Keynote Speaker: Graham Lowe

Graham Lowe’s international reputation as an expert on work and organizations is based on his successful 25-year academic career. Graham is president of The Graham Lowe Group Inc., a workplace consulting and research firm. Since receiving his doctorate in sociology from the University of Toronto in 1979, he has been a professor at the University of Alberta , as well as a visiting professor, lecturer and researcher at other universities in Canada, Europe and Asia.

Graham’s extensive research and publications examine the quality of work, healthy workplaces, human resource development, organizational change and performance, employment trends and the future of work, employment policy, school-work transitions, and unions. Graham’s research has a strong applied focus. He is committed to knowledge transfer to ensure that employers, policy makers, professional associations, unions and individual workers are able to benefit from research insights.

His recent publications include The Quality of Work: A People-Centred Agenda (Oxford University Press, 2000), What’s a Good Job: The Importance of Employment Relationships (with G. Schellenberg; CPRN, 2001), Employer of Choice: Workplace Innovation in Government (CPRN, 2001) and the 4 th edition of Work, Industry and Canadian Society, a widely-used textbook (with H. Krahn; Thomson Nelson, 2002), Healthy Workplaces and Productivity (Health Canada, 2003), and Healthy Workplace Strategies (Health Canada, 2005).

Graham is a Research Associate at Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN), a national social policy think-tank. During 1999-2001, he served as the Director of CPRN’s Work Network. His team created Canada ’s only website that offers a comprehensive range of quality of work indicators ( www.jobquality.ca), and was awarded the Policy Research Initiative’s 2001 Knowledge Broker of the Year Award for a multi-sponsor project on employment relationships.

Graham frequently contributes articles to Canadian HR Reporter and other practitioner publications, served on Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee for the Workplace and Employee Survey, and is a member of the Institute for Work and Health’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Graham has two decades of research, management and policy consulting experience across Canada and internationally. He has given hundreds of conference talks, workshops and seminars and is a frequent media commentator on workplace and labour market issues.

Graham was the recipient of the 2005 Canadian Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award.      

Keynote Speaker Sponsor: Buffett Taylor & Associates Ltd.

Founded in 1981, Buffett Taylor & Associates Ltd. has become one of Canada's leading consulting firms. It possesses expertise in the areas of employee benefits, flexible benefits, managed care, benefit plan administration, organizational and employee health and attendance management strategies.

Since inception, Buffett Taylor has established a reputation as an innovator and an organization which has become adept at developing effective solutions for a broad range of employee benefits and organizational and individual health related challenges. The firm’s senior consultants have developed a number of tools and strategies, which have enabled employers to control benefit costs while providing the utmost in flexibility and tax effectiveness to the organizations’ employees. Utilizing strategies such as preferred provider networks, managed formularies, innovative flexible benefit plan designs and innovative funding techniques, Buffett Taylor has developed a national reputation as a leader in this field.

Organizational and employee health has become synonymous with Buffett Taylor. The firm has developed an effective comprehensive health promotion process, which has enabled employers to become employee friendly organizations with supportive corporate cultures while enabling individual employees to improve the quality of their health and to achieve greater work family life balance.

In 1997, Buffett Taylor published the results of its first triennial National Wellness Survey. The second such survey was published in 2000, and the third was conducted in 2003 and published in 2005. These surveys have become a leading source of health promotion related data particularly with respect to the prevalence of a broad range of health promotion practices. In January 2005, Buffett Taylor published Heart Health, Workplace Wellness and Return on Investment, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of a heart health intervention program on the lives of over 2,300 employees at eight separate employers located in the province of Ontario.

Health Promotion personnel at Buffett Taylor played a key role in researching and writing Health Promotion – A Sourcebook for Canadian Business and edit the monthly health promotion newsletter Well and Wise. In 1999, Ed Buffett, the firm’s Chairman and C.E.O. was chosen as an inaugural recipient of the Who’s Who in Healthcare Awards for his pioneering work in the area of worksite wellness and health promotion. Canadian Healthcare Manager, a Rogers Media Publication, sponsors this award.