Heart Smart HR: Fall Kickoff Reminders
By Louanne Haugan
Hello readers! I trust you all had a wonderful summer and found some time to relax, explore, share meals with friends, and take advantage of the sunshine! I had an amazing summer that included welcoming another grandson to our family!
Now it’s back to school, and that means our churches and their leadership teams are also back to a new season of programming. Perhaps you have a fall kick-off planned in the next few weeks! At the CBWC, we will be gathering every staff member here in Calgary later this month for LAUNCH—a meet-and-greet with our new Executive Minister Clint Mix—our own version of a fall kick-off!
As we head into September, I’d like to provide a couple of housekeeping reminders, as well as an announcement about a slight change to our drug plan for pastors and support staff participating in our benefit program.
In June, we launched another installment of our Board Development Essentials video series—this time on Sick Leave and Long-Term Disability. This episode also comes with a 2-page PDF guide for easy reference. It is our hope that, as your Board gathers over the coming year, you might consider including 10 minutes during your meeting to watch a video. This is a great way to train both existing and/or new Board members on subjects from church governance to human resources.
I also want to remind churches whose fiscal year ended June 30 to get any changes in salary to our office by submitting a 2026 Confidential Information Sheet. Completed forms can be sent to me at lhaugan@cbwc.ca. This is an important piece, as salary impacts both Long Term Disability benefits, as well as pension contribution amounts. Each year, three CBWC pastors are randomly selected in the Canadian Baptist Pension Plan audit, and the CBWC must be able to verify the member’s salary.
Regarding benefits, in April, the national Pension & Insurance committee made a slight change to our benefits by adding Canada Life’s SMART to our drug plan—a management guardrail—effective July 1. As part of our ongoing commitment to provide effective and sustainable benefit coverage, SMART is designed to help manage rising prescription costs while still ensuring access to medically necessary medications. If you are a member currently taking medications covered under the plan, those medications are grandfathered in. If your doctor prescribes a new medication, it may be reviewed under the SMART drug plan before coverage is approved. Most medications will continue to be covered as they are today. The SMART drug plan only applies to medications that require additional review, based on Canada Life’s coverage criteria. If you have questions about your prescription drug coverage, please reach out to Alexandra Bridi, our Benefits Administrator, at benefits@cbbenefits.ca.
Coming to the next edition of Heart Smart HR: Does your church have an AI policy?
