Jennifer Goerz-Schuldt talks about CAAT Pension Plan's successful wellness program
As an organization that enables employers across Canada to prepare a financially secure retirement for their staff, CAAT Pension Plan also looks after the security of its own employees, both in the present and in the future. This purpose is achieved through a three-pronged wellness program consisting of mental, physical, and financial aspects.
The effectiveness of this approach has earned for CAAT a 5-Star Rewards and Recognition 2022 award from Canadian HR Reporter. In this interview with editor Sarah Dobson, workplace wellness specialist Jennifer Goerz-Schuldt describes the wellness program in detail.
When Goerz-Schuldt’s role was created in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the CAAT team already understood the importance of upholding wellness in the workplace.
“We knew that mental wellness was a vital component of our overall health and well-being in an area [where] we really wanted to [support] our employees and being a pension plan as well,” she says. “It’s also important to ensure that our employees have the financial tools that they need for success. So as a defined benefit plan, we can provide a guaranteed lifetime pension for our members.”
Goerz-Schuldt says that the wellness program has received great buy-in and support from CAAT’s leadership team and staff. This reflects the organization’s view of wellness “as a vital part of our employee experience before it even became an industry standard,” she says, adding that it’s something she is proud of and one of the factors that make CAAT a great workplace.
The program’s strength was tested at the height of the pandemic, which required a shift from an in-person to a remote work setting.
“Fortunately, we had the tools and technology to do this and were able to adapt fairly quickly,” Goerz-Schuldt says. “But in doing so, we wanted to ensure that we were providing wellness programs that were actually meaningful and relevant to our staff and what they were experiencing.”
To assist employees during a difficult period, CAAT offered Wellness Wednesdays, which involved a 10-minute break for meditation. The company also hosted mental health sessions featuring speakers like Olympic medalists Clara Hughes and Hayley Wickenheiser, and music therapy sessions with the Canadian Music Therapy Fund. These activities gave employees an opportunity to have fun and nurture the “creative side of [their] brains”.
Other elements of the program include organizing financial wellness sessions to discuss the value of CAAT’s defined-benefit pension plan, as well as providing ergonomic equipment for a safe and comfortable work-from-home experience.
Regarding her role as a wellness specialist, Goerz-Schuldt says it is “part of the larger rewards and recognition [program at CAAT] because it reflects our ‘one team’ approach. We really want to ensure that we’re working as a team no matter what it is… [So] it’s that united approach. We live by our values, which are teamwork, integrity and impact.”
These values are practiced every day, she says, and they demonstrate CAAT’s awareness that well-being and rewards and recognition are crucial to why workers join an organization and decide to stay. Considering the many options available to workers today, CAAT makes its employees feel “valued for the work and efforts that they bring to the table”.
