Ask the experts

Audio time: 24:27

Valerie Fernandez: [00:00:04] My name is Valerie Fernandez. I'm a senior advisor at Beneva in the workplace health department, in group insurance. On a day-to-day basis, I help organizations put in place support measures and strategies to better support the health of their own employees.

Maude Villeneuve: [00:00:19] I'm Maude Villeneuve. I coordinate the Relief Research Chair on Mental Health, Self-management, and Work. I am just incredibly passionate about making better working lives for everyone, including myself.

Voice-over: [00:00:32] You have questions?

Question: [00:00:34] What action should I do to keep a good mental health?

Question: [00:00:39] How can I take care of my employees’ mental health?

Question: [00:00:42] Should I open up about my personal worries at work?

Voice-over: [00:00:46] We're here to answer them.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:00:49] Hi. Welcome to the Beneva podcast: Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Catherine Duranceau. In today's episode, we'll explore the complex nuances of organizational health and will dive deeper into mental health.

In today's era, the companies must provide a healthy work environment for employee retention and also sustained productivity. But the topic of mental health can be daunting. So how should we manage that? Well, we've got some answers for you. Valerie, Maude, glad to be with you today. Now, let's start with the basics. Tell us why organizational health, with an important focus on mental well-being, has become now one of the most important aspects of an organization.

Valerie: [00:01:32] Mental health and psychological well-being has been on top of mind for all organizations, even before that period of the pandemic that we've been going through since 2020. It enhanced the need to address it. More importantly, it's also a way of creating retention for employees to show that the employer cares about the global well-being of the employees, and that goes through physical health, psychological health, social well-being.

And it's a whole. I think that we have to address it in the same way that we want to address physical health and prevention of musculoskeletal disorders. We talk about it more and more. It's positive that organizations are finding a way to show that they care about their employees, and that's the most important thing.

Catherine: [00:02:20] And that it's not taboo to talk about it.

Maude: [00:02:23] And if I can jump on that, on the other end of things, employees have such different expectations of work now. For decades, people were willing to endure bad working conditions, but not anymore. Younger generations don't want to suffer at work. They want to thrive. They want a job that they care for. They want a job that has meaning. And all that sums up into having good psychological health in the workplace. It's being healthy in a job that is healthy for me, that has meaning, that I have fun doing, that I'm committed to doing, that aligns with my values within a company that's healthy through that, that thrives, that cares about me, that has a good culture. So mental health is just profitable. It's cost effective. It prevents so much trouble down the line.

Catherine: [00:03:13] Oh, interesting. What are the signs that an employee is really struggling with mental health, psychological health?

Maude: [00:03:19] When you see that an employee has checked out, whether it's in person or through a Teams meeting, like with remote work. When people start sharing less and less, being involved less and less. Nonverbal cues, of course; you can see in a person's face when they don't want to be here, when smiling seems to be like a struggle. And to notice those signs, you need to see your employees. You need to meet with them regularly. You cannot intervene on what you don't see. So you need to show up and to have face time with your employees to see, okay, something is wrong, and actually ask the questions. Make time.

Valerie: [00:03:57] And we've heard a lot of organizations come to us at Beneva that have that struggle, because the managers are not used to not seeing their employees on a regular basis. Maybe they have new hired employees during the pandemic that they have never met with them in person, or they don't even know what their regular day-to-day routine is. Do they have children? Do they have parents at home that they're taking care of? They don't know their personal situation. So Maude mentioned to notice how the employee is reacting, but to do that, we have to know our employees. We have to have interaction that maybe is a little bit outside of the tasks that they have to do at work. And so that's a little bit of a challenge for the organizations.

And we hear more and more, like, what is the definition of our hybrid mode? Do we want to allow more and more remote working, or do we want to bring back employees more at the office so that we have that connection?

Catherine: [00:04:50] We need that connection in life, being always at home, like for my kids.

Valerie: [00:04:53] I agree.

Catherine: [00:04:54] It's like I'm talking to my computer. Once the Zoom is closed, I'm alone with my animals.

Maude: [00:05:00] And just bouncing off what Valerie said about remote work and whether or not to have people coming back to the office… Hybrid work, it's tricky.

Catherine: [00:05:07] It's trendy.

Maude: [00:05:08] It's trendy, but it's tricky. It can be the best or the worst of both worlds.

Catherine: [00:05:14] Why?

Maude: [00:05:14] It can be the worst if you make people come to the office and you give no added value to being in person. It can be the best if you distribute tasks so that it makes sense. When you're at home, you do deep work, you're focused, you're not interrupted. You do things like reports, analysis, things that you have to put your big brain on. When you're in the office, you work actively on that feeling of connection, on knowing your colleagues, having meetings that have purpose and added value. Brainstorming, resolving issues, getting to know each other. So that is a way to make the best and have the best kind of hybrid work.

Catherine: [00:05:51] So you have to organize the schedule so that the hybrid work makes sense.

Maude: [00:05:56] So many people are like, “I could have done this at home.”

Catherine: [00:05:59] Yeah, I've got that comment a lot. Like, I could do it from home. I'm doing all this traffic to get to work because I decided to buy a house far from the city, or whichever reason.

Maude: [00:06:07] So if you’ve asked people to make the investment of coming back to the office and wasting time on commute and money on their lunches, your job is to make sure that they feel that it's worth it.

Valerie: [00:06:20] We can't underestimate the impact that social support has coming from our colleagues, coworkers, coming from our manager, coming from just the organization, generally speaking. So I think that that's the sense of meaning that we're looking for when going to the office. And I think that that can be only positive to bring that back and to show the importance of social support.

Maude: [00:06:41] The best thing you can have to make your work better, a healthier place, is to have as much social support as you can from your boss, from your colleagues, formal and formal, having access to all kinds of information. And fun. It's important to have fun at the office.

Catherine: [00:06:58] Yes.

Valerie: [00:06:59] Like we're having now.

Maude: [00:07:00] Yeah, we're working, we're having fun. We're chatting.

Catherine: [00:07:08] And tell me, when someone is dealing with psychological health, what are the direct consequences it could have on their work, but also on the work environment?

Valerie: [00:07:13] Just bring it back to your own personal experience. What happens when I didn't get a good night of sleep? What happens when that is going on for a week? How do I feel at work? How do I feel with the children? Am I less patient with my dog? The real key here is to take a step back and look at ourselves. How long has this been going on? That self-conscience that we have to do will help us better understand, and will help us take action into doing better, into getting those tools that we need and maybe just talking about it. Be willing to see ourselves going through those difficult times, to acknowledge them, to talk about it.

Catherine: [00:07:55] Not judging ourselves.

Valerie: [00:07:56] No. Correct. Absolutely. And I think that that's a whole different story.

Catherine: [08:04] I'm sorry. I went there. I judge my own self. Why am I not feeling great today?

Maude: [00:08:05] Oh, we're so hard on ourselves.

Valerie: [00:08:06] Exactly.

Maude: [00:08:08] Yeah. And if you want to see about how to understand, like, the large extent of psychological health in the workplace, we can see it like an onion. First, there's like the core. Of course it's myself. It's my own mental health, especially if I'm in a managing position. Then there are other layers around me. So if I'm stressed out and tired, I'll have less empathy. I'll be shorter with my family, with my colleagues, with my employees, with my staff. And then your staff gets stressed out in your team. Maybe they'll create conflict with other departments and other teams. And in the end, it creates all these little gaps in communication everywhere. A little nothing when people are stressed out can quickly become a mountain that separates people.

Catherine: [00:08:51] So we have to have a red flag and say like, whoa, if something is going wrong, we've got to fix it. And what type of concrete actions can employers take to prioritize their employees and help them out?

Maude: [00:09:01] There are literally hundreds of ways. One thing that is essential to remember is that it's not your big actions that matter; it's little daily actions. It's thanking your employees, knowing their names, having small conversations, being consistent with how you approach them, how you involve yourself, and how you're aware of their work and their lives. It changes so much. With every employee, with every organization, it's not a science. It's not perfect. It will never be perfect. It's an art that you learn through trial and mistake. And that takes a lot of self-compassion and a lot of humility.

And speaking of humility, being a good manager in terms of psychological health that works requires you to do a bit of an ego check and to make sure… we spoke about walking the talk. If your employee tells you that, you know what, in order for me to work my best, I need to have half an hour every lunch hour to just go out and walk. Well then, respect this, be consistent with this, and don't impose lunch meetings on their schedule.

Valerie: [00:10:13] Basically, it's a shared responsibility. We have to acknowledge that there is a responsibility that comes from the employee to say, okay, I think I'm not doing well. On the other side, is the organization that says, okay, well, I'm willing to take the time to listen and to act on it and to be able to support you and acknowledging that you're talking about it and you're taking… you’re courage…

Catherine: [00:10:34] Courage, yeah.

Valerie: [00:10:35] To name it; exactly. And to be there to support without judging and without punishing as well.

Catherine: [00:10:43] “That’s why you weren't efficient.”

Valerie: [00:10:44] Exactly.

Catherine: [00:10:45] People don't do that, but kind of in that sense of mind.

Valerie: [00:10:47] Okay. And that goes through the health culture.

Catherine: [00:10:49] Oh, yeah. It’s a matter of shared responsibility that employers have those great initiatives, and we see the difference. But how does the employee have to also take action in their own personal health? I guess that's also very important to make things better.

Maude: [00:11:05] It's an ongoing conversation. So first, employers open the discussion by teaching.

Catherine: [00:11:13] And giving tools.

Maude: [00:11:14] I'm giving you tools. I'm teaching you about psychological health. Here are some better, more precise words to talk about your working conditions, about your stress. And so you can come to me with a very precise issue. This is causing me stress. And then you can have like a large diversity of strategies and tactics and tips that you can try to self-manage as best as you can. And of course, talking to your manager is part of self-management.

Valerie: [00:11:40] We're talking about psychological health. What happens if you strain your ankle? It's a physical pain.

Catherine: [00:11:47] Yeah.

Valerie: [00:11:47] It's a physical limitation. Are you still going to go walk your dog? Are you still going to feel like you can go up and down the stairs in your house? You're going to feel that pain and you're going to act on it, rather than, when we're limited by our psychological health, it takes more time to admit them. It takes more time to see the limitations or to want to act on them. It's more difficult. We have to relate psychological issues to physical issues. How would we treat it if it was a physical issue? And I think that in the workplace, that's where we want to bring it down to. Like we want to be able to talk about my psychological difficulties as much as I'm talking about, “Oh my God, my back this week is killing me. I can't stay on this chair.” Why not?

Maude: [00:12:33] The difference is shame though, because I will never shame someone for spraining their ankle. I will not say that, “You know what? You should have walked better.” But when you're getting stressed out, when you're trying to border on burning out, it's a brain sprain. And sometimes you meant really well.

Catherine: [00:12:53] A brain sprain? I like that term.

Maude: [00:12:54] And sometimes people are just really passionate and really committed to their jobs. And they love their work, especially people in health care, where we see the highest levels of burnout, because they don't love what they do, because they work badly.

Catherine: [00:13:08] They’re absorbed by it.

Maude: [00:13:09] Or because they're badly organized. It's because sometimes, too much is too much. Taking time off or asking for accommodations while you're having a brain sprain, which is the equivalent of asking for crutches if you had sprained your ankle. But what people do is like, oh, you know what? I'm going to tape my brain. I'm going to go on those crutches. And people get really, really injured because they do backflips on their injured… their brain sprain.

Catherine: [00:13:35] And they try to stand up.

Maude: [00:13:37] They try to stand up. A little bit tough.

Catherine: [00:13:38] Yeah. And if I'm not wrong, there are some group coverages that offer employee and management assistance programs that give access to a range of psychological services; am I right?

Valerie: [00:13:48] Yes. The EAP programs and manager assistance programs have evolved throughout the years to the better of us all. It has evolved to giving financial support, legal support, as well as psychological support. And we can even call for our dependants, not necessarily us as an individual, but if my children have difficulty, if I have difficulty finding a place for my elderly mother, those are all services that an Employee Assistance Program can offer.

Catherine: [00:14:12] Because it could take a lot of effort, a lot of energy.

Valerie: [00:14:15] Exactly.

Maude: [00:14:16] But you need to know about them. A lot of the times, companies only talk about their EAPs through onboarding, when people are already really overwhelmed because they're starting a new job and trying to master all kinds of new things.

Catherine: [00:14:30] And you remember one thing out of ten.

Maude: [00:14:32] Yeah, you're not stressed out yet. So more often than not, you forget about your EAP. And most EAPs are actually pretty amazing. You have access to a lot of services. So you need to refresh people's minds quite often.

Catherine: [00:14:45] So it's actually the managing team that should maybe every three, four months…

Maude: [00:14:49] Three, four months. And remember, you don't you don't have to refresh everything. A lot of people ask, “How can I make my organization evolve? I want us to be more open. I want the culture to change. What can we do?” It starts with you. Actions speak louder than words. Your example is the most powerful practice that you can use to change, make your culture evolve. Sharing your own struggles. Everyone has had a stressed-out episode. We've all had times where we were overwhelmed through.

Catherine: [00:15:20] It’s not showing weakness, sharing that little moment at home where it's chaos or…

Maude: [00:15:24] It's being human. But if your employees see you show that openness, then they will feel more comfortable talking about it, too. You have to walk the talk.

Catherine: [00:15:34] Absolutely. Is it important to always adapt your message depending on the generation you're talking to, different cultural backgrounds? I love how Valerie's face is like, of course.

Valerie: [00:15:45] Of course. And that's funny because we had a client where they had different work shifts and they had many, many immigrant workers that came on different seasonal working that they had within the organization. And when we talked about psychological health, we had to adapt our message. First, it's because they couldn't even understand why we were talking about it. Their first language is not French, first of all. And then second, within their culture, they're not used to talking about how they're doing. They're there for work. They have a shift to complete. That's not even a part of their conversation that they have at work. So if you're asking me if we have to adapt, of course. Even just generations, culture, language. So for sure that we're reaching out to an individual, we want to be able to feel that we're reaching out in their own language and in their own sense of what they need and understanding.

Catherine: [00:16:41] You could connect because you know what they need.

Valerie: [00:16:43] I like that.

Maude: [00:16:43] You can have like the most beautifully crafted message, the most complete policy, and it doesn't matter if the message that you're saying cannot be understood on the other end. And that goes for language. It goes for just different kinds of industries and cultures. I've worked recently with a forest organization in forestry, and they are very forward in their mental health programs. But I was like, “How do you start this conversation?” They have to drive for hours to get to their different sites.

Catherine: [00:17:14] Oh, wow!

Maude: [00:17:14] So they have truck conversations. Well, you know, you're not looking at each other in the eyes, so it's less threatening. And you're driving. You're there anyway and you're literally stuck in the car. So, “How's it going? What's new?” Is there something going on?” And then people are more relaxed because, you know, they're driving. There's music. It's less threatening than if you're in the office with your boss, with a light in your face and like, “How's it going?”

Catherine: [00:17:39] Conference room.

Maude: [00:17:39] The conference room call. Like, people are well-meaning like, and oh, my employee is not doing well, so I'll ask them for a meeting but not tell them why. Like, an employee that's stressed or anxious or depressed…

Catherine: [00:17:52] Yeah.

Maude: [00:17:52] I'm gonna get fired. That's it.

Catherine: [00:17:54] So to engage the conversation, you have to really understand their way of communicating?

Maude: [00:17:59] Of course, and their perspective. And ideally, as best as you can, try to understand their frame of mind. Like, someone that's already stressed, adapt and reassure, like, “Hey, I want to meet you just to check in about your current workload,” just so people feel relaxed and not on the defensive.

Catherine: [00:18:16] Absolutely. And feel comfortable. We were talking a little bit about shared responsibility and the aspects of self-management. Can you share some tips of self-management to help someone that wants to help themselves?

Maude: [00:18:29] There are so many ways to care of yourself. Of course, there's the… not the basic because they're so hard – to work out more, to walk more, to move your body, to eat better, to sleep better. Those are the big three basic things: move, sleep, eat better. But it can be like we talked about social support. Social support is a self-management strategy. Taking time with friends, with family, volunteering, taking care of your dog. My dog is a great psychological health strategy. It's just pure love. In the workplace, it's going to…

Catherine: [00:19:03] To reflect?

Maude: [00:19:04] It's going to reflect. But you can self-manage your mental health in the workplace. You can organize your schedule. Like, I like to batch all my meetings in a chunk and then I have time to focus. But some people need to have recovery breaks or spread them out during the day. So how do you take control of your schedule, of your time? How do you respect your own boundaries? Saying no. Just because it's self-management doesn't mean you have to do it on your own. If you want to walk…

Catherine: [00:19:31] It sounds yourself. “Self-management.”

Maude: [00:19:33] But no, you can use your friends, your partner, again, social support, volunteering, your colleagues, your boss, your organization. Make it social. Make yourself accountable by being visible.

Catherine: [00:19:58] Valerie, you have something you really want to share.

Valerie: [00:20:01] Absolutely. At Beneva, we give manager training on how to prevent and support employees that go on disability leave. And beyond our expectations, during the period where we're talking about maintaining contact during a disability leave with the employee that's on the leave, a manager stood up and shared his own story and said, “I've been with the company for over 20 years and I feel like it's important to share my story. I was on disability leave two times in my career. The first time, I went on a leave of absence for a surgery that I had to get in my back. It was a physical injury. We knew that the date was coming for my surgery. Everybody contacted me to say, how did it go? How's your recovery? When are you coming back? We're excited for you to be back. I felt there was a sense of belonging and that they were interested in my condition. Eight years later, I went on a second disability leave, unfortunately, and this time it was for psychological issues. I went on depression and I was away for five months, and nobody called me.”

Catherine: [00:21:08] Oh wow.

Valerie: [00:21:08] “Not one colleague, not my manager, nobody called me. I still have that in my mind. I felt that I was not important to my organization. And keep in mind that I've been in the organization for over 20 years. For me, the sense of belonging is so important.”

And that person shared their own personal story in front of his colleagues, managers. It was so revealing, so important to address the impact of social support that we mentioned earlier today and the impact of the sense of belonging, the lack of sense of belonging, that could negatively impact the psychological health of an individual. And the difference between a physical and a psychological injury or disability shouldn't be that big. The human being behind needs that social support, whether it's physical or psychological.

Catherine: [00:22:07] But is it because people don't know what to say sometimes?

Valerie: [00:22:10] Absolutely. And that goes through communication and eliminating stigma and giving the tools to managers to have those conversations. And when we address that in the training, we say, just give them a call to see how they're doing. Your role is not to know about their medical condition. It's just to keep that connection and to keep that communication open.

Catherine: [00:22:32] And the sense that you care.

Valerie: [00:22:33] Exactly, to maintain that sense of belonging.

Catherine: [00:22:46] Valerie, this conversation enlightened me a lot about prioritizing organizational health. Can you sum up what we should remember the most?

Valerie: [00:22:53] To know your people, to know your organization, and to adapt your health culture; that's something that evolves throughout time that you may want to change throughout time. And that's fine. We talk about retention of employees, we talk about wanting to be there to support them throughout their difficult challenges of life. So I think that through the health culture, that will resonate.

I feel that all measures can work. You have to define what they are for you and your organization. If it's an EAP program, if it's a different kind of spending account, a health spending account; doesn't matter what they are, just to have a global strategy that's well known within the organization, and communicate that through your different levels of employees and make that live within your organization.

Catherine: [00:23:41] Valerie, Maude, thank you for providing us with so many tools to cultivate mental health through shared responsibility. Thank you all for listening. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate and contact us at [email protected]. If you would like to have more information about this topic and discover other episodes, we invite you to go on Beneva’s website in the podcast section.

Stay tuned for another conversation that will guide you for future insurance and business needs. Until next time.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Audio time: 17:45

Talya Shaulov: [00:00:04] My name is Talya Shaulov. I'm a gynecologist. I work at the CHUM and at Ovo Clinic. My subspeciality is reproductive endocrinology and infertility. What I love most about my job is really working with women and following them throughout multiple stages of their life. I find that very special.

Sarah Beaudry: [00:00:23] Hi, my name is Sarah Beaudry. I'm an organizational development advisor at Beneva. I'm also responsible for the Health Awareness Program. I love helping people out so they can be happy at work and also in their personal life.

Voice-over: [00:00:38] You have questions?

Question: [00:00:41] What are the first steps in raising menopause awareness?

Question: [00:00:50] Is talking about menopause at work still taboo?

Question: [00:00:53] How can I help my employees going through menopause?

Voice-over: [00:00:53] We're here to answer them.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:00:56] Hi. Welcome to the Beneva podcast, Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Catherine Duranceau. A sensitive topic that is rarely an open discussion, but that every woman experiences is menopause. Ten million Canadian women are going through menopause as we speak, and it's still taboo. Gladly, we feel a shift in many companies that want to be more inclusive and start the conversation for the well-being of their employees. And that's exactly what we're going to do right now. Let's dive into the core of the topic. Talya, explain to us what is menopause exactly.

Talya: [00:01:29] So menopause is really a universal physiological phenomenon that a woman will go through around the age of 50 – that’s the average age in North America – which is defined precisely by the absence of menstrual cycles for a period of 12 months, but can be preceded with multiple changes, which we can discuss. And once a woman is in menopause, she is then in menopause for the rest of her life. So it's kind of, her status becomes menopause.

Catherine: [00:01:57] That is done. When we think of menopause, we think, okay, it lasts for years, but there's the pre-menopause, then the menopause, the post-menopause. Can you guide us through those different phases?

Talya: [00:02:08] Yeah. So there's a table kind of that we use to follow which divides the pre-and the menopause and the post- into multiple different stages. But essentially, menopause can be preceded by multiple years of premenopausal changes which can be very variable, so change in menstrual cycle pattern to physical symptoms like hot flashes, mood changes. You know, all the symptoms that we can also discuss. And those can precede menopause by about ten years.

Catherine: [00:02:37] So a couple of years could be actually ten years before hitting the menopause?

Talya: [00:02:42] Before hitting the exact menopause date. And then these symptoms can also last beyond – obviously, not the menstrual cycle changes – but all the other accompanying symptoms can last several years after the actual menopause date as well. So it's not a one-day phenomenon.

Catherine: [00:02:59] No, it's a transition for years, like you're saying. And some women could have a premature menopause. Now, I'm curious. I read that a Hollywood actress started to have those menopause symptoms around 36. When is it considered premature menopause?

Talya: [00:03:14] In kind of scientific terms, there's the term menopause, which is normal between the ages of 45 and over. Anything between 40 and 45 is considered early menopause. But it still happens. And then under the age of 40, it becomes more of a pathological condition which requires investigations and which really requires a treatment, so hormone replacement to protect the patient from complications like cardiovascular complications and osteoporosis.

Catherine: [00:03:44] It should be taken seriously. And what are the symptoms of a menopause?

Talya: [00:03:47] Okay, so the cornerstone of menopause is really hot flashes, whether they be daytime or nighttime; vaginal dryness, or the term we use to call it these days is genitourinary syndrome of menopause. So it encompasses all of the genital urinary tract symptoms.

Catherine: [00:04:03] Are those very common?

Talya: [00:04:04] Very common. About 50% of women will suffer from that during the menopausal transition and beyond, for which we have very good treatments, so it's important to talk about it. And other symptoms will be mood disorders, so anxiety, depression or just mood changes; joint pain; decreased concentration; sleep disturbances which can be accompanied, obviously, by fatigue and decreased energy; memory loss or memory changes. And I would say that pretty much covers most of the symptoms.

Catherine: [00:04:38] And it seems scary, but not all women have necessarily those symptoms.

Talya: [00:04:42] That's right. So it's a universal phenomenon, but the experience is not generalizable to everybody. So some women will go through the menopausal transition very smoothly from one day to the next, no more periods and no other symptoms, whereas some women will really have a tsunami of symptoms appear, you know, this wave of symptoms that kind of overtakes their life. So it's very, very variable.

Catherine: [00:05:06] And every woman has different job. We were saying every menopause has different symptoms because we're all, of course, different. Sarah, how does menopause impact women's work and also maybe their careers?

Sarah: [00:05:16] Well, there's a few ways that menopause can impact their professional lives. So like Talya said, there are physical symptoms, hot flushes, night sweats, sleep disorders, fatigue. But also we can have some concentration problems, so it can impact your work. There's also too, maybe decreased energy. So the fatigue that comes with symptoms of menopause can reduce your level of energy and your motivation, too, at work. There's also all the time management that comes with that because sometimes we have to go to the doctor, the clinic or something like that. So we need a little bit more time to go to medical appointments. There's the ways that menopause can affect work.

Talya: [00:05:57] I think women in the 45 to 55 age category are really in the peak of their careers. Their children are a little bit more grown up. They finally have more time to dedicate to their jobs. They hold more senior positions and senior roles in companies. And these menopause symptoms, this new wave of symptoms that all of a sudden, you know, kind of attacks them out of the blue can really hinder their professional development. It's not the case for everybody. So some women will go through it and their professional careers are not at all impacted, just like their personal lives are not impacted. But the ones who really feel the heaviness of the symptoms will definitely feel it in their professional lives, and so much so, that some of them have to cut back on work, have to decrease hours or completely change jobs, quit their job, change their jobs. So it's very well documented that it can have a serious impact on their career.

Catherine: [00:06:55] And do women still feel that it's an off-limit topic and are frightened to break the silence surrounding the menopause?

Sarah: [00:07:02] I think yes. It’s really going to depend on the work environment, too. So at Beneva, we try to do some education to have an open communication on this topic because it's really important for us. We have more than 60% of all employees that are women. So it's a big topic for us. I think with the education, like I said, the communication, maybe manager training too, that they can be able to give support and know all the symptoms that they're experiencing.

Catherine: [00:07:31] Yeah, because some women don't even know, so we can't blame the managers for not knowing.

Sarah: [00:07:35] That's right. So I think the best thing to do is start with that. And after that, you can maybe create like a support network. So yeah, but the first thing to do is really to talk about it just to break the taboos.

Catherine: [00:07:46] And I guess there are some small actions that employers can take to change the environment and help them go through the process. What could they do?

Sarah: [00:07:55] Yeah. Well, it can be really simple. It can be a little bit more flexibility on the remote work options. It can be also just to install fans or regulate the temperature. If you're in a room with a lot of persons, can I open a window? It can be as simple as that. And just to give information too, just to let know, what are you going to go through, if you have symptoms and everything. And at Beneva, we install rest cabins. It's like a big box. Inside of that, there's a couch that do massaging. Inside of the cabin, you have light therapy, too. You have meditation. 

Catherine: [00:08:38] Can  I go?

Sarah: [00:08:40] Yeah, you’re going to try it out? And you can be in a zero-gravity position on the chair. So you’re floating like astronauts in space. So it's really comfortable. So all the stress goes away and you can disconnect for like, 15 minutes. And you come back after that and you're like, oh wow, that feels so good.

Catherine: [00:08:55] That sounds amazing.

Sarah: [00:08:56] And that's offered to all Beneva employees. Everybody can go and that benefits everyone.

Talya: [00:09:01] So firstly, I think it's important to say that everything that Sarah mentioned is very well documented in the literature. These are not benign things. They're really important. And they can really change a lot for the women. As employers and managers, I think it's really important to sensitize these people. So through whatever it is, workshops and courses and educational tools, but for them to develop the empathy. You know, a woman who has a 25-year-old manager or a male manager, these are people who either don't know menopause themselves yet or will never undergo it themselves. So I think the empathy that a manager can feel to, for example, a woman who's pregnant or a couple going through a separation, it can make a world of a difference for that person. And I think it could really make a difference for the woman who's going through menopause and going through that transition to feel like a human support; you know, like a very humane support could really make a big difference.

And I just wanted to mention also that work is a really rewarding part of a woman's life, and it's a really important part of a woman's life. And I think for employers and managers, it's really important to remember that and to work from that. So menopause is not the time to tell a woman, okay, well, we're going to cut your hours by half, and come back when you're ready.

Catherine: [00:10:21] You don’t feel well? Stay at home and do 15 hours instead of doing 40.

Talya: [00:10:25] It's an opportunity to make her feel good, to make her feel like she's supported, to make her feel like there's going to be changes in place and policies in place to help them go through that. But to preserve their self-esteem is really important, and that also impacts their experience of menopause as well.

Catherine: [00:10:45] Can it change their symptoms?

Talya: [00:10:45] It could also change their symptoms. So a woman who's feeling less stressed out will feel more comfortable, can be less impacted by the symptoms of menopause. So it's kind of a two-way street. It's really important for this environment to be the case at work.

Catherine: [00:11:01] So to feel supported is not taking away responsibilities because, oh, you won't be able to work. That's not it.

Talya: [00:11:06] Exactly, exactly. It's really to promote professional development. And through that, you'll be building a woman's self-esteem. A woman who's suffering from hot flashes can often really feel like her self-image and self-esteem are affected.

Catherine: [00:11:21] Literally, they may be sweating because you feel different.

Talya: [00:11:24] Exactly.

Catherine: [00:11:25] And is there a difference with this socioeconomic background, also the cultural backgrounds? Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Sarah: [00:11:34] Yeah, of course, there's still cultural taboos around menopause, so it's really going to depend on the culture. So that's the main idea to talk about it and to break some taboos and stigmas around that.

Catherine: [00:11:46] But I'm curious, are there some communities that see menopause as like an aura? It's impressive?

Sarah: [00:11:52] Yeah, yeah, there's some cultures that that's really like a big step. And when the woman is in menopause, they're going to help the young ladies to go through their first period and help them to go to that phase and give the tools, how they’re supposed to feel and everything. So they're really going to be there for her.

Catherine: [00:12:14] So you feel part of the community.

Sarah: [00:12:15] Yeah, yeah, they talk really about it. So it's really different in every culture.

Catherine: [00:12:19] Yeah, absolutely. We should be inspired by those cultures.

Sarah: [00:12:21] Of course.

Talya: [00:12:22] Different women will also of go through menopause very differently. There's different factors that will affect menopausal symptoms, the severity and the timing of it. So socioeconomic factors, ethnicity. We even see that women who work certain types of jobs will have different symptoms and earlier menopause. So for example, people who work night shifts like nurses who work night shifts for like, ten years.

Catherine: [00:12:46] And that are doing a job that’s so hard to do.

Talya: [00:12:48] Exactly. That's so important, will sometimes see symptoms appear earlier. So there's a big influence of environmental factors on our experience of menopause as well, for better or worse.

Catherine: [00:13:01] And how could they, let's say the hospital in the case of a nurse, help them out so that they have concrete actions to accept it?

Talya: [00:13:08] Yeah, I mean, I think all the things that Sarah mentioned are really important to all work environments. You know, the hospital happens to be one where it's sometimes a little bit more difficult to implement these things because of the high stress feature of the job. You know, like nurses and other health care professionals in the hospital are always on the go. There's no time for breaks. You know, your break is much less important than the patient who is having a heart attack right now. So I think there is work to be done, and there's huge leaps that are happening in this domain. But it's in all these domains where the job is extremely hands-on, it's not less important to really address the issue. It should be taken seriously.

Catherine: [00:13:48] It should be taken seriously and have those concrete actions even while working in a high-stress environment?

Talya: [00:13:52] Exactly.

Catherine: [00:13:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Beneva did a survey and you got lots of great answers. Tell us more about that.

Sarah: [00:13:59] Yes. We did a survey on organizational health. So that showed us a lot of women were very interested in menopause. So we already did some intervention, like a conference. We put tools on our intranet, too. And we also have an Officevibe that they call which evaluates the level of wellness and happiness of our employees. So we can adjust our intervention according to this data, just to make sure we act on the right track to make sure we did the right thing to respond to the needs of our employees.

Catherine: [00:14:46] Absolutely. Talya, do you have an anecdote to share with us that really struck you?

Talya: [00:14:50] So in line with the topic today, I had one patient who came to see me a couple of years ago. She was going through a really tough menopausal transition, and she was having extremely big symptoms, substantial symptoms that were impacting her personal and work life. And she came to me saying, you know, I need a break from my work. I need to reduce my hours and need to work more from home. Can you fill out my insurance papers? And I was very taken aback by the fact that she brought me these, you know, that she wasn't even comfortable speaking to her employer about it. I kind of felt uncomfortable filling out this form. And, you know, the questions these insurance companies often ask are really specific to, like, physical limitations and mental limitations. And I didn't feel like she filled out any of those categories. You know, it was just simple things that she needed in her job to be able to help her do her job better, you know, in a time where she needed a little bit more support. And so that's when I kind of realized, wow, we have work to do in the workplace.

Catherine: [00:15:45] That is kind of strange. We should be able to have the conversation without saying, hey, I've got my doctor's note. Can you approve that I adapt my job?

Talya: [00:15:54] Yeah, exactly. It's funny because menopause is a medical condition, but it's not a disease. That's kind of what needs to be destigmatized in a way.

Catherine: [00:16:03] Did you have lots of patients like that?

Talya: [00:16:05] No. Thankfully, no.

Catherine: [00:16:06] Good. Thankfully, no. Absolutely.

We always like ending the podcast by having a short recap of our conversation. Sarah, can you sum up the most important points we discussed?

Sarah: [00:16:26] Of course. Well, as we said many times, the symptoms of menopause are different for every woman, which underlines the need to avoid any generalization or labelling of those going through this phase of their lives. Maybe to promote open-mindedness in the workplace and initiate an inclusive dialogue. Give some tools, information, resources that employees can work with. Deconstruct all the prejudices that can be there and show empathy and remember, all of the small gestures can make a difference.

Catherine: [00:16:58] Thank you, Sarah and Talya, for engaging in the conversation. Talking about menopause will break taboos and will slowly help women embrace it instead of fearing it.

Thank you all for listening. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate in contact us at [email protected]. If you would like to have more information about this topic and discover other episodes, we invite you to go on Beneva’s website in the podcast section. Stay tuned for another conversation that will guide you for future insurance and business needs. Until next time.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Andrew Gardner: [00:00:05] Well, hello, my name is Andrew Gardner. I'm the senior regional sales director for savings and investment at Beneva for Southwestern Ontario. And I love what I do because I get to work with the best and brightest financial advisors across my region, and we really try to work hard to make sure that we're moving Canadians onto the best financial footing that they can find. And my role is to work directly with financial advisors to try to create happy clients, because we know that happy clients means a happy practice.

Voice-over: [00:00:36] You have questions?

Question: [00:00:38] You know, there are so many tools that I can use on the web. Why would I need a financial advisor?

Question: [00:00:44] How can my financial advisor add value to my savings and investments?

Question: [00:00:49] As a financial advisor, what are the top arguments I could use to showcase my expertise?

Voice-over: [00:00:56] We're here to answer them.

[TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau: [00:01:00] Hi! Welcome to the Beneva podcast, Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Catherine Duranceau. Today we're diving into a topic useful for many people: the importance of a financial advisor. We all have access to so much information on the web. So why exactly should people choose a financial advisor? Hi, Andrew. So you know the market perfectly well and are very familiar with the numerous options that you could find on the web. What do those tools all have in common?

Andrew: [00:01:29] Well, it's interesting; there's no shortage of them. There's lots and lots and lots of different tools regular individuals can access. And there's lots of places to get knowledge. Right now, one of the things that's common for pretty much anything – this isn't just natural to our industry, but pretty much everywhere else – is that individual people, non-financial professionals, people in the general public, they're constantly being marketed to. So any time there's like a tool or something that you're able to access, especially if it's free, the old saying is, “If it's free, then you are the product.” That's not necessarily bad. I don't want to make it sound necessarily like a bad thing, but it's very, very difficult to navigate through these things when it's a promotional tool that people are using to get you to use their product. 

The other side of it, the things that are autonomous, they tend to be mass, right? In order to do something that's that systematic, you need to have something that can work at a very scalable level. So when you have things like that, you lose a lot of the customization. And when we're talking about financial products in particular, they're very specialized for each individual. They're going to have certain needs, certain goals, certain things that they want to have happen. And it's very difficult to do that within it, even though they're getting quite sophisticated, to capture those individual needs and wants and goals within an optimized or systematic type thing. It's more of a cookie cutter. It's a catch-all.

Catherine: [00:02:55] And we have different priorities, which is normal.

Andrew: [00:02:57] Yeah, absolutely. Everybody's got different wants, different needs, different fears. The thing that I kind of always come back to is, you don't know what you don't know. So you can go through that whole process and feel that you're in really, really good shape, but you didn't ask the right questions. You didn't know the questions to ask in the first place. So it’s almost impossible to navigate a situation, you know, in that scenario where you don't know what you don't know, you're dealing in a medium that is fairly complicated.

Catherine: [00:03:25] So I guess the relationship between the financial advisor and the client is very important so that you understand their needs.

Andrew: [00:03:32] Yeah. There has to be an open communication between the financial professional and the end client in order for this to work properly. In my opinion, it's better to have someone who has access to some of these same tools. Like, it's not like we don't use tools. We're not living in a cave here. Right? We use tools. So you try to always find the best of both sides. So we can use some of these tools. 

Now, when we're talking about independent financial advice or dealing with an advisor or a financial professional, the whole goal here is that that person, you've developed a deeper relationship with, and they kind of understand exactly where you want to get to, and how much risk or how much you want to spend, all that needs analysis that goes on when you're dealing with a financial professional. They can navigate these things and use those tools to help them and try to find the best solution that works the best for you individually, as opposed to something that works best at a scalable level and a cost-effective measure for the actual suppliers of those tools.

Catherine: [00:04:37] Is that something you have to remind your future clients? Like, do-it-yourself in the financial industry, that might not be the right way. How do you navigate around that?

Andrew: [00:04:48] Yeah, I don't do my own dentistry. So it's probably not a good idea. My view is that everybody has a chosen profession, something they do professionally. Right? It takes a ton of time to be able to go through and figure out all the different pitfalls. And even then, you're probably going to miss a few of them because, again, you don't know what you don't know. Research all the different products, options, how it all works. That takes a lot of time. So my view is, you're way better off to focus on what you do for a living. And if you can get a little better at that, if you could squeeze out a few extra dollars, a raise here or there and use that money to put towards your financial stability, the return on investment from that time spent versus time spent in front of the television watching a pundit is dramatically better.

Catherine: [00:05:40] And also, you could ask the right questions so that you're answering the needs of every person, and it's a personalized service. Because I guess sometimes people don't even know how they're actually covered. They don't have the right information since it's not personalized.

Andrew: [00:05:55] Yeah, that's a very big issue when it comes to the insurance side of things. There's a lot of very quick insurance-type products. In the insurance world, there's something called underwriting. So underwriting is the company like Beneva assesses the risk of this policy. Everything is contractually laid out when you sign to get in the policy. Now, the ones that are done through the more digital side or the more autonomous side, they tend to be underwritten at the time of claim. So you don't necessarily know what you're covered for or what the thing that you thought you were covered for, whether or not that was part of that policy. So you're lost. And that's why having an underwritten policy, when you sign it, everything's contractual legally within that contract. And we are bound by law to follow the terms and conditions of that contract. When you have other things where it's done after the fact, then it becomes much more problematic. And in certain cases, you may not even own the policy; the actual issuer owns the policy. And so you don't get paid; they do. So think of things like credit card insurance or disability insurance attached to credit cards, things like that. 

Catherine: [00:07:09] I'm already lost.

Andrew: [00:07:10] Yeah. Like I said, there's so many things, it's easy to get lost. Like, I think it's something that's pretty straightforward, but again, you don't know what you don't know.

Catherine: [00:07:19] And we have to gain trust in our financial advisor, too; I guess that is very important for you.

Andrew: [00:07:24] Yeah. It's the key thing because you're not going to get very far if you don't have that trust level, because you'll always be susceptible to outside influences.

Catherine: [00:07:36] The uncle that says, “No, no, you should do like I do. Go on that website.”

Andrew: [00:07:40] Everybody has a neighbour that, during the dot-com bubble or whatever bubble is floating around right now that made 80% in this or whatever the case is. Right? So yeah, there's lots of different risks that are out there. There's dozens. 

Typically, in my universe, anyway, I work with financial advisors. They have a choice or they're working with Beneva directly in certain cases. But we then take and mitigate risk by handing the keys to professionals who do these different things, who build portfolios, and they're all structured a little differently, so we can mitigate risk as much as possible. Unfortunately, you will have to take some risk in order to generate a return. The risk-free rate of return in Canada has gotten better for sure over the past two years. That's the rising of interest rates. While that doesn't work out well for lots of people – if you own debt or mortgages, that's certainly not good – but if you're a saver and you want a risk-free rate of return, those things have gotten a bit better, right? For sure. Now, inflation's also gone up. So that kind of mitigates that, too. So first step is to make sure that your personal risk, you're not taking on anything more than you're willing to accept. You know, and everybody's brains are different. They're emotional. I tell a story all the time about my father-in-law, he's a GIC person. He doesn't want any risk. If he ever had a statement that came back that was less than the statement he had the previous quarter.

Catherine: [00:09:18] Which could happen.

Andrew: [00:09:19] Well, if you're invested in the markets, yeah, they go up and they go down. They go both ways. He'd literally jump out of a window. Like, he would lose his mind. So the stock market isn't for him. Anything that invests in taking on market risk isn't for him. But he may not know that. Right? So these are the kind of questions that a good financial advisor can ask. And we have to figure out what their risk is, because ultimately, if we don't do that, then they'll be on the ledge. And if they're on the ledge, they're quick to hit the sell button. And if you're selling at the wrong time, then it can cause problems.

Catherine: [00:09:52] You're losing money.

Andrew: [00:09:54] That's right.

Catherine: [00:09:54] And what are the most critical questions you ask when you meet a client that could really help you quickly know where they want to go?

Andrew: [00:10:02] Yeah. So it would be bifurcated into two sides. So on the insurance side, every professional – in fact, it's a regulatory requirement. There's something called a needs analysis where they actually go through many different questions and they talk about your dependents, what kind of protection do you have maybe through a group life insurance plan, or history, medical history of your family and things like that, what your debts and obligations are, and all of those sorts of things. If you wanted to make sure, for example, that if something bad were to happen to me, would I have enough money to cover my mortgage? So in my case, my wife wouldn't be left holding the bag on a debt. Like, at least that way it would be cleared. Right? So there's a whole system that's in place. And we do like systems. So again, autonomous tools use systems. We do, too. It's just it's more of a hands-on approach. So that's the insurance side. 

On the investment side, the biggest question is, when do you need this money?

Catherine: [00:11:04] Two days or two years.

Andrew: [00:11:05] Yeah. And I'll tell you personally – and not everybody may share this – but I wouldn't put anything at market risk if I didn't have at least three years’ worth of timeline.

Catherine: [00:11:12] Really? Three years? Is that your lucky number?

Andrew: [00:11:14] Yeah, well, it's a minimum number. So you kind of have to look at these things very long-term. So if you're dealing with a financial advisor and that's the question, they would say, “Okay, what are the plans? What's the goal?” I'm 52 years old. So let's say I'm going to be working for another ten years. I'm not looking to retire anytime soon. I don't need this money right away. I can take on more risk. But if I was saying, “You know what? I'm taking my ball and I'm going home in six months and I'm going to start redeeming,” liquidity is the big, big, big factor. Because like I said, I don't know what markets are going to do, but I know probabilities. And the longer time we have, the chances of success are greatly appreciated. But I can't take that risk if I don't have that time.

Catherine: [00:12:01] Absolutely. That's interesting. Three years, I'll remember that. I'll remember that. Is there kind of a good match we have to have with the client and the financial advisor? Like, should we kind of meet a couple of them to take the right decision, because we have a financial advisor that understood my needs better than another one?

Andrew: [00:12:22] Yeah, for sure. I do recommend that. This is very, very important stuff. So this is the long-term future when it comes to savings and investments and insurance. So this is where I want people to spend the time. So if you have to meet one or two people… The way it works is a lot of these are referrals. So if you have friends or family that are happy with their current person, that's probably where I would start, at least to get the ball rolling. And that's how the advisor community kind of works too. It's important because they're in the business. They need those referrals to grow, right? That's where most of the growth of their practices comes from referrals. So we like to make sure that clients are happy, because I have a line that I say all the time: “Happy clients means a happy practice.” And that's what every financial professional wants. They want a happy practice with happy clients.

Catherine: [00:13:19] Absolutely. And tell us what type of consequences can people actually experience if they don't have a financial advisor?

Andrew: [00:13:26] Well, in terms of the insurance side, we talked a little bit about that, where if you're not covered for what you thought you were covered and that certain thing did happen to happen, that is obviously catastrophic. Right? On the investment side, it does come back to what I was alluding to earlier about, if you don't have a financial advisor, you need to be very sanguine to do this correctly because you, me, everybody, we're all susceptible to the same emotional pressures. These are age-old pressures; they're fear and greed. That's what moves markets. That's what makes them go up or down.

Catherine: [00:14:04] So they want people to be emotional.

Andrew: [00:14:06] Well it helps, certainly in terms of… there's always two sides. So for every time someone selling something, someone's buying something. This is more to do with trading, but it's funny. Anyway, the old trader saying is that bulls – people who think the stock markets are going to go up – bulls get fed; bears, who think the stock market's going to go down, also get fed, but hogs get slaughtered, right? So it's the greedy ones, the ones that are… again, that's why we have professionals.

Catherine: [00:14:43] I like the animal image of this.

Andrew: [00:14:44] Well, yeah. It's been around a long time. Bulls and bears. I don't know where it comes from originally, but yeah, the idea is, we need to take out as much emotional out of it.

Catherine: [00:14:51] With the financial advisor, you don't have that emotion.

Andrew: [00:14:55] That's right. That is the big consequence. But there are others. More practical things, like estate planning. Am I paying too much in taxes? Does the plan make sense from a whole bunch of other different factors? Right? It's not just all about risk and return and profits on your investments. There are other factors that need to be taken into account. And again, it can be fairly complex. So you can spend the time required to learn all this stuff, or you can hand the keys to a professional and don't do your own dentistry and get you where you want to end up going eventually.

Catherine: [00:15:34] And Andrew, it must be a little bit delicate sometimes to ask your financial advisor, “Hey, how do you make your money out of helping me out?” Tell us, how does that work?

Andrew: [00:15:44] Well, there's there's there's many different models that exist. But the ones generally, especially at Beneva and the ones of the financial advisors that I work with, kind of work mainly in that fees are bundled. So let's start on the insurance side. So when you pay a premium, premiums are what you pay to be insured. That's the cost that you're paying for the insurance. They include the commissions that would be paid to a financial advisor. And so it's all bundled in that price. So off the top of my head, this insurance is going to cost you $40 a month. Well, the advice part of it was covered. 

Now, in the investment world, there are fees. We have professional money managers. We have Beneva. I work here. There's lots of different things that are happening. The fees are part of what's known as the management fees. The costs of the advice are embedded into the management fees, and those management fees are bundled into the investment. So without getting too complicated in it, what clients really need to know is that anytime we post any rates of return on investments, they are net of fees. So whatever we're showing as the performance, that would be after the advice person has been taken care of in terms of their commissions or their costs.

Catherine: [00:17:10] Is it more interesting if you have an investment of two, three, ten years?

Andrew: [00:17:15] Well, as I mentioned, the longer you work with somebody, the longer you're invested, more often than not, the better your results are going to be. And that kind of loops back to the referral process, right? So the better you do as an end client, the way those fees work, it's a percentage of the market value. So as market values get higher, the amount that you're remunerated as a broker for the consulting and advice is also higher. The better you do as a client, the better they do. So we like to think of it as…

Catherine: [00:17:51] You make more money, everyone makes more money.

Andrew: [00:17:53] Yeah, we want the client to win. We want the broker to win. And if Beneva is the right product or solution for that particular situation, then obviously we win too, right? And if people do well, then we also do well.

[TRANSITION]

Catherine: [00:18:19] Do you have a story that reminds us that maybe we really do need a financial adviser?

Andrew: [00:18:24] Well, the one that always comes back, and I guess I've mentioned it a bunch of times now, is time in the market versus the timing, the market. And the idea is that if you had made that investment into the TSX, the dates work, that if you put it in December 31st, 2002, and you bought the TSX index and you just held the index. This is the one that you hear on the radio when they tell you the number. That's a total return index. So that's a very, very common one. And you put your $10,000 in 20 years earlier. So that would be December 31st, 2002. $10,000 goes in. At the end of 20 years, it's a fairly long time, but that's hopefully what the time horizons we’re dealing with, your $10,000 grew to 50,000 and change. If you stripped out the ten best trading days of those 20 years, so just 10 days out of 20 years – not a lot, right? 

You can miss ten trading days. No one's going to ring a bell and tell you today's going to be the best trading day. So if you miss them and you're trying to time the market, you got scared and you pulled your money out, well, if you miss those 10 best trading days, your $10,000 grew. It still did pretty good. It went up to just under just over 27,000, which works out to about 5%. The 10,000 that grew to 50,000 works out to about 8.5. Now, if you miss another ten trading days, so now you've missed 20, your $27,000 drops to just under 18. And if you miss the 30 best trading days out of 20 years – it's not a long time – you're down again to just over 13,000. And if you miss the best 40 trading days, you actually lose money.

Catherine: [00:20:10] Oh, that's interesting.

Andrew: [00:20:12] Yeah. And it's not something widely advertised. But most Canadians do not make money in the stock market. And the main reason why is that they are constantly going in at the wrong time and out at the wrong time because they got scared and they got greedy and they bought when because everything was going up. I got to get in, I got to get in. To me, that was always very jarring. You'd think if you were there for most of the time, you know, 90% of the time, you should be fine. But it turns out not so much.

Catherine: [00:20:47] Leave it to the professionals.

Andrew: [00:20:49] That's right.

Catherine: [00:20:51] Thank you so much, Andrew. Thank you so much. Now I will call a financial advisor right now.

Andrew: [00:20:56] You should, you really should, and everybody else out there. And once you get started, it'll be okay. And if I've got a second, I'll tell people, this is an old thing, but 10% of your gross income should go into long-term savings buckets.

Catherine: [00:21:10] 10% seems a lot.

Andrew: [00:21:12] No, you will be more than happy. If you do that, and you come back 20 years later, there'll be a very large pile of money there at the end.

Catherine: [00:21:21] So every pay, you put 10%.

Andrew: [00:21:22] That's the key. You got to do it so that it happens automatically and it just kind of happens in the background. You check in on it every once every few months or six months or what have you, and you'd be surprised; it just kind of moves up.

Catherine: [00:21:35] I'll call you in 20 years, Andrew. I love that tip.

Andrew: [00:21:38] Absolutely, absolutely.

Catherine: [00:21:40] Thank you so much.

[TRANSITION]

Catherine: [00:21:51] So, Andrew, can you wrap up our discussion and give us the main reasons why we all need probably a financial advisor?

Andrew: [00:21:58] Yeah, I think everybody should, unless you're doing this professionally, it's a really good idea to reach out to people, find the right one for you, and make sure that you're not exposed to things that you may not even know that you're exposed to. And develop a relationship with that person so that you're going to get to where you want to go. And you can't get to where you want to go if you don't even know how to drive the car to get there. So that's really what a professional financial is there. They're there to kind of hold your hand and walk you along this life process, this journey to get you to the end result that you're looking for. And that could be anything. It's different for everybody.

[TRANSITION]

Catherine: [00:22:42] Thank you so much, Andrew, for sharing your experience with us and giving us so much great advice about how it's more than important to have a financial advisor. Thank you to all our listeners. We really hope these insights will help you to showcase your value. If you have any questions, don't hesitate and contact us at [email protected]. If you would like to have more information about this topic and discover other episodes, go on Beneva’s website in the podcast section. Stay tuned for another conversation that will guide you for future insurance and business needs. Until next time.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Marc-Antoine Cyr : [00:00:04] Mon nom est Marc-Antoine Cyr de Gestion immobilière Gestipro. On est gestionnaires de plus de 3500 logements dans la Ville de Québec. Et ce qui me passionne dans la vie, c'est de travailler avec des gens pour lesquels on fournit un logement. C'est un besoin essentiel, fait que c'est très important. Puis évidemment, en gestion immobilière, les journées sont toujours différentes. C'est loin d'être routinier, puis c’est ce qui me motive dans la vie.

Christian Vanasse : [00:00:24] Mon nom est Christian Vanasse. J'œuvre en assurance des entreprises depuis 29 ans. Ma passion, c'est vraiment l'entrepreneuriat. Je suis comme un entrepreneur refoulé. Je travaille depuis des années à sécuriser les investissements de nos entrepreneurs au Québec. À défaut d'en être un, bien, je les protège, je protège leur pérennité.

Voix off : [00:00:50] Vous vous questionnez?

Question : [00:00:53] Je suis sur le point d'acheter un immeuble. Je ne suis pas vraiment informé sur les risques qui sont liés aux dommages en bâtiment. C'est quoi ceux qui sont les plus fréquents?

Question : [00:01:01] Comment savoir si je suis bien protégé en tant que propriétaire d'entreprise?

Question : [00:01:06] Que dois-je faire pour prévenir les réclamations?

Voix off : [00:01:10] Voici nos réponses.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:01:10] Bonjour, bienvenue au balado de Beneva : Paroles d'experts. Je suis votre animatrice, Catherine Duranceau. Et aujourd'hui, on s'adresse aux nouveaux ou futurs investisseurs immobiliers qui veulent tout savoir sur la gestion des risques de sinistres. C'est parti!

[00:01:30] Marc-Antoine, Christian, salut! Je suis très contente de vous recevoir parce que vous êtes définitivement le duo qu'il nous fallait pour répondre à nos questions. Si on entre dans le vif du sujet, quand on devient propriétaire, c'est un projet d'envergure qui demande une bonne planification pour éviter toute surprise. Mais l'acquisition d'un immeuble comporte des risques. Quels sont les plus fréquents?

Marc-Antoine : [00:01:48] Bien, en fait, il y a plusieurs risques en immobilier. On parle de financier, mais au niveau des réclamations, au niveau des sinistres qu'il peut y avoir, c'est vraiment un risque important. Mais le plus souvent, on va parler de dégâts d'eau. Par exemple le fameux 1ᵉʳ juillet, les laveuses mal branchées, le renvoi branché dans le mur au lieu d'être branché dans le renvoi, ça c'est un classique, là. Ça c'est inévitable. On a une dizaine de dégâts d'eau de même par année.

Catherine : [00:02:12] C'est parce que les gens nécessairement ne veulent pas contacter un plombier pour bien le faire?

Marc-Antoine : [00:02:16] Exact souvent, puis des fois aussi, par contre les plombiers sont tellement dans le jus cette journée-là. Tsé, au Québec, on est la seule province au monde qu'on déménage tous le 1er juillet. Ça fait que ça fait un load supplémentaire pour les entreprises qui font ce type de service-là. Puis tsé, même chose pour les raccordements de laveuse. On voit encore des gens qui installent des tuyaux pneumatiques, en caoutchouc. Christian, je dirais caoutchouc plus, là. Ça fait qu’on y va plus avec du tressé, comme ça, ça évite bien des dégâts d'eau. Parce que du caoutchouc, ça perce assez rapidement aussi.

Catherine : [00:02:46] Donc tressé. Marc-Antoine, on s'en rappelle.

Marc-Antoine : [00:02:47] On parle de branchement tressé.

Christian : [00:02:49] C'est de pire en pire avec la réduflation. Avant, souvent c'était fourni avec la laveuse ou avec le lave-vaisselle, les tuyaux. Aujourd'hui, il n'y a plus rien de ça. Ils ne veulent plus les installer non plus. Depuis la COVID, ils ne rentrent même plus dans le logement. Ça fait que les gens ont tendance à utiliser les anciens tuyaux qui étaient là, même s'ils viennent de payer quelques milliers de dollars pour une laveuse, sécheuse. Tsé, si c'est les nouvelles constructions sont un peu plus pensées pour les dégâts d'eau, avec des drains en dessous du lave-vaisselle souvent, des drains en dessous d’où il y a la laveuse, toutes les anciennes constructions, il y a nothing. Il n'y a absolument rien pour prévenir un dégât d'eau. Puis l'eau, on sait que ça s'infiltre. Vous seriez surpris des montants de réclamations, des fois, qu'on peut avoir sur un dégât d'eau. On a vu passer des millions en dégât d'eau sur un dégât.

Catherine : [00:03:36] Ah mon Dieu! Puis des fois, tu dis c'est quelques gouttes, mais au fur et à mesure, j'imagine que c'est là que ça devient problématique. Puis parlant de plomberie, quand tu achètes un immeuble, souvent on le fait inspecter, ça c'est sûr, on veut être certain qu'il est en bon état. Mais la plomberie, tu ne prends pas vraiment le temps d'aller vérifier tes tuyaux, tu n'envoies pas une caméra. On s'entend que c'est des dépenses qui s'ajoutent et qui ne finissent plus. Il faudrait-tu les vérifier les tuyaux de plomberie?

Marc-Antoine : [00:03:59] Pour moi, un bris de plomberie, c’est ce qui est le plus dur à prévenir. Fait que la seule prévention qu'on peut avoir, c'est de la changer quand il y a déjà un dégât d'eau ailleurs, tsé, de continuer le changement. Mais, tu ne peux pas prévenir quand ça va lâcher, là. Selon moi, c'est la chose la plus difficile. Puis Dame Nature, admettons.

Christian : Ah, tout à fait!

Marc-Antoine : [00:04:17] Dame Nature, tu ne peux pas prévoir ce qu'elle dit, là, puis ce qu'elle va faire.

Christian : [00:04:21] Et de plus en plus.

Marc-Antoine : [00:04:21] Exact, c'est ça.

Catherine : [00:04:22] Puis qu'est-ce qui est le pire? C'est-tu les grandes pluies, la neige?

Marc-Antoine : [00:04:26] Je vous dirais le pire, les grands vents. Juste avant Noël, le 23 décembre, il y a eu des énormes vents. Nous, on a une toiture qui a levé complètement d’un douze logements. La pluie, la forte pluie qu'on a eue cet été. Bien souvent, les drains des logements de rez-de-chaussée ne fournissent pas. Ça fait que là, l'eau monte, monte, monte, puis rentre par la porte-patio du logement. Les stationnements souterrains, des fois le drainage, admettons, la ville n’en prend plus là des égouts, ça fait que là, ils poussent sous la ville, là. Ils repoussent l'eau dans les immeubles. Et là, si le clapet ne fonctionne pas bien ou est défectueux, bien écoute, là ça devient une piscine. Ça fait que Dame Nature, c'est pas mal ça. Puis le gel/dégel de l'hiver avec la pluie. Tsé, les toitures, on les fait inspecter, oui. Mais admettons qu'il y a un gel/un dégel, là ce que ça fait, c'est que ça bouche les drains de toiture. Ça fait que là l'eau, quand elle dégèle, là elle continue à monter, monter, puis elle monte par les évents. Les évents, c'est les sorties d'air, disons les sorties d'air.

Catherine : [00:05:24] La façon anglaise, anglo de le dire.

Marc-Antoine : [00:05:27] Exact. C'est les sorties d'air de plomberie, puis les maximums, là, il y a un danger que l'eau monte tellement haut que ça peut rentrer par là. On parle des petits défauts de toiture qu'on n'a pas pu voir. Tsé, il y a un coup de pelle sur un maximum, ça fait un petit trou. Tsé, la prévention de toiture, c'est honnêtement ce qui est le plus important, je trouve. Des fois, j'ai des clients, j'envoie un courriel. La prévention de toiture, cette année, on va monter sur la toiture, on va les vider les feuilles des drains, on va aller inspecter s'il y a des petits problèmes, puis là ça coûte 150 piastres, puis ils ne veulent pas. Moi, je dis « 150 piastres, là, il ne coûte rien, là. Le gars va monter, il va tout te prévoir, puis il va te faire une soumission s'il voit quelque chose qui n’est pas correct, puis il va te le réparer ». Fait que ça, c'est vraiment important. À chaque année, à l'automne, de faire monter un spécialiste en toiture sur votre toiture. C'est ultra important.

Catherine : [00:06:08] Ça s’en vient à l'automne. On y pense Marc-Antoine.

Marc-Antoine : [00:06:10] Toiture.

Catherine : [00:06:11] Toiture. Parfait. Et les tuyaux en tressé pour la plomberie.

Marc-Antoine : [00:06:15] Tressé, oui.

Christian : [00:06:17] Et l'assureur n'est pas toujours présent pour couvrir l'usure normale. Par exemple, l'assureur ne couvre pas ça. Ce qui est infiltration d'eau par des ouvertures, on parlait de ventilation du maximum, ça prend une certaine couverture, ça prend un tout risque complet pour venir couvrir ça. Ça fait qu'en plus d'être à vérifier, il n'y a pas le petit ange assureur en arrière qui va venir nécessairement payer, contrairement aux vents par exemple, comme le 23 décembre, ça c'était couvert en entier.

Catherine : [00:06:45] Donc dans ce cas-là, c'est soudain, donc c'est assurable.

Christian : [00:06:47] Soudain, accidentel, c'est couvert.

Catherine : [00:06:49] Autre risque qui est assez important : les incendies?

Marc-Antoine : [00:06:53] Oui. Bien les incendies, en fait souvent, ça va venir du locataire. La majorité du temps. Une des choses qu'on peut faire, c'est d’interdire la cigarette. Je ne sais pas Christian, mais il doit y avoir déjà moins de réclamations par rapport à il y a 20 ans à cause des incendies causés par les cigarettes.

Christian : [00:07:07] Bizarrement, je dirais oui et non. Il y a moins de feux par les cigarettes parce qu'il y a moins de fumeurs. Sauf que les fumeurs actuels sont moins bien contrôlés. Par exemple avant, c'était coutume que si tu avais un fumeur, il était chez-vous, il fumait dans le salon, puis il avait un cendrier. Aujourd'hui, tu le kick-out dehors, le fumeur il s'en va sur un balcon, puis il n'a pas de cendrier. Il ne sait pas quoi faire avec sa cigarette, fait qu'il va mettre ça dans les pots de fleurs, dans le bran de scie, dans peu importe quoi. Fait que ça provoque beaucoup plus de feux extérieurs.

Marc-Antoine : [00:07:39] Les fameux tambours.

Christian : [00:07:40] Les fameux tambours. Partout où ils vont, c'est comme si on avait oublié de leur aménager un petit coin, ceux qui restent. Ça fait que statistiquement, il y a eu une baisse des feux dus à la cigarette. Mais depuis quelques années, ça repart, la courbe s'inverse, et on recommence à en avoir beaucoup plus. D'où beaucoup de travaux qui se font, Marc-Antoine on te l'a sûrement déjà suggéré, de mettre un cendrier quelque part dehors pour, justement, pas ne qu'ils aillent botcher leurs cigarettes.

Marc-Antoine : [00:08:07] Nos immeubles sont censés être non-fumeurs.

Christian  : Non-fumeurs, même à l’extérieur!

Catherine : [00:08:10] Donc, pourquoi le mettre?

Christian : [00:08:11] C'est bon, ça!

Catherine : Mais pas dans le pot de fleurs.

Marc-Antoine : [00:08:14] C'est ça. Mais oui la cigarette, mais aussi, les incendies de cuisine, c'est notre deuxième risque le plus important. Les gens vont partir les patates sur le mauvais rond, ils vont faire une petite sieste, ils s'endorment. Là, il n'y a plus d'eau dans le chaudron. À un moment donné, le feu pogne dans le riz, etc., fait que. Puis ça, c'est principalement nos réclamations à nous autres. Souvent, ça peut se contrôler assez rapidement, mais ça peut dégénérer assez rapidement aussi.

Christian : [00:08:35] Tsé, on le voit dans les réclamations. C'est des accidents comme ça. Un petit feu mineur, puis la façon de vouloir l'éteindre a aggravé toute la situation.

Catherine : [00:08:44] OK, qu’est-ce qu'on fait pour l'éteindre?

Marc-Antoine : [00:08:46] On appelle les pompiers.

Catherine : [00:08:47] Christian, notre pompier.

Christian : [00:08:50] Ou on appelle aussi les pompiers, tout à fait.

Marc-Antoine : [00:08:50] Les pompiers habituellement sont rapides.

Catherine : [00:08:51] OK, c'est bon. Ça te rassure, hein, Marc-Antoine! OK.

Marc-Antoine : [00:08:53] Dans nos cas à nous, quand c'est arrivé, les pompiers étaient là très rapidement.

Catherine : [00:08:57] OK, c'est très bon.

Catherine : [00:08:59] Puis là, pour éviter de se retrouver, comme on le sait, dans ces situations angoissantes, qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire pour prévenir ces types d'incidents?

Marc-Antoine : [00:09:05] Bien, la prévention, je pense que Beneva, vous travaillez beaucoup là-dessus. C'est important. Mais nous autres aussi, tsé. Juste avec les locataires, de s'assurer qu'ils aient leur preuve d'assurance. Tsé, il y a beaucoup de gens qui ne demandent même pas la preuve d'assurance aux locataires. « Bien c'est dans mes règlements d'immeuble ». Oui, mais dans tes règlements d'immeuble, quand il va y avoir une réclamation, il n'y en a pas d'assurance, il n’y en a pas, là.

Catherine : [00:09:25] Puis toi, tu le vérifies. Une fois que la personne a emménagé, je peux-tu voir?

Marc-Antoine : [00:09:28] Mais nous, avant qu'ils emménagent, avant qu'on remette les clés, on demande la preuve d'assurance. Mais, on parlait de tuyau de laveuse tantôt. Tsé, nous autres, quand nos hommes de maintenance passent dans un logement faire une réparation, la première chose qu'ils font avant d'aller réparer la problématique, ils demandent « Ils sont où tes appareils? » Fait qu'il va aller vérifier les appareils de laveuse pour voir les tuyaux. S'il y a un tuyau de caoutchouc, ils ne chargent même pas au locataire, puis il prend son kit tressé.

Catherine : [00:09:54] Tressé. Je vais m'en rappeler, regarde!

Marc-Antoine : [00:09:55] Tressé, puis il va l'installer. Fait qu'on a pris la décision de ne pas le charger aux locataires parce que ça aurait fait des histoires, un peu de chicane d’obstinage un petit peu.

Catherine : [00:10:02] Parce que c’est quoi, 40 $, là, on s’entend.

Marc-Antoine : [00:10:04] Le temps du gars plus le tuyau, ce n’est pas grand-chose, ça fait qu'on les paye, puis on les change sur-le-champ. Fait que ça, c'est une sorte de prévention. Malgré ça, ça arrive. Mais comment on en a sauvé? Peut-être qu'on en a sauvé dix-quinze dégâts d'eau dans l'année, tsé.

Catherine : [00:10:20] Puis tu en as combien de portes?

Marc-Antoine : [00:10:21] On gère 3500 logements fait que.

Catherine : [00:10:24] Il faut faire attention. Oui. Qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire pour bien l'entretenir, l’immeuble?

Marc-Antoine : [00:10:27] C'est au niveau de la prévention. Tsé, souvent, on parlait tantôt de plomberie. Comment prévoir que la plomberie va fuir le dimanche matin? OK, c'est dur à prévoir. Par contre, quand par exemple on rénove des logements, je donne un exemple. On arrache le bain, on refait la plomberie de ce logement-là. Bien nous, au lieu de juste faire la plomberie de ce logement-là, on va en profiter pour faire la plomberie du logement en dessous. Donc, on va aller dans le plafond du locataire au-dessus, puis on va changer la plomberie. Si la plomberie dans ce logement-là est due, elle est due en bas aussi. Ça, c'est un genre de prévention qui fait en sorte, qui est intelligente au niveau financier. Oui, ça te coûte plus cher là, là, mais peut-être que tu vas sauver dans les dix-quinze prochaines années. Fait que ça, c'est de la prévention qu'on fait beaucoup.

Christian : [00:11:04] Puis malheureusement, la façon de faire de Marc-Antoine, ce n'est pas l'exception, mais ce n’est pas courant non plus. D'être capable de prévenir et de justement changer ce que tu as à changer avant, d'avoir des cédules d'entretien des bâtiments pour venir voir, ce n’est malheureusement pas l'apanage de tous les propriétaires immobiliers ou de gestionnaires d'immeubles. C'est pour ça que pour un assureur, c'est toujours rassurant de travailler avec un gestionnaire d'immeubles parce qu'on sait qu'il a un plan en arrière. Puis comme disait Marc-Antoine, il va en arriver des accidents, c'est sûr.

Catherine : [00:11:33] Puis, est-ce que des fois l'assureur pose la question : Est-ce que vous entretenez vos biens? Il y a-tu quelque chose qui fait partie de, le fait d'accepter puis d'assurer la personne?

Christian : [00:11:40] Au niveau des locataires, pas beaucoup. Il n'y a pas beaucoup de questions là-dessus. C'est fait assez rapidement au particulier. Contrairement à l'assurance commerciale où, quand on assure un gestionnaire d'immeubles ou les immeubles, là on est assez questionneux, hein, Marc-Antoine. Des fois, on est même un peu fatigants.

Marc-Antoine : [00:11:56] Bien oui, puis c'est correct parce que les risques sont plus élevés aussi. Mais au niveau préventif, Beneva sont bons. Tous les immeubles qu'on assure chez Beneva, nous, à 100 % sont inspectés. Ça veut dire qu'il y a un...

Catherine : [00:12:06] C'est très bon. Ce n’est pas tous les assureurs qui font ça.

Marc-Antoine : [00:12:08] Oui, c'est ça. Puis c'est bon pour nous aussi quand même, parce que des fois, ils ont une autre vision de la note. Des fois, ils vont voir des choses qu'on ne voit pas, nous. Parce qu’eux autres, ils ont des actuaires qui vérifient les réclamations, c’est quelle qui en a le plus. Dans le civil, souvent on ne pense pas souvent au civil. Ta marche est peut-être dangereuse. Si quelqu'un tombe là, c'est peut-être de ma faute. Tsé, c'est des choses des fois peut-être qu'on oublie. C'est un bon aide-mémoire en tant que gestionnaire aussi. Dire bon bien parfait, on enligne ça comme ça.

Catherine : [00:12:34] Puis parlant de responsabilité civile, là, tu as parlé des marches, mais à quel point c'est important de l'avoir cette assurance-là?

Christian : [00:12:41] C'est important que les locataires l'aient, pour protéger dans le fond le propriétaire de l'immeuble. S'il y a une erreur d'un locataire, bien ce n’est pas… oui, c'est le contrat d'assurance du propriétaire qui va payer, mais il va y avoir un recours sur le locataire ou sur le contrat du locataire. C'est aussi important pour le propriétaire. Parce que tous les dommages que son immeuble peut causer au locataire, bien, il va être poursuivi pour ça. Des fois, on oublie. On parle en résidentiel, mais souvent dans le résidentiel, il y a des résidences en haut, mais il va y avoir une pharmacie par exemple en bas. Si un dégât d'eau causé par le propriétaire ferme une pharmacie pour ne pas la nommer, Jean Coutu, pendant quelques mois, ça se peut que ça coûte très cher en perte de revenus. Donc, c'est important d'avoir un bon montant d'assurance responsabilité, surtout que ce n’est pas des coûts qui sont onéreux. La responsabilité civile…

Catherine : [00:13:33] Ça représente combien?

Christian : [00:13:35] On parle de, admettons, une centaine de dollars par porte pour un gros maximum. Là aussi, tous les travaux qu'un propriétaire immobilier fait aussi, ça devient des travaux de construction qui ne sont pas nécessairement sous un chantier ou pris en charge par un entrepreneur.

Catherine : [00:13:53] Parce que c'est un homme à tout faire qui les fait ou si on arrange quelque chose.

Christian : [00:13:56] C’est ça, tout à fait. Fait que ça en responsabilité civile, si tu déneiges un toit, puis que tu envoies à neige sur ceux qui attendaient l'autobus en bas, ça se peut que ça coûte cher en corporel.

Catherine : [00:14:07] Il ne faudrait pas, là, mais…

Christian : [00:14:08] Il ne faudrait pas, mais c'est des choses qui arrivent. Mais autour de « j'ai un bloc et je gère des locataires », il y a plein d'activités supplémentaires que la responsabilité civile vient couvrir ici.

Catherine : [00:14:20] Une chance que vous êtes là.

Christian : [00:14:20] Si Marc-Antoine mettait le feu là aujourd'hui, c'est sa responsabilité de Gestipro.

Catherine : [00:14:27] Il va appeler les pompiers.

Marc-Antoine : [00:14:28] Oui, ça je vais le faire.

Catherine : [00:14:29] C'est bon! Puis aussi, quand on pense aux assurances, on a la franchise qui est à considérer. En cas de sinistre, il faut être en mesure de la payer. Mais qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire pour éviter qu'elle monte trop haut, cette franchise-là?

Christian : [00:14:40] Je pense que c'est la prévention. Normalement, les franchises n’ont pas eu tendance à augmenter de façon naturelle. Ce n’est pas comme mon poids à la quarantaine, admettons.

Catherine : [00:14:52] Ou un taux variable.

Christian : [00:14:54] Ça ne s’est pas fait comme ça! C’est ça, ou à taux variable. C'est vraiment, les franchises ont augmenté parce qu'il y a eu de plus en plus de sinistres, puis pour arrêter de payer des frais sur des petits sinistres, puis faire que les propriétaires prennent en main puis fassent plus de prévention, dans le fond, c'est un partage de risques la franchise, c'est comme ça que les franchises ont augmenté. Mais le juste équilibre vient avec un peu un plan de prévention ou un plan d'entretien, un peu comme Marc-Antoine fait. Quand l'assureur a un partenariat. Parce que ce n'est pas juste… magasiner de l'assurance, ce n’est pas juste aller chercher un prix quelque part, parce que ça, quand on est dans le trouble, justement, ça peut passer de franchise de cinq à cent mille à une vitesse grand V.

Catherine : [00:15:33] Il faut comme bien faire nos devoirs, quand on magasine et on veut savoir comment et de quelle façon on est bien assurés.

Christian : [00:15:39] Oui, c'est l'échange. Quand il y a une discussion qui se fait entre le client et l'assureur pour évaluer les risques, parce que les risques ne sont pas les mêmes. Tu as un bâtiment flambant neuf qui vient d'être construit, tu as des assureurs qui ne veulent plus les assurer, parce que là, c'est des dommages sur ces bâtiments-là sur des premiers vices de construction, tu le sais pas, ils n’ont pas vécu. Fait que ce n’est pas la même prévention qu'on met, ce n’est pas le même plan sur un habitat qui est neuf que sur un bâtiment de plus de 50 ans qui pourrait être patrimonial et qui pourrait avoir toutes sortes de défauts. Mais lui, il a eu la chance de passer à travers plusieurs années. On dit s'il n’a pas brûlé pendant 50 ans, pourquoi il brûlerait dans les 50 prochains?

Catherine : [00:16:22] Hein! Ce n’est pas le contraire? Tu dis que c'est neuf, c'est sûr que ça a été bien fait, puis ça va être plus facile à assurer?

Christian : [00:16:27] Non, non!

Marc-Antoine : [00:16:30] Quand on parle des syndicats de copropriété, là, tsé, j'en ai vu des franchises passer de dix mille à cent mille, là. Fait que, pour avoir un dégât d'eau de cent mille, ça prend beaucoup. Et il y a une raison pourquoi ils ont passé à cent mille. Puis souvent, cette raison-là, ce n’est pas juste parce que les copropriétaires sont négligents. Des fois, ça a été mal construit aussi.

Catherine : [00:16:45] Oh mon Dieu, intéressant. Plusieurs propriétaires aussi confient la gestion de leur immeuble à des compagnies de gestion, un peu comme Gestipro, ou peut-être juste à un seul employé. Comment on peut s'assurer que ces personnes sont de confiance ou pour éviter le détournement d'employés?

Marc-Antoine : [00:16:59] Bien, en fait, la confiance va être là par la transparence. Tsé, nous, on a nos propres immeubles à logements, puis on a conçu un système de gestion, une équipe. On est 70 employés à peu près. Ça, on appelle ça un moule à gâteau. Il faut que tout rentre dans le moule à gâteau ou à la même place. Ça fait que ça soit mes immeubles ou l'immeuble de mes clients, il faut que… tout est géré de la même façon. Fait que si c'est bon pour mes clients, c'est bon pour moi. Ça, c'est la première étape.

Deuxième étape, c'est la transparence. Fait que les rapports qu'on envoie à chaque mois, à chaque trois mois. Nous, tous les appels de service, tous les billets ouverts, ils ont un détail. Le nombre de temps qu'on a fait, qu'est-ce qu'on a fait, le détail. Le locataire, c'est-tu de la faute au locataire, c'est-tu de notre faute. Une réclamation. Ils ont des rapports de ça à chaque mois. Ça fait que le propriétaire, lui que c'est un investissement pour lui, mais que ça ne lui intéresse pas vraiment, mais son conseiller lui a dit « Diversifie tes placements puis achète un bloc », bien lui, ça ne l’intéresse pas. Lui, il a au moins ses rapports à chaque mois, puis il est capable de savoir.

Catherine : [00:17:54] Ça se gère, il est en confiance

Marc-Antoine : [00:17:55] Il est capable de savoir en dedans de cinq minutes qu'est-ce qui s'est passé dans son immeuble. Puis, il y a des rapports plus précis à chaque trois mois. Puis un gestionnaire qui n’est pas bon, bien, il ne garde pas ses clients longtemps. Ça se sait assez vite parce que tu peux perdre le contrôle d'un immeuble assez rapidement.

Christian : [00:18:08] Je pense Marc-Antoine que tu as tout à fait raison. Si moi j'avais des immeubles à faire gérer, c'est la transparence puis la quantité d'informations qui peut être donnée. Puis pour un assureur, de choisir le bon gestionnaire d'immeubles comme client…

Catherine : C’est important.

Christian : Tout à fait parce que c'est cette transparence-là, puis la façon dont c'est géré. Si jamais il arrivait un problème, avec la transparence, on peut venir voir où il y a un problème puis agir vite. Agir en amont, plutôt qu'une fois que ça a coûté des millions en réclamation.

Catherine : [00:18:40] Absolument. Puis, il y a-tu d'autres éléments qu'on n'a peut-être pas considérés, qu'on devrait mentionner par rapport aux locataires?

Marc-Antoine : [00:18:46] Moi, souvent, on parle de prévention là, tsé dans la vie, on dit souvent de ne pas juger les gens. Mais en immobilier, malheureusement on juge les gens, OK. On fait des enquêtes de crédit très sévères. Par exemple, je pense qu'en assurance, il y a des rues qu’ils ne veulent pas assurer ou des rues qui coûtent beaucoup plus cher par code postal. Dernièrement, j'ai assuré un immeuble, puis on s'était trompé de code postal, mais c'était un coin de rue. Donc tu as l'immeuble là, puis l'autre coin de rue. Puis elle dit « Bien là, ce n’était pas le bon code postal, ça monte de 500 piastres », mais l'immeuble est voisin de l’autre.

Catherine : [00:19:14] Ah, bien voyons!

Marc-Antoine : [00:19:14] Ça fait que c'est géré par ça. Puis pourquoi c'est géré par ça? Parce qu'il y a des secteurs qui ont une clientèle, malheureusement, qui est un petit peu plus à risque dans le fond. Ça fait que tsé, de sélectionner juste un secteur, puis de bien sélectionner ses locataires, quelqu'un qui est non-fumeur, quelqu'un qui a un bon crédit, ça rentre là-dedans. Si quelqu'un a un bon crédit, c'est souvent quelqu'un qui gère bien ses choses dans la vie, qui est préventif aussi.

Catherine : [00:19:34] Qui va bien payer son loyer.

Marc-Antoine : [00:19:34] Quelqu'un qui n’a pas de dossier criminel, quelqu'un qui n’a pas de dossier au civil, quelqu'un qui n’a pas de dossier au tribunal administratif du logement, en partant, je sais que cette personne-là va s'assurer, puis je ne courrai pas après sa preuve d'assurance. Puis, il faut se rappeler que 95 % des locataires sont super dans nos logements. Il n'y a rien à reprocher, Il y a 5 % qui sont mauvais, puis ils prennent 95 % de notre temps, tsé.

Christian : [00:19:55] Ce n’est pas ces bons locataires-là qu'on voit dans les médias.

Catherine : [00:19:58] Non, malheureusement.

Christian : [00:20:00] Ça ne fait pas des bons reportages pour les cotes d'écoute. Puis c'est super important, parce que ces 95 % là, c'est les yeux. C'est les yeux du bloc, là. C'est eux qui vivent là, c'est eux qui voient, qui entendent les nouveaux bruits, qui peuvent voir ce qui se passe autour, qui peuvent détecter, malheureusement, dans les 5 % de locataires qui peuvent envenimer une situation. Puis d'après moi, c'est assurément un gage de succès pour bien connaître son immeuble, puis bien l'entretenir dans tous les sens du mot entretien.

Catherine : [00:20:33] Puis, c'est les yeux sur le terrain, donc il faut écouter et faire confiance à nos locataires.

Marc-Antoine : [00:20:38] Le gestionnaire n'habite pas sur place, hein, fait que.

Catherine : [00:20:39] Tu l'as bien dit. C'était comme parfait.

[00:20:45 TRANSITION]

Catherine : Marc-Antoine est-ce que tu aurais une anecdote qui va marquer notre imaginaire pour faire attention et prévenir quelques risques?

Marc-Antoine : [00:21:00] Oui, bien en fait, on a plusieurs anecdotes de sinistre, mais une qui m'avait frappée. Tantôt, on parlait Christian de tambour arrière. Les tambours, c'est des escaliers qui montent sur chacun des logements, là, arrières. Et puis, on parlait d'une clientèle des fois qui peut-être plus à risque. J'ai un client, un locataire à un moment donné qui est arrivé avec un fumoir au charbon. Il a fait sa viande, tout ça. Puis lui, il a trouvé une bonne idée de… il ne savait pas où mettre son charbon, fait qu’il a trouvé ça une bonne idée, il a ouvert la récupération, le bac bleu, puis il a vidé son charbon au complet dans la récupération.

Catherine : Tout chaud.

Marc-Antoine : [00:21:32] Tout chaud. Mais lui, il pensait qu'il n'y avait plus d’orange, c’était juste noir, fait qu’il n’y avait pas de problème. Et donc là, il met ça là et là il retourne chez eux. Il retourne faire un petit somme sur son divan parce qu'il avait bien mangé. Et quand il se réveille, les pompiers, et l'incendie était très, très avancé. Donc, on a eu des dommages à peu près cinq à six cent mille pour juste un huit logements d'un côté. Les tambours ont pris au feu au complet, et je vous dirais les pompiers nous disaient qu’il manquait un 30 à 45 secondes que ça prenait la toiture. Puis quand on prend une toiture en incendie, là tu vas prendre le goudron l'élastomère, et là, ça devient une perte totale.

Catherine : [00:22:06] Tout dans le fond. Perte totale.

Marc-Antoine : [00:22:07] Ça devient une perte totale. Parce qu'un coup que c'est rendu là, c'est terminé.

Christian : [00:22:10] Et si le feu ne détruit pas tout, les pompiers avec l'eau de haut en bas.

Marc-Antoine : [00:22:15] Très bon point.

Catherine : Ça aussi!

Christian : Ça va tout ruiner.

Marc-Antoine : [00:22:17] Exactement. Fait que là tsé, imaginez-vous, on a une perte de cinq cent mille pour un huit logements, puis ça n’a pas touché la toiture. Mais tsé, quand on arrive là, l'Action de grâce, les gens étaient déjà tout parti souvent pour un long week-end.

Catherine : [00:22:28] C'était quasiment plus problématique. Les gens ne le voient pas, donc ça prend plus de temps.

Marc-Antoine : [00:22:32] Mais là, ils ne le savent pas. Fait que tu ouvres les portes, et là, il faut que tu gères les animaux. Donc tu cours après les chats, essaie de mettre ça dans les cages pour sortir ça avec les pompiers. Ça fait que c'est plusieurs… Là tu appelles chacun des locataires pour leur dire « Bon bien ce soir si tu reviens, ton logement est inhabitable, fait que tu ne peux pas revenir comme tu veux ». Et là, « Qu'est-ce que je fais? Je m'en vais où? » « Bien, écoute, tu appelles tes assurances responsabilité, et eux autres vont te reloger temporairement. Ils vont s'occuper de toi. Ils vont s'occuper des meubles qui sont en perte totale ». « Je n’ai pas d'assurance, qu'est-ce que je fais? » « Bien appelle la Croix-Rouge ».

Catherine : [00:23:01] La Croix-Rouge, c’est l'option si jamais tu n’avais pas pris l’assurance. On ne le conseille pas là, mais...

Marc-Antoine : [00:23:04] Il y a des organismes qui existent, mais tsé, Beneva, je dis Beneva, mais tous les assureurs ne prendront pas en charge le locataire qui n’est pas assuré. Ce n’est pas sa responsabilité. Ça fait que tsé, des fois il y a des gens qui se retrouvent à la rue juste à cause de ça, parce qu'ils ne veulent pas payer le 30 $ ou le 25 $ par mois pour s'assurer.

Catherine : [00:23:23] Et il voulait juste peut-être faire son saumon ou sa viande, là.

Marc-Antoine : [00:23:26] Exact. Mais dans cet immeuble-là, la farce, c'est que la seule personne sur huit qui n’était pas assuré, c'est le gars du barbecue.

Catherine : [00:23:33] Ah OK! Il l'a appris à la dure! Tu as vécu le pire, je comprends. 500 000 $ plus tard, ça marque l'imaginaire. Fait que les prochaines fois que tu rencontres tes locataires, tu dis « Tu as un BBQ? », j'espère que tu as au moins...

Marc-Antoine : [00:23:46] C'est ça, c’est mieux au propane ou électrique.

Catherine : [00:23:49] Voilà! Fini le charbon. C'est cute, c'est bon mais… merci beaucoup Marc-Antoine.

Marc-Antoine : [00:23:53] Ça fait plaisir! Merci de l'invitation.

[00:23:55 TRANSITION]

Catherine : [00:24:05] Si on résume notre conversation en quelques phrases, qu'est-ce qu'on doit se rappeler pour protéger notre patrimoine immobilier?

Christian : [00:24:11] Surtout de voir venir. Dans le fond, de faire un plan. De bien inspecter son bâtiment, je dirais de le connaître, savoir ce qui est le plus sensible ou qu'est-ce qui pourrait arriver. Connaître ses locataires, avoir fait une bonne inspection du bâtiment, savoir les chauffe-eau, est-ce qu'ils achèvent? La plomberie est fait comment? La toiture, est-ce qu'il y a de l'accumulation d'eau là-dessus? Vraiment connaître pour faire un plan d'action en fonction des priorités. Écouter ses locataires, tenir les livres à jour. Les livres comptables à jour, pour ne pas se faire frauder, mais aussi, tenir toute la documentation à jour de ce qui est fait, de ce qui est à faire. Puis il faut s'assurer que vous avez l'argent des franchises que vous prenez. Si vous sauvez 1000 piastres en prenant une franchise plus haute, bien, assurez-vous que vous avez l'argent entre les deux, pour être bien sûr de bien réparer les dommages s'il arrivait quelque chose, puis garder son immeuble en état.

[00:25:10 TRANSITION]

Catherine : [00:25:15] Merci beaucoup, Marc-Antoine et Christian, de nous avoir partagé ces superbes connaissances sur la gestion des risques de sinistres, et merci à vous d'avoir été à l'écoute de Parole d'experts. N'hésitez surtout pas à nous poser vos questions à l'adresse [email protected]. Ou si vous voulez obtenir plus d'information et épisodes, rendez-vous sur le site web de Beneva dans la section balado. On se donne rendez-vous pour d'autres échanges qui vous donneront des outils pour prendre des décisions éclairées pour vos assurances et vos affaires. À la prochaine!
 

Adam Hudson: [00:00:05] Hi, I'm Adam Hudson. I'm a partner and senior consultant with Clear Health Benefits. The best part of my job is really working day to day with my clients, learning more about their organization, and how we can bring cost effective, sustainable solutions to their organization and their employees. Ultimately, listening to what their needs are and working closely with them to address those needs, wants concerns going forward.

Jeff Bremner: [00:00:31] Hi, my name is Jeff Bremner. I'm the national vice president, MGA Distribution for the partner solutions division of People Corporation. The best part about my job is spending time in the field with my team and getting to know these amazing advisors that we partner with across the country, what's really important to them, and what's important to their clients.

Voice-over: [00:00:54] You have questions?

Question: [00:00:57] I'm wondering, what are my employees’ top well-being needs?

Question: [00:01:02] How to implement a good organizational health in my company.

Question: [00:01:06] How can I ensure our group coverage meets the needs of all of our employees?

Catherine Duranceau: [00:01:12] We're here to answer them. Hi, welcome to the Beneva podcast Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Catherine Duranceau. In this episode, we'll talk about how to establish organizational health that is adapted to everyone's needs in a company. What are employees really looking for in a group insurance plan? Also, how to inform and educate employees about the resources available within a group coverage. Hi, Adam and Jeff. It's a pleasure to talk to you both. Now, for the past years, you've witnessed the significant changes in the industry, especially since COVID-19, of course. Tell us, what important insights should organizations consider when they're working on a solid organizational health framework?

Jeff Bremner: [00:01:57] I think there's lots of ways that you can build a strong organizational health framework, but it doesn't really matter how great it is unless you've got buy-in from leadership and the governance to support it. If I think about leadership working 80-hour work weeks and sending out emails at midnight and sending out emails all day Saturday and Sunday as an example, it's not a really great message to send to the rest of the organization. So I think that often, employees sort of mirror the behavior and the values of their leaders. And so if that's what's being put out there as a value to the organization, you're likely going to end up with a lot of unproductive and burnt-out employees. Conversely, when an organization promotes a healthy workplace, healthy employee well-being, chances are, you're going to end up with very productive employees, very engaged employees.

Catherine: [00:02:56] Not encouraging people to do 80 hours a week?

Jeff Bremner: [00:02:58] Yeah, absolutely. Because, I mean, ultimately we know how that's going to end up, right? It's going to be okay for a while, and then things are going to fall apart.

Adam Hudson: [00:03:06] Yeah, to Jeff's point, I mean, I think that everything starts at the top and it rolls its way down from there. And I think you've got to have that buy-in from leadership. You have to have the commitment from leadership as well, because at the end of the day, the employees are looking up to those leaders, and in a lot of cases, they're trying to follow what they're doing. And if you've got leaders that are engaged, well communicated, I think your organizational framework from there will have a buy-in all the way from top to bottom. And I think your employees, again, there's a lot of communication that goes on within the employee group itself. They're looking to their leaders for guidance. They're looking for commitment. They're looking for engagement. They're looking for transparency. And I think that all comes from the top. And I think when they see that on multiple levels within the leadership group, they themselves are there to follow and work towards a more productive workplace. I think that's something that we all have to understand, that we have to try and maybe reconfigure our train of thought in the workplace with that approach, and we have to have that work-life balance. And that work-life balance comes with access to a multitude of tools that plan sponsors have access to these days.

Catherine: [00:04:15] But Adam, is it a bigger challenge to understand and accommodate the needs of different generations within a company?

Adam Hudson: [00:04:21] I believe it is. I think it still comes from an actual understanding of what the culture of an organization is. An organization has to take a step back, take a look at the culture that they have within, look at the generational kind of demographic mix that they have within, because there's going to come with different level of demands, wants, needs. You've got younger employees that are coming into the workforce and they're not as set up in their lifestyle. They're looking to save for purchasing a house, which we know is extremely difficult these days. They have a different level of demands, concerns, young families. You have your older demographic that maybe they're a little bit sedentary in what their lifestyle is. They already know they've already planned for their retirement. They've paid off a majority of their mortgage. So I think those challenges do come into play, and I think an organization has to be aware of that, but be able to communicate what resources are available to all levels.

Catherine: [00:05:12] And for mental health, maybe different generations are more open to talk about it also.

Adam Hudson: [00:05:17] Absolutely. I think it's hard to say. I think when you look at the older demographic, they hold their cards a little closer to home, whereas when we start looking at the younger demographic, they’re a lot more open. I think social media has triggered a lot of that. I think you've got to look at the resources through EAP programs, additional kind of wellness initiatives that an organization might put out there, different communication avenues that an organization can use to promote mental health wellness. So I think there's a lot of tools and information that can be extremely beneficial for organizations out there.

And going back to the very first point is that leadership has to be committed to that. It's only going to have a stronghold and success if you have that leadership commitment so that.

Catherine: [00:06:03] They could look up to someone and try to be good in their job, but without being burnt out either, because that's not the point.

Adam Hudson: [00:06:11] Exactly.

Catherine: [00:06:12] I believe it must be also a top priority to equally consider diversity within a group?

Adam Hudson: [00:06:15] Absolutely. As we talk about demographics within a group, we're looking at diversity. I mean, people are coming from all different cultures, all walks of life. They have different commitments within an organization. So we have to embrace diversity within an organization because again, by embracing diversity within an organization, it helps to the ultimate success and cohesiveness of that organization and ultimately, the success, the growth, and productivity as a whole.

Catherine: [00:06:43] Absolutely. And if you tell us a little bit about those practical steps employers can take to address mental health effectively.

Jeff Bremner: [00:06:50] I think it really starts with promoting awareness and, back to Adam's point, reducing stigma around mental health. And so this can all be achieved through education, right? Things like workshops, seminars, could be timely articles that are being sent to employees; could be a wellness newsletter that the organization creates to send out to employees. You know, ultimately, when employees are well informed, they're better able to understand their own mental health. Creating that supportive culture is going to be ultimately really, really important for employers to their employees. Fostering a culture of empathy, inclusivity, and open communication where employees actually feel safe, comfortable expressing mental health concerns that they're having. And you can only do that when it's a trusted environment, right?

Catherine: [00:07:44] You need to feel confident to be like, “I'm not going to be judged if I ask this question.”

Jeff Bremner: [00:07:49] Absolutely. I mean, I think, again, creating an environment where you're talking about these things together as a group, ultimately it's going to make people feel a heck of a lot more comfortable about being able to bring it up with their leader when they are having some challenges. And then equally, it's really important to make sure that managers and supervisors are trained to be able to identify where somebody who works for them may be having a mental health challenge, sort of be equipped to be able to manage that conversation, or at least get them in touch with the right people, the right resources.

Catherine: [00:08:24] Mental health is taking so much space in our lives. But to talk about it is, I think, one of the ways to make it better.

Jeff Bremner: [00:08:32] Yeah.

Catherine: [00:08:33] Can we say that group coverage evolved during the years? What changed?

Jeff Bremner: [00:08:36] I would say that there's a growing emphasis on having more personalized solutions available for plan members and their dependents. I think things like an employee assistance plan – while great and covers a broad spectrum of physical, mental, financial, emotional health – I think that as things progress in the coming years, we're going to see a lot more targeted solutions, right? So solutions that are very, very specific to mental health; solutions that are very, very specific to chronic disease. And ideally, I hope we get to a point where instead of putting an EAP as an example in place for all employees and thinking that's going to work for everybody, that we start moving towards a position where we've got a platform that has access to a whole number of different solutions and allows employees and their dependents to choose what it is that works for them. Because I think ultimately, that's what's going to improve employee well-being and ultimately reduce costs for the benefits plan.

But specific to solutions, I think as an example, like, wellness accounts or personal spending accounts are probably going to become even more relevant. I say that because you saw that 2023 Benefits Canada survey, what employees are saying is most important to them is exercise and sleep. And I can't think, off the top of my head, how many providers have really gone down the path of solutions that are dedicated to sleep, but we all recognize how important that is. If we can help employees sleep better, that has a positive, trickle-down impact on the rest of their health.

Now, things like exercise, obviously really, really important as well to employees. You know, you can provide some flexibility there through personal spending accounts where there's funds that are set aside for things like gym memberships and exercise equipment to work out at home. So I think that we're moving in the right direction. But I think that's what we're going to see as the next wave. Personalized solutions and a lot more focus on exercise and sleep.

Adam Hudson: [00:10:55] To Jeff’s point, the younger demographic are more connected. I think they're more informed of what's out there, what is potentially available to them. They're more connected in and in tune with their own health. I think when we look at some of the older demographic, they didn't have access to some of the information that's out there now.

Catherine: [00:11:14] They didn't have TikTok.

Jeff Bremner: [00:11:16] WebMD.

Adam Hudson: [00:11:17] Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a lot of stresses right now in our world, right, you know, with regards to our own health care. So, access to virtual health care is a significant one. We've got a lot of young families out there. And if we can avoid those long trips to the walk-in clinic, the emergency room, or trying to get an appointment with your own doctor, and you can access that in 15 minutes to half an hour. I think that's critical, right?

Going back to Jeff's point on personal spending accounts or wellness accounts. I think ultimately, with the changing in the demographic, as you know, baby boomers are now exiting the workforce or soon to be over the next coming years, and with the younger demographic; they're all looking for choice. They're looking for flexibility. You know, we have to lean on the insurance carriers at this point in time for them to start understanding that and putting together greater tools and program availability to support what these demands are. Certain organizations or certain insurance carriers that do have nice, flexible products for small, midsize groups right now, but not all insurance carriers do. And in the Canadian marketplace, the majority of organizations are under 100 employees and even more so under 50, I guess. So I think it's just critical from that standpoint that the insurance carriers have to look in a little bit deeper and try and find solutions that are going to be a lot more relevant to the employee demographic that we're going to be witnessing in the years to come.

Catherine: [00:12:39] And it should be top priority.

Jeff Bremner: [00:12:40] I think we're also going to see a trend towards higher maximums for psychologists and social worker benefits, as an example.

Catherine: [00:12:48] Oh, to upgrade, alright.

Jeff Bremner: [00:12:49] Well, it's a little disturbing in the sense that mental health topped the list last year of highest out-of-pocket expenditure. And so if we think about a traditional benefits plan that's got a $300 per practitioner maximum or $500 per practitioner maximum, the cost of going to a psychologist or a social worker is $200 an hour. Somebody's going to get one and a half to two and a half sessions out of their benefits plan. But we know that it's going to take a lot more than one and a half to two and a half sessions for people to get where they need to be. And so there's a lot of additional cost that's coming out of the employee's pocket. So when we think about what are the top three stressors for employees right now? Well, it's personal finances, it's workload; and it's work life balance.

Catherine: [00:13:38] Work is there a lot.

Jeff Bremner: [00:13:39] Work is there a lot. But personal finance is being number one. And if people are stressed out about personal finances, and then they don't have a psychologist and social worker benefit that gives them the coverage that they need, then it's not going to go well. And so we've seen a lot of companies, like I think Starbucks was the first one that I can remember. You know, they went to a $5,000 maximum on psychologists and social workers. You know, maybe that's on the high end for sure. But certainly, some organizations are going to $1,500 maximums on psychologists and social workers and then leaving all of the other paramedical benefits at a $500 maximum. If we can get employees using more non-pharmacological avenues like therapy, maybe that then contributes to a reduction in drug costs; not only a reduction in drug costs, but then maybe less employees also going on disability, which then takes some of the financial pressure off the benefits plan.

Catherine: [00:14:33] I understand it must be tricky trying to give that personalized solution. But at least if the employers are trying, we're getting there even more so. But if you tell us, what are the benefits of promoting employee well-being?

Jeff Bremner: [00:14:45] Yeah, I think from my perspective, I think a lot of employers have come to realize that there's a really strong ROI that's associated with having happy and healthy employees. There's a lot of really amazing statistics out there. Like, mentally healthy employees working in a supportive environment are up to 12 times more productive, up to 8 times more engaged than their less healthy counterparts. And obviously, that's going to have a positive impact on performance for the organization. You've got reduced presenteeism, reduced absenteeism unhealthy employees, they take up to nine times more sick leave than their healthy counterparts. That's going to disrupt workflow; that's going to have a negative impact on the organization. I think unhealthy employees have greater health care costs. Right? I think that there's sort of the compassionate benefit, but there's also a bit of a strategic benefit here as well for employers to really focus in on employee well-being.

Adam Hudson: [00:15:44] Jeff makes a great point. I like the strategic benefit of it all, because at the end of the day, when you take a look at all the benefits of providing a very comprehensive, robust, health and wellness program, to that strategic side, I think what we're looking at is, it's a small investment on the front end to incorporate some of these benefits and communications and resources to your employees that we can now maybe step away from that presenteeism and absenteeism and reduce short-term disabilities, long-term disabilities. And if we can reduce even the level of medications individuals are taking, or we can isolate the proper medications for mental health related illnesses. They have those resources out there.

Jeff Bremner: [00:16:27] There's pharmacogenetics.

Adam Hudson: [00:16:28] Pharmacogenetics. And that's exactly it. So when organizations can start kind of accepting and engaging with some of these resources to provide a better kind of healthy landscape for their employees, I think ultimately for them, from even a cost standpoint, it’s significant. Your ROI on that just from productive employees and an organization culture, I think is significant, through it all.

Jeff Bremner: [00:16:52] But I also think that it's really important right now for employers to start thinking ahead. And I say that because we go back to the different generations that are in the workforce right now. So currently, I think it's about 54% of the Canadian workforce is made up of baby boomers and Gen X. It's still a lot. But over the next 5 to 7 years, that number is expected to drop to 25%. And you're going to have an influx of millennial and Gen Z employees in the workforce. And what do we know about millennials and Gen Z employees? They're very, very comfortable talking about mental health. They're very comfortable talking about their well-being. And they place a really strong emphasis on that. So I've heard that currently, Gen Z employees on average stay with an employer for two years and three months.

Catherine: [00:17:49] Two years and three months? That’s not a lot.

Jeff Bremner: [00:17:52] It's not a lot. And millennials are two years and nine months. And that's relative to Gen X that's over five years. And baby boomers are typically over eight years on average. And so when we start thinking about what's going to happen over the next 5 to 7 years, I think that there's a lot of investment that goes into training and developing new employees.

Catherine: [00:18:16] To retain them, you want to keep them.

Jeff Bremner: [00:18:18] You want to retain them, you want to make sure that they're engaged. And we know that Gen Z millennial population, wellness is really important to them. So in order to keep them engaged, it's going to be really, really important for organizations to put a lot of emphasis on organizational health so that they're able to retain those employees long term.

Catherine: [00:18:36] Absolutely. When it comes to group coverage benefits, what's important for the employees, what are their key considerations?

Adam Hudson: [00:18:42] Well, I guess it goes back to having that conversation about having a multi-generational workforce, right? There's different demands depending on the demographic of a group. So I think that the older demographic within an organization are somewhat still traditional in nature. I think they still kind of put a key focus on prescription drugs and dental and vision care. Some of them are looking at flexibility in their benefits, depending on what kind of cost contributions are with their employer. But when we look at a younger demographic, they want absolute flexibility, they want sheer choice in their benefits.

Catherine: [00:19:22] If you want me there, I want my flexibility.

Adam Hudson: [00:19:24] That's right. And I think that's what an organization has to understand. I think they need employee engagement, but I think ultimately, they need to listen to the employees and they need to gain the feedback from the employees to try and understand what's going on within their environment. And then again, trying to draft a program that is going to hit as many of their employees in a positive way as possible.

Jeff Bremner: [00:19:49] And it's not a set-it-and-forget-it type of mentality either. It's something that needs to be addressed on at least on an annual basis, because the makeup of an organization changes so much over time, where you've got younger employees come in. I've seen a lot of benefit plans over the years where the benefits have not changed for 10, 15 years, but the demographics certainly have.

Adam Hudson: [00:20:10] Absolutely. Yeah. And I think what COVID has actually done through all of this, as much as it's caused us to take a step back, adapt. Organizations are now looking at flexible work schedules and working from home and now trying to reengage some of those employees back into the workforce on a more regular basis.

Catherine: [00:20:29] Is it working well, bringing everyone back to work, maybe not five days, but…?

Adam Hudson: [00:20:32] Well, it's not back to a five-day model, but you know, we're still working in a hybrid, but now, it's not as cohesive of a setup as what was. Essentially, asking our employees to come back on set days during a week so that everybody is in the office at one point in time. So you've got greater cohesiveness and you've got greater conversation, greater productivity, because now everybody's there together.

Catherine: [00:20:56] And it's fun to be at the coffee machine, everyone together. “How was your night? Did you sleep well with your kid?” 

Adam Hudson: [00:21:03] Yeah, absolutely. It's all building that culture, that bonding experience. Work is also a social setting, right? It's not just…

Catherine: [00:21:11] Jeff tell us, employees are not always aware of what is included in their group coverage, like telemedicine, employee assistance programs. How can you make sure they're actually well informed?

Jeff Bremner: [00:21:25] Effective communication.

Catherine: [00:21:26] Seems like the basics.

Jeff Bremner: [00:21:27] Yeah, I mean, that's paramount. Employees want to know what's available to them and their dependents as part of their benefits plan. I think it's really critical for organizations to make information accessible and to make it easily digestible for employees. So accessible, meaning like from a digital perspective, it could be an intranet site, it could be a wellness hub, it could be an HR platform, as an example. In more of a physical environment, it's having posters and information in high-traffic areas like lunchrooms or printer rooms or wellness rooms as an example, in order for employees to feel comfortable. We have to understand, I guess, that not everybody's an expert in insurance, right? So making sure that that information is accessible to them, but again, breaking it down into smaller chunks, making it digestible, making it really, really, really easy to understand, ultimately is how I feel that employees are going to really have a strong understanding of what it is that they're covered for.

Adam Hudson: [00:22:33] And I think with organizations, and again, to Jeff's point, it's about just communication. That is the ultimate. But there's multiple avenues of communication. Jeff touched on a number of them. You know, there's some additional ways that you can engage those employees. You can have wellness fairs. And even a wellness fair is a public forum of accessing all of the services and resources that are available within your employee benefits network, essentially, or at least showing them what else is out there and what's available. And from that, you get further employee engagement and feedback as a result. We've done these with our clients in addition to employee education sessions, and one thing I find with employee education sessions – and Jeff will speak to this too, I'm sure – is that when it comes from a third party, so when we have these employee sessions, employees want to come up and talk to us about a personal situation because we still now have to bring it back to reducing stigma in the workplace. And it does go beyond even the mental health side of it. But they might have a personal medical issue. And they want to ask us on a personal front. They don't want to bring that forward to their employer because they don't know how that's going to be taken in.

Catherine: [00:23:46] Received.

Adam Hudson: [00:23:47] Exactly. So I think that there's other avenues that employers can explore for that communication. And at the end of the day, that is the ultimate, though, is how do we communicate it? How do we simplify what's out there and what's available to the plan members?

Jeff Bremner: [00:24:00] And you could also tie it into national health observances as well. So tying in information to World Mental Health Day or Diabetes Awareness Month, which happens to be the month of November. Communicating what's available to employees and tying it into one of those types of observances can be a really sort of beneficial way to get information across.

Catherine: [00:24:22] And it feels like you're very connected to the world today. By doing those themed days, you probably feel it even more in the employees. And I'm curious, when it comes to insurances included in the group coverage, such as life insurance, disability, and critical illness coverage, what steps can be done to improve their comprehension and awareness?

Adam Hudson: [00:24:43] I think it touches upon what we were just discussing. I think it's just clear communication. And how do you go about doing that? I think an organization has to understand how their employees are going to receive the information, how they're going to digest that information. What is the best avenue of communication or mode of communication for them? You know, is it intranet? Is it emails? Is it employee education sessions? Is it smaller employee education sessions where people have a greater comfort? Because the tendency is that if you're part of a large group through an education session, certain plan members are probably less likely to stand up and ask a question.

Catherine: [00:25:19] It's intimidating.

Adam Hudson: [00:25:20] Exactly. So maybe you kind of shrink what those employee sessions look like. But ultimately, it goes to that same kind of mode of, communication is key. And I think an organization knows the culture that they have in place and how to best engage their employees so that they do understand what they have included in their employee benefits program, the value that brings to not just themselves, but in some cases, more importantly, their family members.

Jeff Bremner: [00:25:48] Do you ever get into personalized consultations with plan members?

Adam Hudson: [00:25:54] Yes. From an organizational standpoint, you have to pick an advisor partner that is going to another level of services to not just your organization, but your plan members, and have, if it is one-on-one sessions with plan members, or have that open door that they can reach out to you at any time. Because unfortunately, I think that organizations take a lot of this on their own.

Catherine: [00:26:15] Their shoulders.

Adam Hudson: [00:26:16] Yeah.

Jeff Bremner: [00:26:18] And not the experts.

Adam Hudson: [00:26:19] And they're not the experts. And so they're now burdened trying to answer questions or researching when you have that level of expertise with you and your consultant, or we hope they do in the right partner.

Catherine: [00:26:31] Absolutely. Adam and Jeff, thank you so much for this great conversation. And we remember vacation time is important to think about ourselves. Thank you so much.

[00:26:43 TRANSITION]

Catherine: Jeff, is there a moving or funny story you'd like to share with us today?

Jeff Bremner: [00:26:57] Yeah, I can tell a quick story. Well, it's not necessarily specific to, I guess, organizational health per se. It comes back to the need for communication and education with employees. My wife and I got married in Mexico back in 2008. Likely as a result of it being an all-inclusive and open bar, I had a couple of really close friends of mine have to go to the hospital on consecutive days with the need for stitches. Probably not either of their finest moments. But at least when that happened, they both had employers that did a really great job of effectively communicating what was available to them through the benefits plan, out-of-country emergency coverage being one of those things. So they knew exactly what needed to happen when the injury occurred, and made the call that they needed to make. It probably could have gone a bit of a different way if they weren't prepared in the event something like that happened.

So another great example would be something like a medical second opinion, right? When somebody that's a dependent of yours is diagnosed with something like cancer as an example, knowing that you've got a benefit like that in your back pocket is incredibly valuable. But the only way that employees are really going to understand that is if the employer is communicating effectively with them, making it really easy for them to access that information and make sure that it's digestible for employees.

[00:28:35 TRANSITION]

Catherine: [00:28:44] So, Adam, can you summarize our conversation and remind us what should be done to really prioritize the employees’ well-being?

Adam Hudson: [00:28:51] It goes back to our initial point with leadership. I think the leadership within an organization has to have a thorough understanding of the culture of their organization, the employees within their organization, the generational gap within their organization. And I think they have to work closely with an advisor that's going to be well versed in the landscape of employee benefits, health, wellness. I think they have to be proactive in nature instead of reactionary. And I think if they are ahead of the curve to address some of the immediate concerns that we have right now in the employee landscape, such as mental health, I think they will ultimately be ahead of the curve in their own organizational growth.

Jeff had mentioned some of the statistics, with how long employees remain with an organization, it’s critical to understand that and to see how that's going to change in the years to come. Right now, going back to the mental health side of it all, again, is that to be proactive in nature, but have clear communication to channel some of the resources to their employees and make them aware of what is out there, what's available to themselves, you have to do a really good job in communicating it. Collectively, I think organizations starting from the top can do a really good job on a proactive side of communicating in a very clear, transparent and digestible manner, but at the same time get employee feedback and input on what is available and what they would like to see available to them in the years to come.

Catherine: [00:30:22] To personalize it, as you've been saying.

Adam Hudson: [00:30:26] Correct.

Catherine: [00:30:32] Thank you, Jeff and Adam, for sharing all those valuable insights about prioritizing the health and well-being of employees in an organization. Thank you for listening. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate and contact us at [email protected]. If you would like to have more information about this topic and discover other episodes, we invite you to go on Beneva’s website in the podcast section. Stay tuned for another conversation that will guide you for future insurance and business needs. Until next time!

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Dan Dyck: [00:00:02] My name is Dan Dyck. My wife Christa and I own Solomon Financial, a net worth financial. We've been in the business now for about 30 years together. What drives us? We have a motto that is, “We equip our clients for the great adventures of their lives.” We love that. We love to help families get to where they want to go without our own agenda getting in the way. So that's what fires me up every day is, I still love to deal with clients directly. I love teaching advisors, but my primary thing is, I still like to be kneecap-to-kneecap with clients, helping them to explore their great adventures.

Voice-over: [00:00:40] You have questions?

Question: [00:00:42] I was wondering, is there any way to reduce coverage costs in a smart way?

Question: [00:00:46] What should be done when a client wants to cut on their life insurance?

Question: [00:00:50] I'd like to make sure that my clients are informed enough to make the right decisions without compromising their security.

Voice-over: [00:00:57] We're here to answer them.

[00:01:00 TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau: [00:01:02] Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Catherine Duranceau. Thanks for joining. Today, let's dive into strategies to ensure your clients make the right choice about their coverage. Also, ways to reduce some of your client's protections and investments in a smart way. So, Dan, you've been working in the industry for more than 30 years, and I've heard that even if we're in an important period of inflation, your clients are not cutting out on their coverage. Can you explain to us how that happens?

Dan Dyck: [00:01:36] Yeah, for sure, Catherine. So I think the first thing I would say is that there is no perfect world. You're always going to have these challenges. So I don't want to give the idea that, you know, we've somehow, at our company, attained a perfect track record. But I would say that across the board, our advisors are not experiencing people canceling policies. Generally speaking, most of what we write stays on the books. And I think there's definitely some reasons for that. First off, we have great advisors. They're advisors that believe deeply in what they do, not just placing product. And I'm going to come back to that as we go through it. I think there's kind of three levels of serve in this industry. The first level is transactional. A lot of advisors still look to place business and it's transactional.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:02:27] Just to make money.

Dan Dyck: [00:02:28] Yeah, exactly, like it's a transaction. They know what pays the bills. And again, I don't fault them for that because you do have to look at the bottom line of a business. But I think it is misguided. And I think where it's misguided is, we spend so much of our time in this business working on the front end of the business and the front end of the business is prospecting and closing sales. We, quite frankly, don't even allow that language in our company. We don't want to spend time… We want our advisors spending time, instead of prospecting and closing sales, having real conversations with adults that can make their own decisions.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:03:05] It should be logic.

Dan Dyck: [00:03:06] It should be logic, right? So there's three levels. The first level is, we can make transactions. If you're making transactions, you will spend the vast majority of your career working on prospecting and closing. So that's a concern. The second level that gets a little bit deeper than that is what's used in our industry, or called in our industry, “needs-based selling.” So I might sit down with you, Catherine, and say, well, let's take a look at what you need and then let's sell to that need. It sounds better. In my opinion, it doesn't go deep enough, but basically what that looks like is I might ask you questions like, “So Catherine, tell me about what can you afford to put towards an overall plan for your financial security?”

Catherine Duranceau: [00:03:50] So you're adapting it, which is, I think very logic and smart.

Dan Dyck: [00:03:54] Yeah. And so that's another deeper level. But it still, in my opinion, doesn't go deep enough. And here's why I don't think it goes deep enough. Most people don't know. Most people, if you think about one word that describes most people's finances, honestly, it's fog. They just don't know.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:04:14] And stress.

Dan Dyck: [00:04:14] And yeah, actually, maybe there's two words.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:04:15] Words. I think stress takes a big space in this.

Dan Dyck: [00:04:17] Yeah, absolutely. And I think the stress comes largely from just not knowing. They don't know. Am I doing enough? Should I be saving more? My month-to-month bills versus income? What does that actually look like? Nobody wants to sit down.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:04:31] Should I look at that?

Dan Dyck: [00:04:32] Yeah. Do I even want to know? Right. So when we can get down to that level where we're actually sitting down with people and saying, okay, Catherine, let's start from the bottom up. Let's actually do the work, the hard work that very few people actually want to do, which is cash management. Like, how do we actually manage the money coming into the house and the money going out of the household and make it all mesh and make it all work? So that when we put other things in place, like a TFSA contribution, or your life insurance, or disability insurance, or long-term investing in RSPs and all that, those are not the bottom of that pyramid. They're the top of the pyramid. So the foundation is, are you solid month to month?

Catherine Duranceau: [00:05:16] Interesting.

Dan Dyck: [00:05:17] Yeah. Here's the funny part. We always say that there's natural-born spenders and there's natural born-savers.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:05:23] I want to know which one I am. This is cool.

Dan Dyck: [00:05:26] You got to take a quiz right. Neither is better than the other. And that's an important point. You know, there's a lot of people that, especially in couples, you'll have one participant that'll be like, oh, she's way better with money than me. Why? Well, because she knows how to save and I just know how to spend. And our message is always, actually, that doesn't make either one better. You know, you need to know how to spend because you guys got to have fun in your life. There's a point to this whole going-to-work-and-making-money thing. And it's not just to save money, it's to actually enjoy life. And so both of you are good with money in different ways.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:06:04] Which one are you?

Dan Dyck: [00:06:04] I'm a natural born spender. 100%.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:06:07] I would have thought the opposite.

Dan Dyck: [00:06:09] No, no, no, no, I wasn't born with a saving bone in my body. And so for me, no, when I have money, it's like, the only purpose to this is to go do something with my family, right? I just love spending money, I love travel. There's certain things to me that are just, this is what it's about. And so what's funny though, is my wife is a natural-born spender as well. So we have no tension.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:06:32] And if I'm not wrong, you work with your wife.

Dan Dyck: [00:06:35] I work with my wife.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:06:37] Good communication between the two.

Dan Dyck: [00:06:38] Absolutely. And so when we look at our clients, we're not the people that are saying, “Hey, you need to save as much as you possibly can,” and all that kind of stuff. We get very good results in terms of how much people save of their income, but that's not the focus. The focus is, what are we actually shooting for? What are we working towards? What jacks you guys up? What do you get excited about? Let's shoot for that. And then we will teach them to save, to accomplish those things. I only save money so that I can spend more later. That's my whole drive.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:07:10] And tell me, with your experience, what are the financial products that people should never cut out on? 

Dan Dyck: [00:07:10] Travel.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:07:11] Yeah, right. For mental health, we need to get out of a routine?

Dan Dyck: [00:07:20] Why do I say travel? Because that one's near and dear to me. But for somebody, it might be cars. You should never skimp on cars. So when we say financial products, of course I know what you're asking. You're asking should they be, you know, not cutting back on their TFSA contribution or on their life insurance premiums or things like that? Of course, that's all true. But when you think about what motivates people, their life insurance premium does not motivate them at all. Right? I pay a lot towards my Beneva universal life policy. Why? You already know me. Why do you think I put a lot towards my benefit policy?

Catherine Duranceau: [00:07:56] Well, you know how to deal with your money. You're quite good.

Dan Dyck: [00:07:59] I’ve good  systems. But the reality is, it's because I want to spend it later. I'm piling up money so that I can spend it. I already know what I'm going to spend it on. I'm already excited about those things. And so every month, a bunch of money goes to my universal life policy. But what's motivating me is not my premium. So really, what's motivating me is travel. Quite honestly, I love traveling with my family. And so that's what I'm doing with some of that money that gets built up in that life insurance policy. So for me, that's my motivator. So what should I not skimp on? I should not skimp on my dreams, the things that I'm excited about because it's what motivates me not to skimp on my insurance premium. So think about what actually motivates people rather than what is their duty.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:08:47] But then what happens when someone calls you and says, “I'm feeling kind of uncomfortable and I want to cut out on my life insurance?” Do you have to convince them? What is your approach in those situations?

Dan Dyck: [00:08:59] No. So it's a little bit laissez-faire, honestly, because my first answer to that is, absolutely. Let's have a coffee. Okay? So I will say that I can count on one hand, maybe even one finger, the number of times I've had a client call and say, “I need to cut out my life insurance.” The reason for that is because of the planning work that goes in before we ever get to actually putting a product, a financial product in place. And even then, sometimes you still get to a point where there's nothing that you can do. Certainly, when you've had no time to prepare with that client, in other words, prepare contingency plans, it's been a short relationship, it's harder. But here's how we normally operate. So step number one is we always want to make sure that there's emergency money in place. Emergency money is critical for job losses or just even job interruptions, or lower income or higher expenses or unexpected expenses. So we put a lot of emphasis when we first start with that family on cash flow planning to make sure that we actually have some money set aside. But usually it starts with, do they have any money on a monthly basis? And we spend a lot of time doing what we call plugging leaks. And plugging leaks can be things like they're overpaying on their cell bill or they're overpaying for internet at home or things like that. And we teach them how to strip down everything that they're being overcharged for, not what they're overspending on…

Catherine Duranceau: [00:10:30] You take the time to do that, which is good.

Dan Dyck: [00:10:32] We take a lot of time to do that work. Then we free up that money and we put it, generally speaking, into a TFSA that is no fees in, no fees out. So that becomes that client's emergency money. We don't call it a TFSA. We affectionately call it their bucket. So now we have that bucket in place. If a client comes to us and says, man, we can't make our insurance premiums, the first thing we would do is look at the bucket. Do they have enough money in there to cover premiums for a period of time? The second thing that we would do is let's say that we've run the course, we've used the bucket, and there's nothing else left to keep that policy going. It really depends on what kind of a policy it is. If it's a term insurance policy, we don't have a lot of options to extend that because there's no reserve fund inside that policy. So with Beneva, we do a lot of universal life with Beneva. Even if it's universal life plus a term rider, there's at least a portion that gives them a reserve fund inside the policy for this type of an event. So then we can say, look, how much can we afford? Not how much can you afford.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:11:41] You’re including yourself in it.

Dan Dyck: [00:11:42] We're helping them with their budget. How much can we afford to put towards this policy? And let's say that it was $200 per month and they can still do 50. Well, 50 might cover all the insurance cost. It's just, they don't have anything going into the savings component for a while. That's okay. That's sustainable. Let's pay your insurance cost and we will take a pause on the portion that normally goes to your investment component of the policy. So that's one step. Another step would be, we can't even afford the 50. Okay. Let's bring it right down to zero again. As long as it's a universal life policy, it will probably sustain itself for an extended period of time because the $50 cost will just come out of the reserves of the policy for a while. So for us, if there is at least some universal life component, it gives us a ton of options. If it's pure term, nothing wrong with pure term, but if it's pure term, we are significantly more limited. We're drawing from different resources trying to pay for that policy. But if we miss, you know, a premium for more than 30 days, it's canceled. It's over. The term insurance policy collapses. So we will then look to things like, Catherine, you're not working right now. You have RSPs. RSPs are taxed in your tax bracket. So if you're not working, your tax brackets likely going to be quite a bit lower this year. It may be a good idea for us to draw a bit of money out of your RSP every month to sustain your grocery bill and these different things that you're having trouble paying for, including your life insurance. How do you feel about that? So we can look at solutions like that to fund from different areas, to try and keep those things in place.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:13:21] So you're really analyzing every aspect before getting to the emergency fund and other resources.

Dan Dyck: [00:13:27] Yeah, you've got it. And it might be too, at some point we have to reduce coverage rather than eliminate coverage, which is sort of the last stage. Many, many more things that can be done that we haven't touched on. Because if I know your situation inside out, we can have those good conversations. If I just sold you a product, you're probably canceling that policy.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:13:48] And we trust you so much more, I guess, in those situations since you've been there for the past couple of years. But there are probably some people that did cut out, is it their life insurance or they stopped investing in whichever branch? Did that ever happen and how could you help them out?

Dan Dyck: [00:14:03] Yeah, yeah. No, certainly. And that's fair, Catherine. That's what I said at the beginning. There is no perfect world. There still will be clients that literally… like, I still remember a specific client, doing all of their work with them. And we went slow and it was methodical and we hit everything we could possibly hit. And then when we finished, one of the things we did is we put insurance in place on him and her. And two weeks into the underwriting process, they both worked at the same oil field company. They were both fired in the same day. So situations like that, it's not like, okay, you know, there's got to be a way around this to keep these policies in force. There just wasn't. So what did we do in that case? Get back in here, guys. The policies are on hold. We get it. Let's work on how do you survive now for the next three, four, five, six months until you're both back at work? And then we'll do a reset. So there are obviously extreme situations where there's just nothing that we can do.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:15:05] Uncontrollable also because you could lose your job at any day.

Dan Dyck: [00:15:09] Yeah. Yeah. You got it. So it's naive to say that you can save every policy you ever write, but it should be the hallmark of your business that that stands out as an absolute anomaly. Literally, I had to go back about eight years to remember that case because it's anomalous. It's not the norm. We want to make sure that almost all the business we put in place is good, solid business.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:15:33] And tell us, what do you think about group coverage? Is it a decent protection for everyone? How could you like be sure everyone has the right protection?

Dan Dyck: [00:15:43] Great question. And I've wrestled with that myself because you see people that have group coverage. What's interesting is a lot of times you'll be working with a client and they have really no frame of reference for how much insurance is enough. So this is somewhat undergirded by this belief: insurance is not a need. And I believe that insurance is not a need. It doesn't go far enough. But again, because they didn't have any choice in that whole thing, they were just assigned it. Right? They might have been given the choice, you can have one time in your annual salary or two times, but nobody sat down with them and went through, what is for you an ideal amount of insurance that you would like to have? Not what's the need, but what's the ideal amount? Nobody went through that exercise with them.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:16:29] I find it interesting because you were talking at the beginning how important the real conversation is, and I think you're getting that with the one-on-one situation, instead of having the group coverage where you're not getting everybody's needs and really understanding what every person wants and desires. But there are some great advantages of having group coverage, too.

Dan Dyck: [00:16:48] Yeah. And the reality is, for a lot of clients, group coverage is the only coverage they can get. Their health is such that they can only get group coverage, in which case it's not just good; it's the greatest, if they can't get coverage elsewhere. Group coverage is also incredibly cost effective. So we want to make sure that when clients have group coverage, they know the value in it. We typically recommend to beef it up to the top level they're allowed. So if it's standard, they get one year's income, and they're allowed to beef that up to two years’ income, we will recommend they beef it up to two years income. Obviously, group life coverage generally also comes with a lot of other benefits. And in some cases, even when a client retires, they can take some of those benefits with them into retirement, which is not always the case. But it's a solid product. So we encourage people to participate in their group coverage to the fullest extent. And then on top of that, look at what do they want for an ideal insurance need? Again, I don't use the word need; I use the word desire. What's your desired amount that you want? And then we'll make group coverage a part of that. Generally speaking, they will beef it up a little bit on the personal side anyway, because the difference in cost is fairly negligible, to ensure that they have that coverage, even if they leave their group.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:18:35] Dan, is there a personal story that you'd like to share to our listeners today? 

Dan Dyck: [00:18:38] Sure. Yeah. So it was at a point in my career, about 15 years into my career, where I had had this, what I called a crisis of conscience. And I was going back to all of my current clients, and I was trying to sort of, if you will, throw my mouth over the bar and then figure out how to fix it. So what that looked like to me was saying, whatever you guys want in your life, let's figure out how to go there, and we'll work together until we get it, and then leaving the house and going, “I have no idea how to get them there.” And that forced me to become significantly more creative and more resourceful and bring more people to the table to try and solve those issues or to shoot for those things. So as meeting with this one couple and I was talking to them about, what is it that you really want? And honestly, my impression was the wife was all in and the husband was all out, right? I was talking to her because she was giving me…

Catherine Duranceau: [00:19:41] Very motivated.

Dan Dyck: [00:19:41] Yeah, she was motivated. She was participatory, and he was just staring out the window like he wished I would leave. And all of a sudden, he started to cry. And I was like, I did not see that coming. Maybe he is listening. And he looks at me and he says, all I want to do is take my kids to Disneyland. And I said, okay. As he's crying, right? And I said, okay, can you tell me more about that? And he says, I have been promising my kids since they were little kids that I would take them to Disneyland. My oldest turns 18 next year and I've never done it. I've lived paycheque to paycheque my whole life, and I've never delivered on that promise. Immediately, for me, that was like, this is what it's about. It's not about life insurance and TFSAs and RSPs. He doesn't give a rip about that stuff. All he cared about is he wanted to send his kid or take his kids, rather, to Disneyland. And so from that point forward with that family, all we talked about is how do we get there? Now, what did it require? It required some debt work. It required some TFSAs. It required all kinds of things to bring it together. And they took their kids to Disneyland. And it was a celebration for them and for me. Right? It was extraordinary to have participated in that and watched him take his kids to Disneyland.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:21:03] It's such a personal story where you're helping him like, just get that goal that's so rewarding for you.

Dan Dyck: [00:21:08] 100%. And did he buy life insurance? Yeah, he did, but it wasn't the point, right? It was, we tapped into something that he was passionate about and it was helping his family, doing things for his family. So life insurance later was a no-brainer. But it wasn't what we led with. You know, his TFSA was a no-brainer. It's not what we led with. We led with, how do we get you to Disneyland? So yeah, that was a cool turning point in my career.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:21:34] Yeah. A human story where you just wanted to change your way of seeing your job.

Dan Dyck: [00:21:39] Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine Duranceau: [00:22:00] All right, Dan, so it's time to sum up our great conversation. Can you briefly tell us what we should absolutely remember when clients maybe want to just cut their savings?

Dan Dyck: [00:22:08] Yeah. Thank you, Catherine I've really enjoyed this time together, too. So I think to sum it up, if a client is asking to cut costs, it’s for a reason. So rather than thinking about ourselves in that situation, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the client. We need to feel that pain a little bit, if you will. But most importantly, that's where we need to roll up our sleeves and go to work. And rolling up our sleeves and go going to work looks like us sitting down, going back to the basics again, providing we've done our job in the first place of helping them with their cash flow planning, helping them with their emergency fund establishment, all those pieces, then we've earned the right to go back into that situation at that point and say, okay, where does it hurt? How do we fix it? And how, therefore, can we defend the really important products that you've put in place so that we're not back to the drawing board later? If we've done our work at the beginning, that conversation, we've earned their trust to have that conversation when the crisis comes up.

[00:23:08 TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau: [00:23:09] Thank you for your time and expertise, Dan. It was so interesting to know how to deal with customers who want to cut back on their protection. And thank you for listening. I hope these tools will be helpful for your ongoing and future practice. If you have any questions, don't hesitate and contact us at [email protected]. If you would like to have more information about this topic and discover other episodes, go on Beneva's website in the podcast section. Stay tuned for another conversation that will guide you for future insurance and business needs, until next time.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Benoit Robert : [00:00:03] Alors mon nom est Benoit Robert. Je suis le président-directeur général et fondateur de Communauto. Je suis quelqu'un qui a toujours été préoccupé par la qualité de l'environnement, la qualité de vie, la qualité de l'urbanisme. Donc pour moi, l'autopartage, c'est une façon d'améliorer la ville et, par conséquent, d'améliorer la vie qu'on peut mener dans les villes qu'on habite.

Christian Vanasse : [00:00:25] Mon nom est Christian Vanasse. J'œuvre en assurance des entreprises depuis 29 ans. Ma passion, c'est vraiment l'entrepreneuriat. Je suis comme un entrepreneur refoulé. Je travaille depuis des années à sécuriser les investissements de nos entrepreneurs au Québec. À défaut d'en être un, bien, je les protège, je protège leur pérennité.

Voix off : [00:00:48] Vous vous questionnez?

Question : [00:00:50] Est-ce que j'ai un assureur qui répond vraiment à mes besoins?

Question : [00:00:53] Comment je peux savoir si mon entreprise est encore bien protégée?

Question : [00:00:57] À quel moment je dois réviser mes protections d'entreprise?

Voix off : [00:01:00] Voici nos réponses.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:01:03] Bonjour! On est très heureux de vous accueillir pour un nouvel épisode de Paroles d'experts. Je m'appelle Catherine Duranceau et j'ai le bonheur de guider la conversation qui porte sur les meilleurs outils pour optimiser vos protections d'entreprise. Salut Benoit et Christian, c'est un honneur de discuter avec vous. J'aimerais vraiment qu'on commence par le tout début de Communauto, Benoit, parce que tu as eu cette idée de génie en 1994, cette alternative verte et ça a débuté à Québec. Parle-nous un peu du début de l'aventure de Communauto?

Benoit Robert : [00:01:34] Je sais pas si c'est une idée de génie, moi j'ai toujours dit que c'était plutôt… que ça vient peut-être d'un besoin très égoïste. J'ai toujours trouvé… bien, toujours… à partir du moment où j'ai eu ressenti le besoin d'avoir accès à un véhicule – parce que je suis quelqu'un qui aime les activités de plein air, donc des fois qui dit plein air, dit des fois on a besoin de louer une voiture pour sortir de la ville ou aller faire du ski de fond, aller faire de la randonnée pédestre ou autre – j'aurais souhaité pouvoir louer des voitures pour moins que 24 h. Parce que j'habitais à Québec à l'époque. Je suis déménagé de Montréal à Québec pour pouvoir faire ma maîtrise ici à l'Université Laval, et puis je trouvais dommage d'avoir à louer une voiture pour 24 h juste pour aller, par exemple, au Centre de ski de fond de Charlesbourg, ce qui était très loin en autobus, mais très, très proche en auto. C'est un exemple parmi d'autres, mais c’est ce genre de petites frustrations cumulées-là qui m'ont fait penser « bien, ça serait le fun qu'on puisse louer une auto pour seulement quelques heures, plutôt que de payer à la journée ». Donc, l'idée est vraiment née d'un besoin. Par contre, c'est à l'Université Laval, après m'être inscrit à la maîtrise, que j'ai commencé à faire des recherches sur ce concept-là en me disant « c'est une bonne idée, sûrement qu'il y a quelqu'un qui y a pensé quelque part dans le monde ».

Catherine Duranceau : [00:02:37] Puis, c’est du côté de l'Europe que tu as été légèrement inspiré?

Benoit Robert : [00:02:38] Bien au début, je savais pas où chercher, puis je savais même pas comment qualifier ce type de service-là, parce que c'était l'autopartage avant la lettre. Fait que dans ce temps-là, c'est avant Internet en fait. Quand on voulait faire des recherches, il fallait aller dans les microfiches à l'université, puis on avançait à tâtons. Ça fait que là, je cherchais « car rental », « short-term car rental ». Tsé, j'essayais de trouver n'importe quelle combinaison de mots qui pourrait me mettre sur une piste. Puis, c'est en me rendant au centre de documentation de Transports 2000 et en discutant avec la personne qui s'occupait du centre de documentation, en lui expliquant c'était quoi l'idée, qu’il m'a mis sur la première piste, le premier filon que j'ai découvert. C'est un bouquin qui s'appelait « Para-transit: Neglected options for urbain mobility ». Excusez mon accent en anglais, mais là-dedans, on décrivait des services qui avaient, soit jamais existé, mais qui avaient été pensés, conceptualisés, ou qui avaient déjà existé. Là-dedans, il y en avait aux États-Unis, mais il y en avait en Europe aussi, notamment à Amsterdam.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:03:32] Puis qui fonctionnaient quand même. Et là, de le mettre en branle, ce projet-là, j'imagine qu'il y a quelques embûches, là?

Benoit Robert : [00:03:37] Bien, en fait, non. C'est qu'il fonctionnait pas ou il avait jamais fonctionné.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:03:42] OK, ça, ça nous motive à partir le projet, là!

Benoit Robert : [00:03:44] Oui, c'est ça. Amsterdam, ça fonctionnait plus vraiment. À Montpellier, ça avait été un flop monumental parce qu'ils avaient appelé ça « service de taxi sans conducteur ». Ils se sont mis l'industrie du taxi à dos. Et aux États-Unis, c'est une boîte d'urbanistes-conseil qui avait élaboré un concept, qui avait été financé par le Urban Mass Administration aux États-Unis. Donc il a été subventionné pour faire le projet, mais ça avait été un flop commercial. Fait que mes premiers filons n'étaient pas très concluants pour rencontrer des banquiers, puis leur demander « Bien regardez, ça n'a jamais marché, mais avec moi, faites-moi confiance, ça va marcher ».

Catherine Duranceau : [00:04:17] Ça va marcher! Puis là, d'essayer de convaincre l'assureur, alors ça va fonctionner. Est-ce que vous voulez embarquer dans mon projet? Puis ça a été un peu le cas, Christian, avec côté assurances, parce que l'entreprise par la suite a évolué, de Montréal à Halifax, a beaucoup, beaucoup bougé. Tu as été témoin depuis le début, là, Christian, de l'aventure Communauto, peux-tu nous en parler?

Christian Vanasse : [00:04:35] Pas tout à fait depuis le début, mais…

Catherine Duranceau : [00:04:37] Pas loin!

Christian Vanasse : [00:04:38] Oui, dans l'ex-Capitale, chez Beneva, c'est une fierté, l'histoire de Communauto, parce que c'est très compliqué pour les entrepreneurs comme Benoit qui ont une idée puis qui veulent partir quelque chose. Les assureurs, on travaille avec le passé, donc on travaille avec des statistiques du passé, puis on essaie de prévoir l'avenir. Mais quand il n'y a pas de passé…

Catherine Duranceau : [00:05:03] Mais une idée novatrice.

Christian Vanasse : [00:05:04] Une idée novatrice.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:05:05] Donc, on salut ça, Benoit là.

Christian Vanasse : [00:05:06] C'est ça, où il n'y a pas de passé, pas nécessairement de statistiques, bien, de trouver l'assureur qui va dire OK. Un peu comme le banquier, « bien, j'ai confiance en votre projet et puis on va l'avancer ensemble ». Puis, c’est ce qui s'est fait avec La Capitale, tranquillement, avec les premières voitures à Québec. Puis la suite, de l'accompagnement par la suite jusqu'à aujourd'hui.

Benoit Robert : [00:05:30] On n’avait pas beaucoup de matériaux pour les actuaires de l'assurance.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:05:33] Oui, c'est ça! C’était plus difficile.

Benoit Robert : [00:05:34] C'était plutôt ennuyant comme produit, comme concept à assurer.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:05:38] Tu les fais travailler un peu, essayer de comparer des marchés et tout ça. Puis sinon, quand même, il faut dire que la communication et la transparence, c'est un aspect important du côté de l'assureur.

Christian Vanasse : [00:05:47] Oui, tout à fait. Pour nous, Benoît de Communauto, c'est pas un client, c'est un partenaire avec beaucoup de transparence. C'est des rencontres fréquentes sur les projets à venir, sur les changements de législations qui pourraient affecter son industrie, que ce soit par les vignettes de stationnement ou par des stationnements, les véhicules laissés un peu partout. Du véhicule Communauto standard au Flex où le véhicule peut-être… Tous ces changements-là, puis cette évolution-là chez Communauto, c'est de l'information qu'on a à l'avance, que Benoît nous fait travailler avant en disant « J'ai une idée supplémentaire, ça s'en vient, on s'en va vers là ».

Catherine Duranceau : [00:06:31] Je complexifie le tout.

Christian Vanasse : [00:06:32] Puis de notre côté, ça nous permet de venir voir, de faire travailler les actuaires, parce qu'on a pas mal plus d'autos pour faire travailler les actuaires, pas mal plus de données, puis ça nous permet de bien accompagner Communauto dans tous ces projets futurs. Mais si ce n'était pas de cet échange d'information-là, cette relation de partenariat-là et de confiance, autant nous envers Communauto que je pense Benoît envers nous, on fait preuve de transparence dans la tarification, dans les conditions, Benoît dans vers où il va, puis on réfléchit ensemble à trouver des solutions pour que ça aille mieux.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:07:10] Que ça fonctionne. Oui, oui.

Christian Vanasse : [00:07:11] Tout à fait. Qu'on le voit, puis que les projets se réalisent année après année.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:07:16] Puis, comme ça a peut-être été plus difficile, convaincre nécessairement l'assureur qui a finalement embarqué dans ton projet, toi, as-tu un conseil à donner à d'autres entrepreneurs qui se retrouvent aussi dans une zone grise un peu comme tu l'étais au tout début? Parce que finalement, ça a très bien fonctionné. Je pense que Beneva est content aujourd'hui aussi?

Benoit Robert : [00:07:31] Je dirais que mes conseils, ça se résume en deux mots : persévérance et patience. Mais, ça m'a pris à peu près un an avant de réussir à trouver un assureur. Tantôt, vous me posez des questions sur comment l'idée m'est venue. Mais en fait, ce qu'il faut comprendre aussi, c'est qu'au départ, je n'avais pas du tout l'intention de lancer le service. Moi, j'essayais de convaincre des loueurs de le lancer pour que je puisse en profiter comme consommateur.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:07:53] OK. Tu ne voulais pas le gérer.

Benoit Robert : [00:07:55] Fait que ça a été l'aboutissement d'un processus qui a duré quand même quelques années avant que je sois devant l'obligation de lancer le service. Et c'est à partir de ce moment-là, où j'ai commencé mes démarches pour pouvoir trouver un assureur, apprendre comment on lance une entreprise, j'avais aucune idée de comment.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:08:11] OK, on part à zéro, là, tsé.

Benoit Robert : [00:08:12] Je partais à zéro. C'est ça. Fait que ça a été un long processus. J'ai cogné à la porte de plusieurs assureurs, écrit plusieurs lettres et ainsi de suite. Ça a pris du temps. Mais c'est ça, il fallait tout simplement persévérer jusqu'au jour où, finalement, à La Capitale, le nom de Beneva de l'époque, finalement quelqu'un s'est intéressé à mon projet et c'est à partir de là que j'ai pu y donner suite.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:08:32] Wow! C'est très motivant! On dirait qu'on a le goût d'avoir cette persévérance un peu comme toi, Benoît.

Benoit Robert : [00:08:38] Ou cette naïveté, je pourrais dire, parce que j'avais aucune idée de dans quoi je m'embarquais!

Catherine Duranceau : [00:08:42] Dans le cas de Communauto, on fait bien sûr des suivis mensuels pour être sûrs que tous les services sont à jour avec le fait que l'entreprise grandit. Mais sinon, pour un autre type d'entreprise, c'est quand que c'est nécessaire de faire des mises à jour?

Christian Vanasse : [00:08:56] Aussitôt qu'il y a des changements majeurs ou des projets. Dans le cas de Communauto, on se rencontre souvent, puis on se parle souvent parce que Communauto a toujours un nouveau projet qui s'en vient. On est toujours en train de voir.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:09:10] Je vois l'idée qui s'en vient de Benoit, là. Il remonte ses lunettes, là.

Christian Vanasse : [00:09:13] Oui, oui. On est toujours en train de bâtir quelque chose. Je dirais que la mise à jour, dans la plupart des entreprises, on essaie de le faire au minimum une fois par année. Mais idéalement, aussitôt qu'il y a un changement dans les activités ou qu'il y a de l'acquisition de biens ou un changement législatif qui change, qui change la façon d'opérer de l'entreprise. Aussitôt qu'un processus change, qu'il y a des acquisitions, c'est très important de faire la mise à jour. Puis souvent, on dit tout le temps de ne pas attendre au renouvellement, parce qu'au renouvellement, c'est comme… c’est dommage en assurances, au renouvellement, on négocie de la prime puis des conditions. Ça fait qu'on n'est pas en travail de dire « Ah OK, comment on va évaluer ça, comment ton nouveau projet va t'amener là? Ça va être quoi l'impact sur les autres choses? » La période du renouvellement est plus pour renouveler le contrat, tandis que toute la période entre les deux, bien c'est là qu'on peut travailler à améliorer des choses, à comprendre comment est fait, à conseiller parfois sur certaines préventions ou sur certaines choses qui amélioreraient des situations. Fait que je dirais que c'est aussitôt qu'il y a un changement, aussitôt qu'il y a une idée quelconque, de consulter son assureur pour voir « Écoute, est-ce que… »

Catherine Duranceau : [00:10:30] Est-ce que ça vaut la peine. C'est ça.

Christian Vanasse : [00:10:30] Oui! Est-ce que tu vas m'accompagner? Qu'est-ce que tu vois, toi comme assureur que, moi, je verrais pas comme risque?

Catherine Duranceau : [00:10:35] C'est peut-être nouveau aussi.

Christian Vanasse : [00:10:37] C'est toujours gagnant, la communication. Un peu comme… Puis c'est drôle parce qu'en finances, on le fait avec son banquier. Son banquier, on est toujours rendu là à lui dire « J’ai un projet, ça se peut que j'aie besoin de ça », mais on oublie souvent l'assureur. Puis pourtant, ce qui va sécuriser ce projet-là en arrière, c'est l'assureur, fait qu'il faut qu'il soit là, il faut qu'il comprenne. Fait que c'est ce que je prône.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:11:01] J’aime ça. Et dis-nous, Christian, est-ce que tu aurais un exemple d'une entreprise qui malheureusement avait peut-être pas fait les mises à jour, avait peut-être oublié d'appeler son assureur et qui, finalement, se retrouvait peut-être dans une situation inconfortable, financièrement ou autre?

Christian Vanasse : [00:11:15] C'est malheureusement trop fréquent. Je nommerai pas de nom d'entreprises, mais ça arrive vraiment fréquemment. On le voit souvent chez les entrepreneurs. Par exemple, un entrepreneur en construction. Part la petite business, deux-trois employés, ça va bien. Pas le temps d'appeler son assureur, c'est sur le chantier. Nouveau contrat, achète une pépine. Un autre petit contrat, achète un lift, tout ça. Puis vient un moment où ils se font voler tout ce qu'il y avait sur un chantier. Puis quand ils appellent leur assureur, bien l'assureur dit « Tu avais 50 000 de stock, là, tu m'en réclames pour 250. Je le sais pas, moi, que tu t'es acheté une pépine, je le sais pas que tu t’es acheté un lift, je le sais pas que tu t’es acheté un paquet d'équipements ».

Puis là, bien ça fait des pertes vraiment vraiment importantes. Fait que, comme on disait tantôt, aussitôt qu'on fait des acquisitions qui sont majeures, d'en informer son assureur, c'est très important. Même si vous pouvez des fois avoir un montant global d'assurances. Tu dis « Moi j'ai un montant global, ça fait que si j'achète trois-quatre outils de plus… ».

Catherine Duranceau : [00:12:19] Je suis déjà couvert.

Christian Vanasse : [00:12:19] « … je suis déjà couvert ». Mais, ça va très rapidement. Puis, il ne faut pas oublier aussi que, ce qu'on achète, des fois on va profiter de spéciaux. On va acheter. Les entrepreneurs sont là, il y a un lot, il y en a un qui a fait faillite, ils achètent le lot de stock, il amène ça. Puis là, il peut même appeler son assureur, puis dire « J'ai rajouté 30 000 d'outils ». Mais la journée où il se fait voler…

Catherine Duranceau : [00:12:43] Il n’est pas couvert.

Christian Vanasse : [00:12:44] Il faut les racheter, les 30 000 d'outils. Mais là, ça va être en valeur à neuf. Ce 30 000 -là vaut peut-être 100 000, puis il vaut peut-être 125 000. Ça fait que là, ils vont être en insuffisance d'assurances. Puis ça, on le voit malheureusement souvent, là. Puis la plupart du temps, ils peuvent passer à travers, mais d'autres fois, c'est des mises à jour sur des bâtiments. On le voit, là. On l'a vu dans les dernières années. Beaucoup des feux majeurs, par exemple, où le client n’a pas fait réévaluer son bâtiment, puis il dit « Bah! Mon assureur m'indexe de 4-5 % par année ». Puis lui, il continue à faire des travaux sur le bâtiment, puis finalement, il est victime d'un feu assuré pour, par exemple, 1 million. Puis finalement, ça coûte 1,6 million reconstruire. Bien, c’est 600 000 piastres de sa poche qu’il est obligé de débourser.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:13:37] C'est gros, là.

Christian Vanasse : [00:13:38] Le client, ça, ça peut mettre une entreprise à terre, vraiment, vraiment rapidement.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:13:42] Bien, je pense qu’on n’a pas le réflexe de rappeler l'assureur. « Écoute, j'ai racheté tel, tel item ». Mais Benoit, est-ce que ça t'est arrivé de dire « OK, là, il est temps que j'appelle pour peut-être faire un petit suivi parce que j'ai trop d'expansion, ou j'ai 700 véhicules qui vont arriver au cours des prochaines semaines »?

Benoit Robert : [00:13:57] En fait, pour ce qui est des véhicules, c'est pas un enjeu parce que notre entente prévoit que toutes les voitures qu'on acquiert en cours d'année font partie de la police, puis on fait un ajustement annuel. Par contre, maintenant, on est propriétaire de garages. On a ouvert notre premier centre d'entretien en septembre, puis on a acheté une bâtisse aussi. Donc, on ouvre un deuxième centre d'entretien dans les prochaines semaines. Avec ce que je viens d'entendre, c'est clair que je vais demander au directeur de mon centre d'entretien : est-ce qu'il a appelé notre assureur?

Catherine Duranceau : [00:14:22] Appelle à chaque mois, là. Bien non, mais c'est vrai!

Benoit Robert : [00:14:23] Justement, ils viennent d'installer dix lifts la semaine passée. Est-ce qu’ils sont inclus?

Christian Vanasse : [00:14:26] Ça serait un bon exemple.

Benoit Robert : [00:14:29] C'est beau de déléguer, mais en même temps, il faut s'assurer que ceux à qui on délègue pensent à appeler notre partenaire assureur.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:14:35] Ah oui, oui, non, c'est bien dit. Bien dit.

Christian Vanasse : [00:14:37] Mais je te rassure Benoît, on suit de notre bord aussi.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:14:38] Encore une fois, notre assureur est là. Et sinon, de manière générale, Christian, dis-nous quel type d'assurance doit-on avoir quand on possède une entreprise en général?

Christian Vanasse : [00:14:49] Il y en a vraiment… il y en a une multitude. Je dirais en premier, c'est tout ce qui touche la responsabilité civile. Donc, tout ce qu'on fait, tous les dommages qu'on peut faire aux tiers, c'est ce que ça prend absolument. Ça, c’est comme l'incontournable. Peu importe qui se lance en affaires, ça prend de la responsabilité civile pour les dommages que tu fais aux tiers pour éliminer les poursuites. Après ça, c'est tout ce qui est tes risques qui sont un petit peu plus à toi. Fait que tes bâtiments, ton contenu, ton mobilier.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:15:17] Le financier, admettons.

Christian Vanasse : [00:15:18] Oui, financier. Tout ce que tu as acheté.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:15:20] Tu ne veux pas perdre ton argent.

Christian Vanasse : [00:15:21] C'est ça. Tout ce que tu as acheté et investi, tu ne veux pas que ce soit un petit feu ou un petit vol qui vienne te chercher tout ce que tu as investi là. Il y a tout ce qui s'appelle assurance au niveau de la perte de revenu. Si jamais tes activités arrêtaient, bien, tu as encore des gens à payer, tu as encore une hypothèque, tu as encore plein de choses. Il faut que les revenus continuent à rentrer. Ça fait que c'est de l'assurance pour les pertes de revenus.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:15:48] Un peu en mode pour ne pas tomber en faillite.

Christian Vanasse : [00:15:49] Bien, tout à fait.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:15:50] Un peu ce parallèle-là?

Christian Vanasse : [00:15:52] Pour continuer les activités. Il y a tout ce qui touche la fraude. La fraude en argent, la fraude par carte de crédit et compagnie. Toutes ces protections-là sont nécessaires. Aujourd'hui, dans le monde actuel, tout ce qui touche la cybersécurité, c'est un incontournable, là. C'est plus quand est-ce que tu vas te faire hacker. C'est pas si tu vas te faire hacker, c'est quand. Tsé, c'est là. Les assureurs sont frileux sur la protection de ça. C'est quelque chose que je disais, un assureur ça se fie, ça établit les règles et les tarifications en fonction du passé. Bien, le cyber on le voit beaucoup, mais c'est quand même assez récent. Il n'y a pas 20 puis 25 ans de statistiques là-dessus. Fait que les protections sont quand même assez limitées, mais c'est un risque où les assureurs travaillent très fort parce que c'est quelque chose de très réel aujourd'hui dans la vie de...

Catherine Duranceau : [00:16:50] Et qui devient rapidement incontrôlable, parce que dès que c'est parti, ils peuvent voler plusieurs milliers de dollars, disons, dans un temps.

Christian Vanasse : [00:16:55] Tout à fait. Puis peu importe la grosseur, qu’on parle de micro-entreprises, de petites entreprises jusqu'à méga entreprises, tout le monde…

Catherine Duranceau : [00:17:05] Le dommage est là.

Christian Vanasse : [00:17:06] Le dommage est là, tout le monde peut y passer.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:17:08] OK, donc il y en a plusieurs types d'assurances, mais tout autant essentielles.

Christian Vanasse : [00:17:12] Tout à fait.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:17:13] Et Communauto, j'imagine, on a bien dressé le portrait. Il faut être bien assuré aussi avec les 6000 véhicules de Communauto aujourd'hui?

Benoit Robert : [00:17:22] À peu près, oui.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:17:24] Ça m'impressionne. J'aime ça, Benoit. J'aime ça, j'aime ça.

[00:17:27 TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau : [00:17:49] Benoît, est-ce qu'il y aurait comme une anecdote cocasse ou qui t'a énormément marqué à travers ces dernières années chez Communauto?

Benoit Robert : [00:17:57] En fait, c'est même la première année que ça m'a marqué, parce que je pense qu'il y a beaucoup de gens l'ont oublié, mais c'est moi qui ai fait le premier accident avec une voiture de Communauto.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:18:05] OK! Raconte-nous, on veut les détails.

Benoit Robert : [00:18:08] Après avoir démarré le service à Québec, tantôt j'ai mentionné que je suis venu à Québec pour faire ma maîtrise, donc ce n'était pas prévu que je m'installe à Québec définitivement. Je suis originaire de Montréal. Donc rapidement, après avoir lancé le service à Québec, j'ai commencé à travailler avec des partenaires à Montréal pour lancer le service là-bas, donc je devais faire souvent la navette Montréal-Québec. Puis moi, mon père ne me prêtait pas son auto. Fait qu’entre 16 ans et 29 ans, j'ai à peu près touché zéro fois. En réalité, j'ai touché peut-être une ou deux fois un volant d'auto, fait que je n'avais pas beaucoup d'expérience. Je faisais la route Montréal-Québec, puis il fallait que j'arrête plusieurs fois dans des haltes routières pour me relaxer un petit peu parce que j'étais tellement stressé. Fait qu'à un moment donné, il y avait une plaque de glace, puis mon auto a commencé à tourner, tourner, tourner. Puis là, je voyais un camion qui arrivait. Je voyais tout ça au ralenti. Fait qu’à un moment donné, le camion approchait, approchait, approchait. Puis à un moment donné, ça fait pouk! Au moins, c'était vrai. Je le voyais pas juste au ralenti, il avait vraiment ralenti. Heureusement! Mais bon. Un petit pouk sur une auto, sur la 20 en hiver, l'auto roulait encore, mais après avoir regardé l'auto, j’ai dit « Oh boy! » J’étais un petit peu gêné, un petit peu mal à l'aise. J'espère qu'ils me couperont pas mon assurance.

Christian Vanasse : [00:19:16] Qui a été si dure à négocier.

Benoit Robert : [00:19:18] Qui a été si dure à trouver.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:19] Ah oui, c’est ça! Puis finalement, je l'avais et ça a été, oui, une belle épreuve?

Benoit Robert : [00:19:22] C’était pas pour tester le produit. C'était pas volontaire.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:24] Mais finalement, tu étais correct. Ça aurait pu être assez dangereux, là.

Benoit Robert : [00:19:26] Oui, oui. Comme je vous dis, moi je voyais tout ça au ralenti, mais je savais pas si c'était au ralenti pour vrai ou seulement dans ma tête.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:32] Tu as paniqué. Finalement, ça s'est bien géré.

Benoit Robert : [00:19:34] C’est ça. Mais j'ai jamais refait d'accident depuis.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:36] Depuis ce moment-là, OK.

Benoit Robert : [00:19:37] Ça fait presque 30 ans.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:37] Puis, as-tu été impressionné des services pour réclamer par la suite?

Benoit Robert : [00:19:41] Ça a très bien été. Comme tout le reste par la suite.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:45] Ils sont restés dans le projet, donc c'est bon signe.

Benoit Robert : [00:19:48] C'est bon signe.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:19:49] OK, bon, bien merci, c'était super. Merci.

[00:19:52 TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau : [00:20:11] Pour résumer notre conversation, Christian, en quelques mots, partage-nous pourquoi, à quel moment et comment on devrait optimiser nos protections d'entreprise?

Christian Vanasse : [00:20:19] Les protections d'assurance, c'est la vie. Donc, ça suit le cycle de vie de l'entreprise. Donc, ça doit s'optimiser à chaque fois qu'il se passe quelque chose. Des premiers pas de l'entreprise jusqu'à premier achat de souliers, de linge, de livres d'école, de rentrée scolaire, de mariage. C'est un peu ça. C'est à chaque fois qu'il y a un changement dans l'entreprise, il faut en aviser son assureur. Idéalement, il faut en jaser avec son assureur avant. L'entreprise va se marier avec une autre entreprise. Il faudrait le savoir pour être capable d'envisager et d'aider à planifier ce que ça va prendre comme assurances avec la nouvelle entreprise fusionnée. Quand il se fait des acquisitions de matériels, des investissements, des changements d'activités, aussitôt qu'il se passe quelque chose qui n'est pas le day to day, il faut en aviser son assureur puis en jaser. Il peut juste vous aider à grandir avec votre entreprise en toute sécurité. Fait que vous prenez plus de chances, vous faites pas des affaires à peu près, on est là pour encadrer puis vous protéger si jamais il arrive quelque chose.

Catherine Duranceau : [00:21:29] Puis au contraire, on vous dérange pas là.

Christian Vanasse : [00:21:31] Jamais! Jamais, jamais, vous nous dérangez. Jamais, jamais! On est du bon monde, on adore ça.

[00:21:38 TRANSITION]

Catherine Duranceau : [00:21:40] Merci beaucoup, Benoit et Christian, pour ce témoignage et de nous avoir partagé votre expérience sur les protections d'entreprise. C'était super intéressant et inspirant. Surtout, un immense merci à nos auditeurs. Si vous avez des questions, écrivez-nous à l'adresse [email protected]. Pour obtenir plus d'information et écouter plus d'épisodes, aller sur le site web de Beneva, section balado. On se donne rendez-vous pour d'autres échanges qui vous donneront des outils pour prendre des décisions éclairées pour vos assurances et vos affaires.

FIN DE TRANSCRIPTION