Canadian Appliance Source tackles low wages, limited opportunities, says HR leader Diane Mohabir
Home retailer Canadian Appliance Source (CAS) reached a significant milestone this year.
For the first time, the company celebrated a record 53 employees notching up five years of service.
It's an achievement in an industry that traditionally has high staff turnover rates (a 2024 Mercer report put turnover in Canadian retail at 25.9% compared to an average of 11.9%) with low wages and limited career opportunities often blamed for staff walking away.
Tackling both of these issues has been at the centre of the company's strategy to change how frontline roles were perceived and paid.
“Since I started with the company, I created the initiative to have some of the best compensation in the industry,” Diane Mohabir, director of human resources, compensation and social branding at CAS says.
“We conduct yearly wage surveys to make sure we’re not just at the market [value]. We want to be above market because, at the end of the day, it’s a job; people come here to get paid."
The company also takes an innovative approach to setting pay rates. Rather than a one-size-fits-all rule to wages, it instead uses real-time economic signals such as the varying cost of living across regions to create regionally sensitive pay and Mohabir believes this makes a difference in hiring and how long employees stay.
“Five years after my employment, we had the highest rate of five-year employees. We had 32 employees that reach their five-year anniversary, which we did not have before,” Mohabir says. “As of this year, we have 63 five-year employees.”
Growth in retention at Canadian Appliance Source isn’t only about money. There are also programs for recognition and building careers through internal mobility, with a rotational program allowing employees to work temporarily in other departments.
“CAS is a very flat company; how you grow here is about how many areas of the business you can touch and learn. You become more valuable through your skill set,” she says. “We’re really focusing on internal hires as well as what skills have [our employees] attained in one position and how can they transfer that over to another.”
Like most companies, CAS runs annual staff feedback surveys but Mohabir knows it's what happens after the survey that matters.
“You can have a culture of feedback, but if you’re not actioning on it, it’s falling on deaf ears, and your employees will feel that," she says.
From annual surveys, Mohabir’s team extracts themes to act on.
“Last year, it was recognition and wellness, and this year, recognition was not on there. Everyone felt recognized and that we were caring about their wellness,” she says.
The focus on compensation at CAS, comes against the backdrop of slightly lower wage increases than earlier projections for Canadian employees in 2024, suggesting employers are tightening spending, according to a recent report.
In November 2023, Mercer projected a national average merit increase of 3.1% and a total increase of 3.6% for 2024. However, a March 2024 survey of more than 430 organizations showed actual merit increases averaging 3.2%, while total increases came in at 3.5%, both slightly lower than expected.
Retail and wholesale reported merit increases significantly lower than the national average, at 2.8%, making Mohabir’s initiative all the more attractive for her retail sector employees.
