Updated on February 23, 2024
There is nothing worse than employees who let their work frustrations fester without talking about it with their managers. “Resenteeism” can be damaging.
Resenteeism is a new term describing employees who show resentment towards their employer but don’t dare talk about it openly—except with their colleagues. This phenomenon can become contagious and quickly undermine the work climate. That’s why employers must be mindful about resenteeism and find ways to identify and address it before it’s too late.
Presenteeism and resenteeism, how to distinguish them?
Presenteeism leads to a loss of productivity because employees show up to work physically but not mentally. Resenteeism however can cause employees to check out more permanently if an employer fails to spot it. That’s because resentful employees can remain productive for some time even while continually blaming their employer and sharing their bad moods with colleagues.
In a labour shortage context, it’s especially important to understand what may be displeasing employees and try to redress the situation to leverage their skills in the best possible conditions. As well, maintaining a healthy and pleasant work climate is essential for retaining the finest talent in your business.
How do you recognize that something’s amiss?
With the rise of telework and remote management, resenteeism can be even more difficult to identify as it is not always visually perceptible. The key is communication. It’s important to encourage manager-employee exchanges in groups and individually:
- Listen, take an interest in what employees experience on a daily basis;
- Stay open and take time to receive suggestions and comments from everyone;
- Set aside time during the week to speak with employees, one-on-one and in groups, and give them a space to talk about their life and work issues.
You probably know the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The time you take to listen and discuss with your teams is an investment that will save you significant costs in the medium and long run.
This aspect of the employer-manager-employee relationship should even be covered under your occupational health and safety strategy. Just as you maintain your business’s equipment and tools, it is essential that you look after your employees’ physical and mental health.
What are the solutions to help solve the problem?
Once you identify a resenteeism problem in your team, you must determine its root causes and then propose solutions best suited to the context and needs. If the dissatisfaction expressed by employees is directly tied to their professional life, you can be flexible in improving the situation, just as you are with presenteeism. For example, you could:
- change certain tasks while factoring in the impact this will have on the team’s productivity or work climate;
- get employees to commit to correcting the situation by guiding them towards available resources;
- follow up with employees, encourage them and formally recognize their progress;
- provide employees with opportunities for job development by encouraging them to update and develop their skills.
If the cause of resenteeism stems from an employee’s personal life, you can consider alternative solutions, such as more flexible working conditions for a better work-life balance, or prescribed preventive leave to avert a longer absence.
What are the benefits of considering resentment?
Prolonged or pervasive, resenteeism adds to a toxic work climate. In the medium and long run, it will undermine your employees’ retention and productivity.
Recognizing employee resenteeism will help you circumscribe it and find solutions faster to eradicate it. This way, you will contribute to:
- employee cohesion and collaboration;
- better intra-team productivity;
- a higher rate of employee retention and commitment.
Don’t remain passive before this phenomenon, which tends to spread. As a manager and employer, getting ahead of the problem will allow you to have an easier time correcting any resenteeism and thereby avoid major collateral damage.
24 Apr 2023 | Written by :
Jean-François Boudreault is a RH expert at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
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Innovation is more than a buzzword. How do you foster success and stand out in a highly competitive marketplace?
More than ever, innovation is crucial to the success of businesses, whether to stand out from the competition or adapt to the new realities of a changing market. However, based on that, how do you identify opportunities to innovate? Where do you start and what steps do you take to set up winning conditions?
1 – Know your business well
First, you need to get a specific picture of your business.
• What are its strengths and weaknesses?
• Where does it stand versus the competition?
• What is your vision for your business for the next two or three years?
Make room for innovation in your business when designing your strategic planning. Allocate a budget for innovative ideas to allow for experimentation, trial and error. This is often the way to create successful projects that will increase your revenues.
2 – Study market trends
In addition to knowing your business well, you also need to know your market and competitors, here and elsewhere in the world. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are the market trends and consumer needs?
For example, demographics are changing, mobility is increasing and, in recent years, environmental concerns have led to an increased demand for greener products. Will these aspects affect the demand for your products and services?
To keep up to date with the evolution of your business sector, you can subscribe to newsletters, attend trade shows, and talk to people you work with in your business sector, for instance.
By anticipating your clients’ needs, your business will be better able to remain relevant and appealing to them.
3 – Assessing your business’s processes
By analyzing the way you work, in other words, your processes, you may be able to identify weaknesses and discover new ways of doing things that will make you more efficient and productive.
In some cases, for example, a manual process that is time- and energy-consuming may be replaced with automation, which is much more efficient. That could be a good time to leverage the potential of new technologies for your business.
4 – Involve your employees
While a culture of innovation must of course be led by a business’s owners, it must also involve employees. By creating an environment where they can share their ideas and by encouraging innovation, you will see new development opportunities emerge, e.g., these could include launching a new product, streamlining processes or improving the customer experience, to name a few.
In addition, by involving your employees from the start, change management will probably be less burdensome, especially if you make sure you properly support your employees and all stakeholders in the new ways of doing things. As a bonus, your business’s culture of innovation will more likely attract and retain the best talent.
5 – Listen to your clients’ feedback
Your clients are an excellent source of information for finding ways to innovate. By listening carefully to their comments and suggestions, you can discover various ways to improve your products and services. If your clients frequently complain about a problem or shortcoming, see it as an opportunity to create a new product or service.
Feedback can also suggest new ideas for existing products. By offering your clients innovative solutions, you’ll be leagues ahead of your competitors and be seen as a leader in your industry.
Look beyond technology
Yes, technology is important, but it is not the only way to innovate. Innovation can be about marketing, business models, and much more. For example, you might find a new approach to your social media strategy or work with a new business to share resources.
Innovation is essential to the survival and success of businesses operating in an ever changing world. By embracing a culture of innovation, your business will stand out from the competition and stay in tune with your clients’ changing needs. That’s how you create more opportunities to innovate!
06 Apr 2023 | Written by :
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Did you know that the first step in taking out cyber risk insurance is to make sure your business has implemented suitable security measures?
In recent years, cyberattacks have increased at an alarming rate. Simply assuming that their business is immune to such threats could turn out to be a business leader’s biggest mistake.
Indeed, any business can fall victim to such threats. A successful scam can not only impact operations and cause significant financial losses—it can also seriously damage business reputation.
A business can nonetheless limit damage by taking out cyber risk insurance. This type of coverage, relatively new to the market, helps mitigate the multiple consequences of a business’s computer systems breach.
Implement the necessary measures
However, to be allowed to purchase insurance that covers cyberattack risks, a business must first implement suitable and effective security measures.
Adopting such measures is necessary: given the explosion of cyberattacks and claims, insurers offering coverage against cyberattack risks no longer commit to insuring vulnerable businesses.
1. Determine the security risks
The first step is to determine what security risks your business is exposed to.
2. Implement core processes
You should then plan and implement basic anti-cyberattack core processes such as:
- identity and access management;
- data and email encryption.
3. Train and raise awareness among employees
It is also important to continuously train your business’s employees to make them aware of IT security risks. This will enable them to adopt the right behaviours and take effective action to avoid attacks or limit the damage. Very often, cybercriminals sneak in through people’s accounts or emails to achieve their objective.
Main types of insurance coverage
Cyber risk insurance may compensate a business for such things as:
- lost income;
- the costs of crisis management and reputational damage;
- the costs of restoring computer equipment disabled by cyberattack;
- data recovery costs;
- cyberextortion ransom payments;
- costs related to damages.
Keep in mind that, as with any insurer’s risk-financing measures, compensation is subject to specific conditions and policy exclusions.
Law 25 and ISO 27001
Businesses may hire external firms to implement cybersecurity solutions. These firms’ expertise offers businesses peace of mind: they know that they are better protected in the event of a cyberattack, and that they meet the security standards and basic criteria for purchasing insurance coverage.
It is worth noting that Law 25, passed last fall by the Québec government, requires businesses to protect the personal information they hold. This new law is inspired by the General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force throughout the European Union in 2018.
ISO 27001 is also proving to be an excellent barometer for identifying potential risks and demonstrating that a business has implemented appropriate measures to manage the security of its information and data.
Of course, all these measures combined cannot guarantee that a business will be fully protected against cyberattacks. Still, the above safeguards greatly reduce the risks and consequences of such attacks. The effectiveness and compliance of the measures you implement will allow your business to take out cyber risk insurance and gain peace of mind.
03 Apr 2023 | Written by :
Simon Julien is your expert in financial advisory for the Québec office. Contact him today!
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Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, delivered Made-in-Canada Plan (Budget 2023) on March 28, 2023. Budget 2023 is influenced by a range of factors, including tax measures to:
- address the cost-of-living pressures driven by inflation;
- stay competitive in the transition towards a greener economy;
- demonstrate fiscal responsibility after posing massive deficits during the pandemic.
Budget 2023 announces changes to the alternative minimum tax, extends the six-month increase to the GST rebate, and introduces a “grocery rebate”. It also increases spending in areas like health and dental care, and introduces direct support for low-income Canadians, and new programs to boost the clean economy.
Budget 2023 centers around the following three pillars:
People
Budget 2023 announces several measures to support Canadians, including investments in health and child care—such as providing dental care for uninsured Canadians with a family income of less than $90,000 annually, targeted inflation relief, and affordable housing initiatives.
Green economy
Budget 2023 builds on Canada’s transition to a green economy, and introduces various clean-energy programs, partly to compete with new tax breaks and other incentives that were announced in the United States last year.
Labour market
Budget 2023 is focused on strengthening Canada’s labourmarket, and introduces measures to increase skilled trade workers, expand training and innovation programs, and support employee ownership trusts.
In addition, Budget 2023 invests in Canada’s national defense totaling more than $55 billion over 20 years, builds progress towards Indigenous reconciliation, cuts federal travel and reduced outsourcing, and introduces measures to help ensure a fair tax system.
