Investing in Our Employees

Investing in

OUR EMPLOYEES

SARCAN’s employees are our greatest asset. This year we continued to invest in the training, education, and development of our team members across all SARCAN facilities.

Planning for Retirement

In spring of 2019, SARCAN launched the Preparing for Retirement Project. Our aim is to support employees to feel more confident, prepared, and connected as they plan for, or transition into retirement. Our primary focus this year was education: providing group learning sessions and developing self-directed resources.

From October to March, we hosted 9 “Tab Talks” on a variety of topics related to retirement, including pension and benefits, budgeting, income and community supports, and wills and estates. All employees were encouraged to attend these sessions, delivered online, in-person, and through video recordings of presentations. On average, at least 60 employees attended each live session.

SARCAN is grateful to Service Canada, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services, Credit Counselling Society, Affinity Credit Union, Sunlife Financial, LifeWorks, The Cooperators, and the Public Legal Education Association of Saskatchewan for presenting these sessions with us. We also developed a Preparing for Retirement Handbook, targeted toward later-career employees thinking about retirement. The handbook included a quick reference guide, roadmap of key dates, and interactive worksheet package. We shared the handbook with all employees over email, the Connect intranet site, and mailed a hard copy to have as a resource at all locations.

A FEW OTHER PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

■ Meeting with over 50 individual employees at depots and plants, discussing retirement planning, answering employee questions, and reviewing resources together. ■ Creating 6 written case studies based on real experiences with transitioning to retirement to use as learning materials with supervisors and managers. ■ Holding meetings with external stakeholders to discuss gaps and opportunities.

■ Researching potential enhancements to pension and benefits plans. ■ Developing internal tools to improve processes around accommodations and retirement transitions.

We would like to thank the Community Initiatives Fund for their financial support of this project.

Orientation & Onboarding

SARCAN enhanced the materials our Supervisors use for onboarding new employees in advance of our spring 2019 hiring season. The enhanced resources we provided to Supervisors included clearer expectations and checklists, expanded training resources, a roadmap to guide the employee through the process, and a welcoming gift. These resources were shared alongside training on how best to onboard new employees. A total of 144 new employees were welcomed to a new career at SARCAN using these revitalized resources. Feedback from this year of new employees was very positive: ■ 100% said that SARCAN gave them enough training and information to do their job properly. ■ 94% said that SARCAN did a better or equivalent job of onboarding compared to other places they have worked. ■ 85% would recommend a career at SARCAN to friends and family.

Aspire

SARCAN continues to utilize Aspire, our online training system, to provide necessary training to all SARCAN team members. The catalogue of courses available, including 41 custom SARCAN courses, was expanded this year to include courses on:

■ Cash register and cash handling. ■ Preparing for emergencies. ■ Cleaning spills. ■ Healthy eating. ■ Dealing with difficult customers.

This year, access to Aspire was also extended to SARCAN work placements, job coaches, and discount refund organizations. SARCAN employees completed a combined 4,640 training experiences through Aspire. Leadership Training

SARCAN hosted our annual Leadership Training session for SARCAN Supervisors in May 2019. The focus of this year’s session was on Fostering Effective Teams. Attendees learned about the characteristics of effective teams, how to motivate teams, and how to manage conflict. Supervisors also learned about the importance of team building and participated in examples of team building activities they could use at their SARCAN locations.

CAN’ned Wisdom

We continued to host our popular educational and informational CAN’ned Wisdom sessions for SARCAN employees. This year’s topics included accuracy, employee recognition, using computers, and documentation. SARCAN has hosted 31 sessions to date, and sessions have been attended by over 1,400 employees since 2016.