The Newsroom

Ipsos Reid recently conducted a survey on behalf of Manulife for the Voluntary Retirement Savings Plan (VRSP)

After surveying 250 small business owners in Quebec on their thoughts and awareness of the VRSP, the results are in and all the signs point to “Yes” in favour of this workplace retirement savings plan.

Here are some of the key highlights:

• Very high awareness – 86% have heard of VRSPs
• Positive reaction – 85% like the concept of VRSPs
• The majority (57%) of owners feel they have an obligation to help employees save for retirement
• Approximately one-third plan to implement a VRSP within six months; another one-third indicated they will within 18 months

Top reasons for wanting to implement this workplace retirement savings plan are:

• retired employees living comfortably are a reflection of the owner and their business (53%);
• they’ll retain quality employees (48%); and
• attract quality employees (43%).

And the most important features for employers when choosing a workplace retirement savings plan:

• Reputation of the plan provider/brand (96%)
• Advice offered by the plan provider to their employees (96%)
• Minimal administration work (96%)

The need for a workplace retirement savings plan for employees is a critical one. We’re all getting older, living longer and many of us don’t have enough saved for retirement. Employers are also expressing a need for a workplace retirement savings plan for a variety of reasons.

On July 1 VRSPs went into effect in Quebec and it’s now mandatory for many small business owners to offer a VRSP if they don’t already offer a workplace retirement savings plan.

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted from May 29th to June 18th, 2014 on behalf of Manulife Financial. For this survey, a sample of 250 Quebec small businesses, identified as having between 10 and 99 employees, was interviewed by telephone. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within +/-7.1 percentage points had all Quebec small businesses in this sample universe been polled. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.