Money is one thing, but with the best employee benefits in Canada, a company can give so much more value to their employees than just pure dollars. There are mandatory employee benefits Canadian employers provide, but there are a number of other benefits they can provide to enrich the lives of their employees, too. One of these areas where employee benefits can have an impact is education. Every parent hopes their child receives a good education, often working long hours to afford their children the best possible start in life. But education can be expensive and a major point of stress, especially if parents are helping their kids with competitive admissions or paying for related expenses like medical school application help. With education valued at such a premium, it makes sense to include educational opportunities with benefits packages. In this article, we will go over some of the benefits that Canadian employers offer, different types of benefits employers can offer their employees and how educational benefits can provide value to employees and their families.
Note: If you are a university, business, or student organization representative and want to partner with us, visit our partnerships page.
Employee Benefits – Beyond Salaries
Want to know how to become an attractive employer? Most employers attract the best workers by offering more than just money. Benefits packages include all non-monetary incentives, from vacation time to medical coverage.
In Canada, certain benefits are mandatory while others are not required, but are commonly used by most employers – at least, by those who are setting up career jobs instead of student jobs. Other benefits are optional and offered by employers as perks for their employees through employer partnerships or company-specific options.
Types of employee benefits in Canada include:
- Paid time off
- Canada Pension Plan
- Medical and dental coverage
- Life insurance
- Childcare
- Employment perks
- Education support
Mandatory Benefits in Canada
Time Off
All employers will have vacation and holiday policies in place to give employees a certain amount of guaranteed time off to rest and relax over the course of a year. Vacation is between 2 and 3 weeks and there are 10 holidays throughout the year.
Of course, some business can stay open on holidays (hospitality and food service industries, for instance, might remain open on holidays for celebrations; entertainment industry professionals; and, of course emergency services, just to name a few). Federal law in Canada requires employees who sacrifice their holidays to receive additional pay as compensation.
Maternity leave (and paternity leave) is one of the most important standard benefits that are mandated by Canadian Federal law, guaranteeing time off to care for newborn children, and guaranteeing that the employee will have a job when returning to work.
Pension
Retirement is something everybody needs to plan for (remember: looking to the future is very important!) and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is a mandatory part of a paycheque.
Other Benefits Types
Medical Coverage
The most common type of benefit is medical coverage, which allows employees to pay for medications and treatments not covered by their province’s health insurance plan.
Dental Coverage
Also very common is dental coverage. We all need to care for our teeth, but doing so can be expensive. Employers recognize this and often provide dental care as part of their benefits package.
Life Insurance
A good reminder that benefits are not just for the employee themselves but for their families as well, life insurance is a common feature of Canadian business’ benefits packages. This benefit would help a surviving widow or widower and any children.
Vehicles and Equipment
Company vehicles are used for company business, but can be a nice perk for a job. Other employers might provide necessary equipment like a cell phone, digital pad, or computer.
Childcare
Children again: pay attention to how important this is! If an employee has children but can’t afford childcare, they might require this particular benefit.
Educational Opportunities as Benefits
Some employers offer educational opportunities as part of their benefits packages. Oftentimes, this takes the form of offering the employee courses or other employee development programs. The benefit is usually focused on improving the employee’s knowledge and abilities – teaching them evolving skills for a job to keep the employee “current”. Picture the kind of classes a person in the tech sector might need to keep up with new programming languages or operating systems; or think of someone who works in remote digital marketing – an industry that’s always growing and developing.
Employees looking to pursue continuing education, such as a PhD or an MBA, could us the help of PhD admission, an MBA admission, or keep up with required job skills.
Why Education? How This Helps the Workforce
Furthermore, education is one benefit that stacks over time. Contrast education to other common benefits, like medical care. If your employee requires medical or dental coverage, that does not really assist you, the employer.
Education, on the other hand, benefits you and your team cumulatively. Once your employee improves their knowledge and skill, the benefits are reaped day by day, year upon year. More qualified and knowledgeable employees are happier, more productive, more efficient, and more dedicated to the company that allows them to grow.
Looking to the Future: The Next Generation of Students and Employees
The better life can be something your employees’ children benefit from, too. If you offer a benefit to children of parents, that provides a strong motivator to accept a job and will attract top employees who have children (or are considering starting a family). Imagine being the reason somebody can finally start a family.
This is prudent not just for students and parents, but for employers and schools as well. The parents and their children directly benefit from education, of course, but as an employer, educating the next generation ensures a much stronger workforce in the future.
Why Admissions Consulting?
Academic consulting is an excellent way to benefit anybody pursuing higher education and furthering their career opportunities.
Available in a wide variety of fields, like dental school application, nursing school application, law school application, and undergraduates for college and university admissions consulting, almost every prospective student looking for advancement of knowledge and skills would benefit from admissions consulting services.
Through BeMo's employee benefits program, an employer can arrange for coverage for students (or employees) in packages, and give their employee’s a future and a future for their children. BeMo's benefits offer career coaching and admissions help for employees and their families, whether they want to pursue a degree or advance their professional skillset.
Everyone deserves access to higher education. Skill building and education make exponential differences in a person’s life. Admissions are a hurdle for many people, and someone who would thrive in an academic environment, and have their whole lives improve as a result, might be denied that opportunity because of a few details during the admissions process.
That’s why admissions consulting is extremely helpful to prospective students, and why it is one of the most effective ways to add meaningful benefits to your workforce and for their children.
The Workplace Improvement
Picture an employee who has the skills of an MBA at their disposal. Your business benefits immensely. Or, as the employee: picture your career trajectory after getting that MBA. Everybody wins. Any business becomes more competitive, with stronger employees, more confident in themselves, their skills, and their future.
Long-term, better-educated students who are just entering the workforce put your company in a better position. Educating your existing workforce is excellent, but ensuring the next generation of workers have better education means out-of-the-gate benefits to both employee and the business.
It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to make everybody better off – exponentially so. The more access people have to education and development, and the sooner they attain that access, the longer the benefits will play out into the future and the greater the return to your business.
The benefit goes further than monetary compensation or career advancement, as well. Job satisfaction is bound to go up with a deeper understanding of the business. Tasks become easier, objectives become clearer.
The Necessary and Inevitable Future
Education is needed to keep up. The future changes faster every day, and with tech advancements, even something like sales or marketing has changed so drastically from the 20th century to the 21st that, cast against the relief of history, the idea of not promoting development and education seems counterproductive.
Think about marketing: in 1922 that meant posters and billboards. Now we have internet ads, social media, video blogs, and viral campaigns. Word of mouth still works, but with Twitter, Tik-Tok, and Zoom, even that has changed drastically from the last century to this one.
Or consider this: in 1974, the Altair became the world’s first personal computer. These days everybody has a personal computer in their pocket, one that we often forget was originally just designed to be a phone.
The world changes, and education is required to keep up with it.
Conclusion
Employees do want top dollar for their work – that is true. But a great benefits package will mean a lot more to them, if it’s put together correctly.
Education is an underrated part of benefits packages, in-particular as it relates to children. Offering admissions prep and adding their services to a benefits package will be invaluable to you as an employer, your employees who seek development, and to your employees’ children.
FAQs
1. What Benefits Should I Look for in a Job?
To some extent, this is a personal question and a different answer will apply to everybody.
Again, we would like to stress educational opportunities. These benefits are exponentially valuable and pay off every second after getting them; education is more than a “one-time thing”, it’s a lifelong gain.
2. As An Employer, How Can I Fit BeMo Into My Employee’s Benefits Package?
Quite easily, and in a couple of different ways.
First, offering BeMo’s academic counselling to the children of your employees. Educational opportunities for children makes straight the road to a better future. It also takes a huge burden off the mind of parents worried about creating the best opportunities for their children.
Second, offering BeMo’s services to your employees directly.
These packages might be offered as bulk-buys or on a case-by-case basis, whichever best suits your business.
3. Will This Benefit Me if I’m a Small Business Owner?
Yes. The size of the business does not matter, as you will see benefit from a better-educated workforce.
You can probably afford it, too. It’s a very cost-effective method of improving your workforce, and you will likely see a very good long-term result.
4. My Employer Doesn’t Offer Educational Assistance as Part of Their Benefits Package. What Should I Do?
Ask them about it.
Bring it up politely and professionally, but do to talk to them about it. You might specifically arrange a meeting to talk about benefits, or you could bring it up at a more general meeting – as you prefer and as is convenient – and suggest that this would be a great benefit to offer employees.
5. Will I Really Benefit From More Education?
Definitely.
No matter how much you have learned, there is always more to learn.
Refreshing knowledge by re-learning is also useful. It gets your mind fired up and kicks it out of complacency.
Finally, systems change and yesterday’s knowledge is always being built upon. There will be something new to learn every day. Explore that.
6. I Don’t Have Children. Should This Be Important to Me?
Yes.
Further education might be for your children, but it might be for you, too. Either can benefit.
Additionally, this benefit will mean a lot to those with children. At the very least, it might ease some of their stress, and who doesn’t love a low-stress workplace?
7. Is This the Most Important Benefit to Have/Offer?
Ultimately, health insurance is probably paramount, but don’t underestimate the value of education.
Take the (mandatory) CPP benefit as an example. Saving for retirement is very important, but with additional education, your retirement benefits. You yourself earn more money, are more knowledgeable about what to do with it in terms of savings and investments (thanks to your MBA, no doubt!) and your future is bright even without CPP. Your children receive the same benefit, and can even help you retire.
So, while education might not be the absolute acme of benefits, it is certainly up there.
8. What If My Child Is Thinking of Education in an Area BeMo Doesn’t Cover – Outside of Medicine or Business?
BeMo is more than medicine and business. PhD programs, undergrads – as long as your child is looking at higher education, they can look towards BeMo for assistance.
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