. And then dealing with anyone that from there may or may not want to come in. And you made another point earlier to just in surrounding return to work. And we also have documentation or guides around alternative working arrangements. I mean, it’s designed to help alleviate layoffs or any temporary layoffs. And we’ve got lots of research around job sharing programs and ideas that maybe some business owners haven’t thought about. And again, yes, there’s just a ton of HR information out there. We’re just trying to condense it and gather it and let our clients and prospects know that they can come to one place and get most of the answers.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing also Colin, that you’d have entertained or explored the differences that will be encountered by different kinds of businesses. What comes to mind for me is if I’m B to C, business to consumer, I’m going to be faced with some different issues than if I don’t have the general public coming into my office every day in a B to B, in business to business. I’m guessing that there are lines there that people are going to have to actually re-design their counter spaces, where they meet with customers, these kinds of things.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. They absolutely will, and the requirements change based on the type of transactions, type of company that you are. And like I said, this checklist, we want our clients and prospects just to think, questions like, “Are your workstations more than two meters apart? Yes or no.” And if yes, great. If no, “Have you put a protective shield in front?” And if you do, we’ll answer the question, “Are you allowed to have workplaces or workspaces, sorry, that are closer together provided you’ve created a protective screen?”
So, you don’t have to run into the office, move every desk around, but if you’ve got that space, great. If you’ve got offices with closing doors, great. If not, again, this is what your requirements are. And it does change based on industry. Questions around automatic doors, “Is the customer going to open the door? Is the employer going to open the door? Who’s cleaning the door?” We’re just trying to help navigate all those questions.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’ll throw a couple of questions and you can tell me whether or not these are in there. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left in our time today. But one of the things that I think people, some businesses certainly are discovering this work from home thing actually has some merit and people are more productive working from home. They may want to embrace it. That’s going to change the way business has its relationship with workers. And I assume that that has implications for insurance and all sorts of things.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. If you have the typical office environment and now your risk is underwritten based on that typical office environment. And then now you say, “Well, geez, only 30% or less are in the office. And I’ve got people spread out all over Canada.” It also turns into, of course, some IT issues, changes to the cyber crime, cyber security. So yeah, lots of questions.
Paul Martin:
All right. Well, I’m going to encourage people, business owners that are listening to give you a call and grab a hold of this checklist that you’ve got. Because man, we are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters. Colin, as always, thank you for joining us and very informative.
Colin Rooke:
Thanks, Paul.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business with Butler Byers. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.
Colin Rooke:
Thank you.
Insurance Captives
In today’s episode, Paul Martin and Colin Rooke discuss insurance captives and how they can work for your business.
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM and joining me as always Colin Rook, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. And as we record this Colin, we are just a few days into phase one of re-opened Saskatchewan, and that was pretty preliminary stuff. But as we move forward through the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more of that re-opening of Saskatchewan, if we can use that terminology, which means people are trying to figure out, what does the new normal look like?
And I know that that’s a question you get to an awful lot about what are the risk in implications? What are the insurance implications of all of this? So you’ve begun to dig into it. So let’s take this expertise that you’ve applied to it with all of the knowledge and the resources at your disposal to put together the checklist. And that’s what you’re really good at is checklists and helping businesses sort through things that could be rocky roads, and you try and smooth them out. So I’m guessing the return to work is topic number one these days.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, it is. And I think like on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about cyber and I make a lot of apologies for why are we talking about cyber again? Well, cyber is just topical. Cyber crime keeps changing, every week there’s something new and when it comes to COVID-19, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s what the insurance companies are talking about. It’s what our clients and prospects are talking about. And so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on resource generation and, I think everyone is just being inundated with information currently. I mean, of course it’s all over the news. If you’re involved in any sort of local or national associations, you’re going to be receiving bulletins and updates.
Paul Martin:
You raise a really good point there because I’m thinking if I’m a business owner or I’m the general manager of a business, and my responsibility is to try and keep this ship on a course here through this pandemic. I’m navigating through all the government programs and trying to figure out all the rules and qualifications and un-qualifications, and all of the fine print of all of those things. And then just when I get that sorted out, oh yeah. Then they got to go to parliament, actually turn that into law and the legislation gets changed. And so I got to relearn it. I got all of that stuff on my plate. Then I actually got to do business.
And now I’ve just nicely, got everybody settled into where they’re kind of productive working from home. Now we’re going to start saying, “Well, we’ll let them migrate back to the office.” I mean, business owners just simply don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to deal with all of this stuff. And I think that’s probably what you’re trying to do is to say, “Look, here’s a shortcut. I’ll give you the snapshot. We’ll put it all together in one place and save you a ton of time.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I mean, a lot of this information, if you put in the time that we are, you could find it yourself. And that’s why I referenced that everyone’s being inundated with information. There’s certainly no shortage, but there’s just so much on business owners’ plates at the moment. And if we can do anything to just make life easy, that’s where our focus is today. And that’s where this checklist comes in. Some of it would be redundant. Some of it you’d have discussions around, for example, cleaning. Who’s going to do it? How often we’re going to do it? But maybe you haven’t, maybe you’ve overlooked something. And this document is going to highlight any missing step, but then we’ve taken a step further.
So as you go through, it’s a yes, no questionnaire. And if something isn’t applicable, you’d leave it. But as you go through this questionnaire and you’re working through it and maybe you have a few nos, a lot of nos, anything that’s missing, or anything that you want more information around on this checklist, we will have access to something that we’ll be able to help you in that category. So, it’s not just a matter of identifying what you haven’t done yet or pointing out what you may not have thought about. It allows you to come back to us and say, “Okay, we went through the list and this is what we’re concerned about.” We then can come back to you and say, “Okay, this is what you would need from us to further that, to further prepare yourself,” which is why I think this is such a great checklist that we’ve put together. We’re going to fill the gaps for you.
Paul Martin:
That’s really got to be music to the ears of somebody who’s been going for the last 10 weeks on every day is a work day. There’s no separation between weekend and weekday because we’re working from home. And so normally in a, even just psychological where we go to the office and then when we come home that separates it. When you’re working from home, there is no separation. And so I think I’m hearing people use expressions like zoom fatigue, and “I’m just exhausted. At the end of the day, I spend all day in front of a camera, basically on stage all day long and performing. I am pooped out at the end of the day and then I don’t get any weekend to recharge because we’re just, you just kind of, everybody’s gotten into this mode of a 10, 12 hour day.” And you come along and say, “I’ve got this checklist that’s just going to help you shortcut. Then if you missed anything, not to worry because we’ve got it for you. And if there’s a hole, we’ll fill it.”
Colin Rooke:
Exactly. And that was the intent. How can we get all of our resources? Short of sending out dozens of emails with just resource after resource, and then it turns into noise. How can we itemize what we have access to, and then sort of customize what we’re delivering based on an internal assessment. And like, to give an example, like for one of the questions, “Have employees received communication regarding COVID-19 workplace best practices?” If they have, great. Check yes, move on. If you’ve done something and you want more, we’ll provide that. But if it’s no, guess what? We have the document that you can use, that you can send out, and then you can say it was temporarily a no, and now it’s a yes. And Butler Byer’s got that done for you.
Another one, “If using face coverings or masks, have employees been trained on proper procedures?” You can say, “I spent a ton of time outsourcing masks or I created them myself,” however you got them. But do your people know how to remove masks that could be contaminated without self contamination? And yes, you can search and search and search and find that information. It’s available. We found it, but we’re going to give that to you. So if you haven’t done that, well, guess what? We’re going to solve that problem.
Butler Byers can help you purchase your own insurance company and it’s called an insurance captive.
Paul Martin:
All right, we’re going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further in some of the nuances that we’re beginning to hear about how businesses are going to have to, well kind of massage these return-to-work programs and one size doesn’t fit all. So I want to dig into that just a bit. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin and joining me is Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. We’ve got to take a little break. Back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, your host, and joining me Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Just before the break Colin and I alluded to some of the nuances I think that business owners and managers are going to have to deal with in the near term. One of those is, will everybody basically come back at the same time? Or are we going to be saying, there’s going to be a voluntary return to work. I’m hearing all these versions from different businesses that how they’re going to approach it, that there isn’t one size fits all in all of this. And I assume each of those brings with it some sort of implications that managers need to take into account.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think depending on what industry you’re working in, I think the plan is going to be very different. And I would say again with the phase one of Open Saskatchewan that a lot of management meetings have, of course, been centered around, how are we going to open? Are we going to open? What is opening look like? How do we communicate this? What is the next three months going to look like, six months? And even conversations around, if you have employees that have been temporarily laid off, will they remain, will you bring some back? And again, we want to help. All the examples I’ve just given now, we will have some resource that will help you navigate through that conversation.
Over the break I was just thinking, if you take this checklist that I’m referring to now, this could be the management meeting. You gather your executives in the room and you work through this, and this is the moving forward plan. And we’re helping to make that easy. And again, it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what have we done well?, What could we do better?” And then reaching out, and then we will help.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing that that has implications as well for, there’s a couple of levels. One is, you are after all in the insurance business. So talking to insurance companies, I assume that if you go through the checklist, they will look upon that favorably. But also there’s, I think we’re going to head into a whole lot of uncharted labor law areas here, as we bring people back, and do we force them, not force them? And then if we want all our people back and somebody doesn’t want to come back, then terminations, all of the stuff that comes from all of that, that you can envision. I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but you can imagine these things happening. I’m assuming that there’s legal stuff, there’s all sorts of health related stuff, and then there’s just the basic HR people stuff that goes into this. There’s a lot of complexity in this stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Yes. And we’ve got resources around all of that. And yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of our time learning about labor laws and working with other legal professionals to answer those questions. What if I say, “Okay, XYZ company is open as of May 25th, but two thirds of the staff don’t want to report back to work, what are my rights as an employer? What rights do my employees have?” And as with anything, it varies based on industry. But we have resources around that. We have resources around what the employer is required to do. Of course, you have a duty to create a safe environment. And that comes with following the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada. And so we’ve got documentation as to what that looks like across most industries. And again, we can help. And we can’t fight the battle for you if you’ve got a segment of your workforce that does not want to come in, but we can certainly explain to you what your rights are as an employer, what you can do to prepare the workplace so then that, you aren’t seen as offside.
And after that, it’s a matter of communication, which again, we can help with as well. And then dealing with anyone that from there may or may not want to come in. And you made another point earlier to just in surrounding return to work. And we also have documentation or guides around alternative working arrangements. I mean, it’s designed to help alleviate layoffs or any temporary layoffs. And we’ve got lots of research around job sharing programs and ideas that maybe some business owners haven’t thought about. And again, yes, there’s just a ton of HR information out there. We’re just trying to condense it and gather it and let our clients and prospects know that they can come to one place and get most of the answers.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing also Colin, that you’d have entertained or explored the differences that will be encountered by different kinds of businesses. What comes to mind for me is if I’m B to C, business to consumer, I’m going to be faced with some different issues than if I don’t have the general public coming into my office every day in a B to B, in business to business. I’m guessing that there are lines there that people are going to have to actually re-design their counter spaces, where they meet with customers, these kinds of things.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. They absolutely will, and the requirements change based on the type of transactions, type of company that you are. And like I said, this checklist, we want our clients and prospects just to think, questions like, “Are your workstations more than two meters apart? Yes or no.” And if yes, great. If no, “Have you put a protective shield in front?” And if you do, we’ll answer the question, “Are you allowed to have workplaces or workspaces, sorry, that are closer together provided you’ve created a protective screen?”
So, you don’t have to run into the office, move every desk around, but if you’ve got that space, great. If you’ve got offices with closing doors, great. If not, again, this is what your requirements are. And it does change based on industry. Questions around automatic doors, “Is the customer going to open the door? Is the employer going to open the door? Who’s cleaning the door?” We’re just trying to help navigate all those questions.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’ll throw a couple of questions and you can tell me whether or not these are in there. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left in our time today. But one of the things that I think people, some businesses certainly are discovering this work from home thing actually has some merit and people are more productive working from home. They may want to embrace it. That’s going to change the way business has its relationship with workers. And I assume that that has implications for insurance and all sorts of things.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. If you have the typical office environment and now your risk is underwritten based on that typical office environment. And then now you say, “Well, geez, only 30% or less are in the office. And I’ve got people spread out all over Canada.” It also turns into, of course, some IT issues, changes to the cyber crime, cyber security. So yeah, lots of questions.
Paul Martin:
All right. Well, I’m going to encourage people, business owners that are listening to give you a call and grab a hold of this checklist that you’ve got. Because man, we are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters. Colin, as always, thank you for joining us and very informative.
Colin Rooke:
Thanks, Paul.
The difference being the profits are yours, the dividends are yours, the investment returns are yours.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business with Butler Byers. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.
Colin Rooke:
Thank you.
Paul Martin:
And so you’ll walk them through whether or not this is viable for their individual company or perhaps introduce them to a group that they could be a part of.
Colin Rooke:
Yep. And it’s not for everyone. I would say about one in five, maybe two and five that that look into an insurance captive, it actually makes sense. And so there’s a lot of work that goes into, is this a viable option? But for those that it makes sense for, it’s a fantastic nontraditional way of looking at insurance.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’m intrigued by the fact that you say about 60% of the world’s premiums go into these kinds of policies. So it’s one of those things where maybe in this case, Canada, Saskatchewan in particular, just a little behind the curve of what the rest of the world is doing. And these are financial instruments that have been invented and are novel that haven’t found their way here yet.
Colin Rooke:
That’s a fair assessment. It’s a lot more prevalent in the United States for example. The uptake has been slower in Canada, certainly.
Paul Martin:
Colin, we’ve run out of time. Fascinating conversation. We’ve been talking about insurance captives and if you’re a business owner or you run a business and you want to scratch your head about a new way of looking at how you buy insurance, this is the guy you want to give a call to and have a conversation and ask, “Is my firm a good candidate to look at a captive?” Colin, as always, thank you very much for joining us.
Colin Rooke:
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. This is risky business commercial insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin. Join us again next time.
Crafting The Right Benefits Package
A discussion of how to craft a benefits package, and the importance of benefits, retirement plans, RRSPs and pensions.
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM and joining me as always Colin Rook, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. And as we record this Colin, we are just a few days into phase one of re-opened Saskatchewan, and that was pretty preliminary stuff. But as we move forward through the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more of that re-opening of Saskatchewan, if we can use that terminology, which means people are trying to figure out, what does the new normal look like?
And I know that that’s a question you get to an awful lot about what are the risk in implications? What are the insurance implications of all of this? So you’ve begun to dig into it. So let’s take this expertise that you’ve applied to it with all of the knowledge and the resources at your disposal to put together the checklist. And that’s what you’re really good at is checklists and helping businesses sort through things that could be rocky roads, and you try and smooth them out. So I’m guessing the return to work is topic number one these days.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, it is. And I think like on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about cyber and I make a lot of apologies for why are we talking about cyber again? Well, cyber is just topical. Cyber crime keeps changing, every week there’s something new and when it comes to COVID-19, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s what the insurance companies are talking about. It’s what our clients and prospects are talking about. And so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on resource generation and, I think everyone is just being inundated with information currently. I mean, of course it’s all over the news. If you’re involved in any sort of local or national associations, you’re going to be receiving bulletins and updates.
Paul Martin:
You raise a really good point there because I’m thinking if I’m a business owner or I’m the general manager of a business, and my responsibility is to try and keep this ship on a course here through this pandemic. I’m navigating through all the government programs and trying to figure out all the rules and qualifications and un-qualifications, and all of the fine print of all of those things. And then just when I get that sorted out, oh yeah. Then they got to go to parliament, actually turn that into law and the legislation gets changed. And so I got to relearn it. I got all of that stuff on my plate. Then I actually got to do business.
And now I’ve just nicely, got everybody settled into where they’re kind of productive working from home. Now we’re going to start saying, “Well, we’ll let them migrate back to the office.” I mean, business owners just simply don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to deal with all of this stuff. And I think that’s probably what you’re trying to do is to say, “Look, here’s a shortcut. I’ll give you the snapshot. We’ll put it all together in one place and save you a ton of time.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I mean, a lot of this information, if you put in the time that we are, you could find it yourself. And that’s why I referenced that everyone’s being inundated with information. There’s certainly no shortage, but there’s just so much on business owners’ plates at the moment. And if we can do anything to just make life easy, that’s where our focus is today. And that’s where this checklist comes in. Some of it would be redundant. Some of it you’d have discussions around, for example, cleaning. Who’s going to do it? How often we’re going to do it? But maybe you haven’t, maybe you’ve overlooked something. And this document is going to highlight any missing step, but then we’ve taken a step further.
So as you go through, it’s a yes, no questionnaire. And if something isn’t applicable, you’d leave it. But as you go through this questionnaire and you’re working through it and maybe you have a few nos, a lot of nos, anything that’s missing, or anything that you want more information around on this checklist, we will have access to something that we’ll be able to help you in that category. So, it’s not just a matter of identifying what you haven’t done yet or pointing out what you may not have thought about. It allows you to come back to us and say, “Okay, we went through the list and this is what we’re concerned about.” We then can come back to you and say, “Okay, this is what you would need from us to further that, to further prepare yourself,” which is why I think this is such a great checklist that we’ve put together. We’re going to fill the gaps for you.
Paul Martin:
That’s really got to be music to the ears of somebody who’s been going for the last 10 weeks on every day is a work day. There’s no separation between weekend and weekday because we’re working from home. And so normally in a, even just psychological where we go to the office and then when we come home that separates it. When you’re working from home, there is no separation. And so I think I’m hearing people use expressions like zoom fatigue, and “I’m just exhausted. At the end of the day, I spend all day in front of a camera, basically on stage all day long and performing. I am pooped out at the end of the day and then I don’t get any weekend to recharge because we’re just, you just kind of, everybody’s gotten into this mode of a 10, 12 hour day.” And you come along and say, “I’ve got this checklist that’s just going to help you shortcut. Then if you missed anything, not to worry because we’ve got it for you. And if there’s a hole, we’ll fill it.”
Colin Rooke:
Exactly. And that was the intent. How can we get all of our resources? Short of sending out dozens of emails with just resource after resource, and then it turns into noise. How can we itemize what we have access to, and then sort of customize what we’re delivering based on an internal assessment. And like, to give an example, like for one of the questions, “Have employees received communication regarding COVID-19 workplace best practices?” If they have, great. Check yes, move on. If you’ve done something and you want more, we’ll provide that. But if it’s no, guess what? We have the document that you can use, that you can send out, and then you can say it was temporarily a no, and now it’s a yes. And Butler Byer’s got that done for you.
Another one, “If using face coverings or masks, have employees been trained on proper procedures?” You can say, “I spent a ton of time outsourcing masks or I created them myself,” however you got them. But do your people know how to remove masks that could be contaminated without self contamination? And yes, you can search and search and search and find that information. It’s available. We found it, but we’re going to give that to you. So if you haven’t done that, well, guess what? We’re going to solve that problem.
Paul Martin:
All right, we’re going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further in some of the nuances that we’re beginning to hear about how businesses are going to have to, well kind of massage these return-to-work programs and one size doesn’t fit all. So I want to dig into that just a bit. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin and joining me is Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. We’ve got to take a little break. Back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, your host, and joining me Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Just before the break Colin and I alluded to some of the nuances I think that business owners and managers are going to have to deal with in the near term. One of those is, will everybody basically come back at the same time? Or are we going to be saying, there’s going to be a voluntary return to work. I’m hearing all these versions from different businesses that how they’re going to approach it, that there isn’t one size fits all in all of this. And I assume each of those brings with it some sort of implications that managers need to take into account.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think depending on what industry you’re working in, I think the plan is going to be very different. And I would say again with the phase one of Open Saskatchewan that a lot of management meetings have, of course, been centered around, how are we going to open? Are we going to open? What is opening look like? How do we communicate this? What is the next three months going to look like, six months? And even conversations around, if you have employees that have been temporarily laid off, will they remain, will you bring some back? And again, we want to help. All the examples I’ve just given now, we will have some resource that will help you navigate through that conversation.
Over the break I was just thinking, if you take this checklist that I’m referring to now, this could be the management meeting. You gather your executives in the room and you work through this, and this is the moving forward plan. And we’re helping to make that easy. And again, it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what have we done well?, What could we do better?” And then reaching out, and then we will help.
The landscape and what employers used to do for their longstanding employees that had been with them forever, there was a very traditional standard structured to benefit plans which really isn’t the case anymore.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing that that has implications as well for, there’s a couple of levels. One is, you are after all in the insurance business. So talking to insurance companies, I assume that if you go through the checklist, they will look upon that favorably. But also there’s, I think we’re going to head into a whole lot of uncharted labor law areas here, as we bring people back, and do we force them, not force them? And then if we want all our people back and somebody doesn’t want to come back, then terminations, all of the stuff that comes from all of that, that you can envision. I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but you can imagine these things happening. I’m assuming that there’s legal stuff, there’s all sorts of health related stuff, and then there’s just the basic HR people stuff that goes into this. There’s a lot of complexity in this stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Yes. And we’ve got resources around all of that. And yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of our time learning about labor laws and working with other legal professionals to answer those questions. What if I say, “Okay, XYZ company is open as of May 25th, but two thirds of the staff don’t want to report back to work, what are my rights as an employer? What rights do my employees have?” And as with anything, it varies based on industry. But we have resources around that. We have resources around what the employer is required to do. Of course, you have a duty to create a safe environment. And that comes with following the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada. And so we’ve got documentation as to what that looks like across most industries. And again, we can help. And we can’t fight the battle for you if you’ve got a segment of your workforce that does not want to come in, but we can certainly explain to you what your rights are as an employer, what you can do to prepare the workplace so then that, you aren’t seen as offside.
And after that, it’s a matter of communication, which again, we can help with as well. And then dealing with anyone that from there may or may not want to come in. And you made another point earlier to just in surrounding return to work. And we also have documentation or guides around alternative working arrangements. I mean, it’s designed to help alleviate layoffs or any temporary layoffs. And we’ve got lots of research around job sharing programs and ideas that maybe some business owners haven’t thought about. And again, yes, there’s just a ton of HR information out there. We’re just trying to condense it and gather it and let our clients and prospects know that they can come to one place and get most of the answers.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing also Colin, that you’d have entertained or explored the differences that will be encountered by different kinds of businesses. What comes to mind for me is if I’m B to C, business to consumer, I’m going to be faced with some different issues than if I don’t have the general public coming into my office every day in a B to B, in business to business. I’m guessing that there are lines there that people are going to have to actually re-design their counter spaces, where they meet with customers, these kinds of things.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. They absolutely will, and the requirements change based on the type of transactions, type of company that you are. And like I said, this checklist, we want our clients and prospects just to think, questions like, “Are your workstations more than two meters apart? Yes or no.” And if yes, great. If no, “Have you put a protective shield in front?” And if you do, we’ll answer the question, “Are you allowed to have workplaces or workspaces, sorry, that are closer together provided you’ve created a protective screen?”
So, you don’t have to run into the office, move every desk around, but if you’ve got that space, great. If you’ve got offices with closing doors, great. If not, again, this is what your requirements are. And it does change based on industry. Questions around automatic doors, “Is the customer going to open the door? Is the employer going to open the door? Who’s cleaning the door?” We’re just trying to help navigate all those questions.
They’re looking for the more capable benefits that will accommodate their needs that don’t necessarily tie to health. Things like health spending accounts that give the employee the flexibility to get their full expensive of glasses taken care of or prescription sunglasses or they want to go for more massage therapy because they’re not necessarily using as much on the medication side.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’ll throw a couple of questions and you can tell me whether or not these are in there. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left in our time today. But one of the things that I think people, some businesses certainly are discovering this work from home thing actually has some merit and people are more productive working from home. They may want to embrace it. That’s going to change the way business has its relationship with workers. And I assume that that has implications for insurance and all sorts of things.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. If you have the typical office environment and now your risk is underwritten based on that typical office environment. And then now you say, “Well, geez, only 30% or less are in the office. And I’ve got people spread out all over Canada.” It also turns into, of course, some IT issues, changes to the cyber crime, cyber security. So yeah, lots of questions.
Paul Martin:
All right. Well, I’m going to encourage people, business owners that are listening to give you a call and grab a hold of this checklist that you’ve got. Because man, we are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters. Colin, as always, thank you for joining us and very informative.
Colin Rooke:
Thanks, Paul.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business with Butler Byers. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.
Colin Rooke:
Thank you.
Paul Martin:
All right, well we’ve been talking a lot about sort of insurance side of benefits and we’ve got to take a little break here and when we come back I want to start talking about the retirement plans and RSPs, pensions, this kind of stuff, that sort of financial management piece of it if we could. So you’re listening to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Buyers. We’ve got to take a short break. We’ll be back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business commercial insurance with Butler Buyers. This is Paul Martin and joining me in the studio is Ryan Warner, the benefits specialist who works very closely with Butler Buyers and he sits in periodically to bring us up to date on some of the latest thinking and developments that are going on on the benefit side of commercial insurance. So we were talking about dental plans and these kinds of things before and now we’re going to start talking about retirement savings. And I guess this is where the demographics really come into play, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got this workforce that is big bulge of boomers, big bulge of millennials, and kind of a you in between there a little bit of a valley. What are the challenges that the industry and employers are facing on this one? Because my guess is the needs are different.
Ryan Warner:
Dramatically different. ]You’re older generations now that they’re approaching retirement are thinking very differently. They’re now realizing, hopefully we’ve put enough away and if we haven’t, how’s that going to look? What are the government benefits going to look like come retirement. So I would say your Gen X and your baby boomer crowd is really in need of education more than any things to feel comfortable with what those next couple steps look like versus the younger generation. I mean, the argument right now is just trying to get them to save at all. So that’s a challenge for employers. But I’m seeing a lot of activity in employers being creative in how they are trying to attract and again, retain the younger demographics and utilizing retirement savings in a different strategy. So it’s really interesting some of the nuances that are out there and really not a lot of change in what’s available, just how it’s being presented.
Paul Martin:
Well, in Saskatchewan, we’ve laboured under this thought that we have a saving culture. And there was a time when we did it, I think about 1983, 23 cents out of every dollar that an employee earned in this province went into savings. I mean, it’s a remarkable number. We are about two or 3% right now, which is actually a quite an improvement because we were negative two or three, just three or four years ago. So we don’t have a saving culture anymore. And as a consequence, we need to actually be cognizant of that. I think we need to think and talk about that because we’re likely seeing across the country the largest group of people who have no retirement savings heading into retirement.
Ryan Warner:
Absolutely. It’s a huge challenge. I mean I can’t stress enough how important it is to save and yet the world we live in now has changed so much. The youth are coming out a school with greater depth than they ever did before. Purchasing homes is far more difficult now. I mean, the argument there is also they don’t have access to the same money going into school or because tuition is so much higher than not coming out of school with the same resources. Incomes really haven’t gone up that much either. So all of these factors combined together make it very difficult for the younger generation to start the saving process. And the older generation, that hasn’t put enough away, I mean that’s possibly a big factor as to why they’re working so much longer as well. Not just because they want to.
Paul Martin:
Or that they’re fit and they’re living longer, but they actually have a need. Well, you constantly see headlines, for example in the business media that more and more people are going into retirement carrying debt, which would have been unheard of not so long ago. And it really is kind of counterintuitive. You think when I retire, everything should be paid for and I’m just going to live off this reduced income stream that’s going to come from a pension retirement or a retirement pension plan. World’s kind of upside down on this. So you were talking about what caught my attention was your reference to student loans and student debt. That one is really complicated. And I suspect you probably see it regional too, where if you’re trying to buy a house in Toronto, it’s quite a bit different than trying to buy a house in Saskatchewan to start with. I mean, our prices are more reasonable. But what are you hearing about this kind of stuff? What are the young people saying to you and to those of you who form these kinds of benefits plans? What are they saying that they need or simply can’t cope with, can’t deal with?
Ryan Warner:
Yeah. As these individuals are coming out of school, they’ve got their ticket, they’ve got their diploma, whatever they’ve gone for, and now they’re ready to get that first job. And these employers have these great programs available. So there’s some kind of a savings platform there hopefully geared towards retirement. But as a younger individual coming out of school with all this debt, it can be a challenge to try to do everything. Right? I mean, we’re trying to teach them that they can’t do everything and sometimes it’s more important what they’re doing on the weekend. But as far as the debt versus participating in the retirement plan goes, it can be really tough on that individual to decide. Right? So what most plans do is offer some kind of a match. So, 3% that the employee has to put in, the employer is going to match it, which sounds great.
But if the employee is struggling with debt to the point where maybe they have to make the decision, that can be a really challenging choice. So we’ve seen now a development in the industry where now there’s a provider out there that’s willing to set in place a program where the employer will still make the match to, say an RSP program, but the employee’s 3% would go towards their debt repayments. So it’s a method of attracting somebody to join you and helping them understand that not only is this a great place to work, but we’re going to help you pay down your student debt and you’re still going to benefit from the retirement plan. So if you have to make that choice, we’re not going to force it on you.
Paul Martin:
So the young person would basically just have to demonstrate, I am indeed retiring my student debt and if I can do that, then the employer side will still contribute to a retirement plan. So it’s half of what you would normally expect, but it’s something.
Ryan Warner:
That’s right. I mean in the event that somebody had to make that decision and said, “I can’t participate in this plan,” now they’re losing the full six. So I think something is always better than nothing, regardless of age.
Paul Martin:
I guess if it’s a group RSP, you get that deduction. So you get that little bit of a boost at tax refund time. And there is a saying in the financial world, time is your friend. So the earlier you can make a contribution, even the small 3% one can have a big difference at the back end if you’ve got 40 years or 50 years to see that money grow.
Ryan Warner:
If I showed you some of the charts we put in front of employees when we’re doing education, I mean it’s scary the difference it can make. So starting as young as possible is obviously ideal.
Paul Martin:
Well, interest rates have a big factor in all of this too. I mean, I noticed the other day the federal finance minister came out with their interim financial statement and Ottawa’s deficit went up $7 billion and they didn’t increase spending. So there’s lots of spending announcements, but the money hasn’t left, but it went up. And why it was unfunded pension liability. That $7 billion was pension that they owe to government employees that will have to be paid down the road. People don’t have any idea of how sensitive that marketplace is. So you’ve got the federal government going deeper and deeper in debt, standing still simply because interest rates are going down.
Ryan Warner:
There are problems from top to bottom in this system and frankly it’s all just not saving enough or not putting enough away. So government, personal, regardless of where you sit, if you’re not putting something away, you’re in big trouble.
Paul Martin:
So it’s look after yourself in this one? What are employers or businesses, commercial operations with payrolls, employees opting for? Do you see more development of pension plans or is it more group RSPs or can you be that just straight forward in that description?
Ryan Warner:
Well, I think there’s a lot of RSPs going on out there that is the easiest to implement. It’s simple from an administrative perspective, that’s the most common. Certainly in the small to mid size companies, pension plans get a little bit more complex so that can be challenging for the small to midsize business to to get involved with. I mean we haven’t seen defined benefit pension plans set up in years, so it’s just defined contribution pension plans, which frankly you can structure an RSP to operate and function kind of like a defined contribution pension plan, so mostly RSPs I would say.
Paul Martin:
Well Ryan as always, this time just seems to blast by. I don’t know. I think I’m managing our time very well and I know got 50 more questions to go and all of a sudden the clock says, “no, you’re done.” But thanks very much for joining us. It’s a really interesting topic that is subject to clearly in Saskatchewan we talk a lot about pensions these days. It’s a hot topic that gets a lot of headlines and so thanks for bringing us those insights into how some employers are dealing with it.
Well Ryan as always, this time just seems to blast by. I don’t know. I think I’m managing our time very well and I know got 50 more questions to go and all of a sudden the clock says, “no, you’re done.” But thanks very much for joining us. It’s a really interesting topic that is subject to clearly in Saskatchewan we talk a lot about pensions these days. It’s a hot topic that gets a lot of headlines and so thanks for bringing us those insights into how some employers are dealing with it.
2019 – A Year in Review
Colin Rooke and Paul Martin talk about the largest risks the world experienced in 2019, and how to use that information in the years ahead.
Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.
Paul Martin:
Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM and joining me as always Colin Rook, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. And as we record this Colin, we are just a few days into phase one of re-opened Saskatchewan, and that was pretty preliminary stuff. But as we move forward through the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more of that re-opening of Saskatchewan, if we can use that terminology, which means people are trying to figure out, what does the new normal look like?
And I know that that’s a question you get to an awful lot about what are the risk in implications? What are the insurance implications of all of this? So you’ve begun to dig into it. So let’s take this expertise that you’ve applied to it with all of the knowledge and the resources at your disposal to put together the checklist. And that’s what you’re really good at is checklists and helping businesses sort through things that could be rocky roads, and you try and smooth them out. So I’m guessing the return to work is topic number one these days.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, it is. And I think like on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about cyber and I make a lot of apologies for why are we talking about cyber again? Well, cyber is just topical. Cyber crime keeps changing, every week there’s something new and when it comes to COVID-19, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s what the insurance companies are talking about. It’s what our clients and prospects are talking about. And so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on resource generation and, I think everyone is just being inundated with information currently. I mean, of course it’s all over the news. If you’re involved in any sort of local or national associations, you’re going to be receiving bulletins and updates.
The global list is almost identical to the individual lists of most of these countries, with some variation.
Paul Martin:
You raise a really good point there because I’m thinking if I’m a business owner or I’m the general manager of a business, and my responsibility is to try and keep this ship on a course here through this pandemic. I’m navigating through all the government programs and trying to figure out all the rules and qualifications and un-qualifications, and all of the fine print of all of those things. And then just when I get that sorted out, oh yeah. Then they got to go to parliament, actually turn that into law and the legislation gets changed. And so I got to relearn it. I got all of that stuff on my plate. Then I actually got to do business.
And now I’ve just nicely, got everybody settled into where they’re kind of productive working from home. Now we’re going to start saying, “Well, we’ll let them migrate back to the office.” I mean, business owners just simply don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to deal with all of this stuff. And I think that’s probably what you’re trying to do is to say, “Look, here’s a shortcut. I’ll give you the snapshot. We’ll put it all together in one place and save you a ton of time.”
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I mean, a lot of this information, if you put in the time that we are, you could find it yourself. And that’s why I referenced that everyone’s being inundated with information. There’s certainly no shortage, but there’s just so much on business owners’ plates at the moment. And if we can do anything to just make life easy, that’s where our focus is today. And that’s where this checklist comes in. Some of it would be redundant. Some of it you’d have discussions around, for example, cleaning. Who’s going to do it? How often we’re going to do it? But maybe you haven’t, maybe you’ve overlooked something. And this document is going to highlight any missing step, but then we’ve taken a step further.
So as you go through, it’s a yes, no questionnaire. And if something isn’t applicable, you’d leave it. But as you go through this questionnaire and you’re working through it and maybe you have a few nos, a lot of nos, anything that’s missing, or anything that you want more information around on this checklist, we will have access to something that we’ll be able to help you in that category. So, it’s not just a matter of identifying what you haven’t done yet or pointing out what you may not have thought about. It allows you to come back to us and say, “Okay, we went through the list and this is what we’re concerned about.” We then can come back to you and say, “Okay, this is what you would need from us to further that, to further prepare yourself,” which is why I think this is such a great checklist that we’ve put together. We’re going to fill the gaps for you.
Paul Martin:
That’s really got to be music to the ears of somebody who’s been going for the last 10 weeks on every day is a work day. There’s no separation between weekend and weekday because we’re working from home. And so normally in a, even just psychological where we go to the office and then when we come home that separates it. When you’re working from home, there is no separation. And so I think I’m hearing people use expressions like zoom fatigue, and “I’m just exhausted. At the end of the day, I spend all day in front of a camera, basically on stage all day long and performing. I am pooped out at the end of the day and then I don’t get any weekend to recharge because we’re just, you just kind of, everybody’s gotten into this mode of a 10, 12 hour day.” And you come along and say, “I’ve got this checklist that’s just going to help you shortcut. Then if you missed anything, not to worry because we’ve got it for you. And if there’s a hole, we’ll fill it.”
Colin Rooke:
Exactly. And that was the intent. How can we get all of our resources? Short of sending out dozens of emails with just resource after resource, and then it turns into noise. How can we itemize what we have access to, and then sort of customize what we’re delivering based on an internal assessment. And like, to give an example, like for one of the questions, “Have employees received communication regarding COVID-19 workplace best practices?” If they have, great. Check yes, move on. If you’ve done something and you want more, we’ll provide that. But if it’s no, guess what? We have the document that you can use, that you can send out, and then you can say it was temporarily a no, and now it’s a yes. And Butler Byer’s got that done for you.
Another one, “If using face coverings or masks, have employees been trained on proper procedures?” You can say, “I spent a ton of time outsourcing masks or I created them myself,” however you got them. But do your people know how to remove masks that could be contaminated without self contamination? And yes, you can search and search and search and find that information. It’s available. We found it, but we’re going to give that to you. So if you haven’t done that, well, guess what? We’re going to solve that problem.
It is dominant and it’s not going away it’s getting worse and it’s imperative that everyone put more focus on cyber crime mitigation.
Paul Martin:
All right, we’re going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further in some of the nuances that we’re beginning to hear about how businesses are going to have to, well kind of massage these return-to-work programs and one size doesn’t fit all. So I want to dig into that just a bit. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin and joining me is Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. We’ve got to take a little break. Back after this.
Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, your host, and joining me Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Just before the break Colin and I alluded to some of the nuances I think that business owners and managers are going to have to deal with in the near term. One of those is, will everybody basically come back at the same time? Or are we going to be saying, there’s going to be a voluntary return to work. I’m hearing all these versions from different businesses that how they’re going to approach it, that there isn’t one size fits all in all of this. And I assume each of those brings with it some sort of implications that managers need to take into account.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think depending on what industry you’re working in, I think the plan is going to be very different. And I would say again with the phase one of Open Saskatchewan that a lot of management meetings have, of course, been centered around, how are we going to open? Are we going to open? What is opening look like? How do we communicate this? What is the next three months going to look like, six months? And even conversations around, if you have employees that have been temporarily laid off, will they remain, will you bring some back? And again, we want to help. All the examples I’ve just given now, we will have some resource that will help you navigate through that conversation.
Over the break I was just thinking, if you take this checklist that I’m referring to now, this could be the management meeting. You gather your executives in the room and you work through this, and this is the moving forward plan. And we’re helping to make that easy. And again, it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what have we done well?, What could we do better?” And then reaching out, and then we will help.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing that that has implications as well for, there’s a couple of levels. One is, you are after all in the insurance business. So talking to insurance companies, I assume that if you go through the checklist, they will look upon that favorably. But also there’s, I think we’re going to head into a whole lot of uncharted labor law areas here, as we bring people back, and do we force them, not force them? And then if we want all our people back and somebody doesn’t want to come back, then terminations, all of the stuff that comes from all of that, that you can envision. I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but you can imagine these things happening. I’m assuming that there’s legal stuff, there’s all sorts of health related stuff, and then there’s just the basic HR people stuff that goes into this. There’s a lot of complexity in this stuff.
Colin Rooke:
Yes. And we’ve got resources around all of that. And yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of our time learning about labor laws and working with other legal professionals to answer those questions. What if I say, “Okay, XYZ company is open as of May 25th, but two thirds of the staff don’t want to report back to work, what are my rights as an employer? What rights do my employees have?” And as with anything, it varies based on industry. But we have resources around that. We have resources around what the employer is required to do. Of course, you have a duty to create a safe environment. And that comes with following the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada. And so we’ve got documentation as to what that looks like across most industries. And again, we can help. And we can’t fight the battle for you if you’ve got a segment of your workforce that does not want to come in, but we can certainly explain to you what your rights are as an employer, what you can do to prepare the workplace so then that, you aren’t seen as offside.
And after that, it’s a matter of communication, which again, we can help with as well. And then dealing with anyone that from there may or may not want to come in. And you made another point earlier to just in surrounding return to work. And we also have documentation or guides around alternative working arrangements. I mean, it’s designed to help alleviate layoffs or any temporary layoffs. And we’ve got lots of research around job sharing programs and ideas that maybe some business owners haven’t thought about. And again, yes, there’s just a ton of HR information out there. We’re just trying to condense it and gather it and let our clients and prospects know that they can come to one place and get most of the answers.
Paul Martin:
I’m guessing also Colin, that you’d have entertained or explored the differences that will be encountered by different kinds of businesses. What comes to mind for me is if I’m B to C, business to consumer, I’m going to be faced with some different issues than if I don’t have the general public coming into my office every day in a B to B, in business to business. I’m guessing that there are lines there that people are going to have to actually re-design their counter spaces, where they meet with customers, these kinds of things.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah. They absolutely will, and the requirements change based on the type of transactions, type of company that you are. And like I said, this checklist, we want our clients and prospects just to think, questions like, “Are your workstations more than two meters apart? Yes or no.” And if yes, great. If no, “Have you put a protective shield in front?” And if you do, we’ll answer the question, “Are you allowed to have workplaces or workspaces, sorry, that are closer together provided you’ve created a protective screen?”
So, you don’t have to run into the office, move every desk around, but if you’ve got that space, great. If you’ve got offices with closing doors, great. If not, again, this is what your requirements are. And it does change based on industry. Questions around automatic doors, “Is the customer going to open the door? Is the employer going to open the door? Who’s cleaning the door?” We’re just trying to help navigate all those questions.
Paul Martin:
Well, I’ll throw a couple of questions and you can tell me whether or not these are in there. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left in our time today. But one of the things that I think people, some businesses certainly are discovering this work from home thing actually has some merit and people are more productive working from home. They may want to embrace it. That’s going to change the way business has its relationship with workers. And I assume that that has implications for insurance and all sorts of things.
Colin Rooke:
Absolutely. If you have the typical office environment and now your risk is underwritten based on that typical office environment. And then now you say, “Well, geez, only 30% or less are in the office. And I’ve got people spread out all over Canada.” It also turns into, of course, some IT issues, changes to the cyber crime, cyber security. So yeah, lots of questions.
Paul Martin:
All right. Well, I’m going to encourage people, business owners that are listening to give you a call and grab a hold of this checklist that you’ve got. Because man, we are moving into territory nobody’s been in before, and this is all fresh ground and probably full of all kinds of landmines. So anything you can do to protect yourself, Colin has that list that will help you really navigate through these choppy waters. Colin, as always, thank you for joining us and very informative.
Colin Rooke:
Thanks, Paul.
Paul Martin:
You have been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business with Butler Byers. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.
Colin Rooke:
Thank you.
Paul Martin:
Top of the pile.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah their ideal client.
Paul Martin:
And I guess there’d be no reason to assume Saskatchewan would be any different so business owners here probably would fall into that same mindset.
Colin Rooke:
Yeah, exactly. And again, you might say, “Well I’m not large enough,” or they’re probably thinking Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal, Calgary but they’re not that specific. It’s less targeted than you think, it’s a blanket approach. They develop a way to hack certain systems and then they just, it’s often just a blanket approach and whatever works they run with. So to say, “Well I’m not big enough or I’m too far away from the big smoke as you would say Paul being Toronto it’s just not the case. You’re just as likely to be a target as a company out east.
And again, it’s something that needs to be discussed in the management meetings, at the executive level, the board of directors. We have to take cyber crime very seriously. And again, we’ve talked about this list before and I don’t want to just make the show about cyber but I do want to point out a huge change on this list. When we first started the first two years we talked about reputation risk almost nonstop. That was the number one global risk reputation, loss of brand value. It is now globally number eight. So in two years my tune has almost completely changed from reputation risk which again we beat that to death and now it’s almost a hundred percent cyber and as much as I try and get away from the topic it just keeps growing.
…it’s something that needs to be discussed in the management meetings, at the executive level, the board of directors. We have to take cyber crime very seriously.
Paul Martin:
The industry just won’t let you do it. It’s interesting climate changes moved down the list too and cyber has moved up.
Colin Rooke:
It was reputation risk and climate change and now we’re talking about risk eight and risk nine being reputation risk and climate change. So big changes on again what’s keeping business owners up at night.
Paul Martin:
Well listen, this is scary and I think if I’m a business owner listening to this you’re enlightening me in saying you’re turning the red light on I’d better pay attention to this. So when they call you what’s the nature of the conversation you have with a business owner? I mean what are you talking to them about? What questions are you asking? What answers are they seeking?
Colin Rooke:
So are we an insurance brokerage? Yes. Do we sell insurance? Yes. And our clients carry insurance but insurance is one of the tools we use. We need to have a conversation about cyber crime. Every client that we work with goes through a risk assessment. They are all unique to the businesses that we’re working with, to the individual businesses. But I can assure you on every single one cyber will come up and we need to determine together your level of preparedness and we will help you identify the risk and also work on a plan moving forward. We’re going to work together to mitigate cyber crime.
Now if we determine together that coverage is warranted we will look at placing a cyber liability policy but I can assure you prior to that or part and parcel we will educate on cyber crime. If we don’t put in the work, if we don’t work together to develop a plan, the insurance policy is almost meaningless. Again we talked about business interruption being the number two risk. Well if we sell you the product and we say, “Don’t worry. When your system is crippled we’ll make sure some of the bills get paid.” At the end of the day you still, back to your business interruption, you still were down and if you don’t work on a plan it could be for an extended period of time.
Planning, working together, sharing that plan, reviewing the plan and updating that plan is going to reduce that time to as little as possible and that is our goal. So that’s one of the things we are going to work on. But we also have to educate because there’s a lot of misconceptions as to what is a virus and the types of viruses. It’s no longer an X rated email that gets through with a strange attachment that people open. I mean, if you think,, “I watch for those and I don’t click on them,” that is not what we’re talking about at all and we need to educate as to what to look for and how the nature …
Paul Martin:
So the hackers have become more sophisticated and we are still living in
Colin Rooke:
They’re experts at replicating those working in the organizations and we have to teach you how to identify that.
Paul Martin:
Colin as always we could go on and on about this and we’ll have to end it here but there’s a new risk in town and business owners need to be paying attention to it. And if they reach out to you you’d be quite willing to sit down with them and walk them through it and give them some guidance and advice. You’ve been listening to Colin Rook the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business, Commercial Insurance With Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you next time.