You've built something good. People want to work here, mostly. But every so often someone you trained, someone who actually got it, hands in their notice for a job down the road that pays about the same.
You run the exit interview. They say kind things. What they don't say is that the other place offered a retirement plan and you didn't.
Most small business owners in Canada are sitting in exactly this spot. Most don't realize how solvable it is.
Why don't most small businesses offer a retirement plan?
Start with the honest version. There are real reasons owners hold off, and none of them are stupid.
- Cost worry. You assume a plan means a big employer contribution you can't commit to.
- "We're too small." You figure these plans are for companies with hundreds of staff.
- Complexity. You picture paperwork, compliance, and a part-time job you don't have time for.
Here's where that leaves the country. Only about 19 percent of Canadian small and mid-sized employers offer any workplace retirement plan. Bring in group RRSPs and similar arrangements and private-sector coverage still sits near 37 percent, against roughly 87 percent in the public sector.
So if you don't have a plan, you're in the majority. That's exactly the problem.
What does not having a plan actually cost you?
The cost doesn't show up as a line item. It shows up as turnover.
Replacing an employee runs somewhere between 50 and 200 percent of their salary once you count recruiting, lost productivity, and ramp-up time. On a $65,000 employee, even the low end is about $32,500 (illustrative). Lose two a year and you've spent more than most retirement plans would ever cost you.
Workplace retirement plans are linked to 20 to 60 percent lower turnover. For most of your team, a workplace plan is the only retirement saving that ever actually happens. They want it. They just want it from you.
How does a group retirement plan actually work?
Simpler than the picture in your head. The common setup is a group RRSP. Money comes off payroll, the employee picks their contribution, and the provider handles the investing and the admin.
Your contribution is your call. A match can start as low as 1 percent. You are not signing up to fund anyone's retirement single-handedly; you're giving people a structured, low-friction way to build their own, with a little help from you.
RiskX is the Official Common Wealth advisor, and Common Wealth is the modern platform a lot of our clients run their plan on. The plan itself was never the hard part. Having someone accountable for setting it up properly and running it is.
If it's this good, why doesn't every small business have one?
Because the myths are sticky, and most brokers never challenge them.
Too expensive: the match can start small. Employees won't value it: they rank it among the benefits they want most. Too much admin: that work belongs to the provider, not you.
The quieter reason is the sales motion. Most brokers open on health and dental, because that's the easy, familiar conversation. Retirement rarely comes up, so the owner never hears that the door is this easy to open.
What's the cost of waiting another year?
CPP and OAS together replace under 40 percent of the average person's income. Your team knows it, even if they don't say it. About 2 in 3 Canadians worry about their retirement savings, and 42 percent name money as their single biggest source of stress.
That stress doesn't stay home. It follows people to work, and eventually it follows your best ones out the door to an employer who gave them a way to get ahead.
The cost of doing nothing is real. It just doesn't land on a single invoice. It lands the week your most reliable person resigns.
How RiskX approaches it
We bring the plan, set up the governance, and stay accountable for running it. We don't sell you a product and vanish until renewal.
A good plan often pays for itself in retention, though we will never promise you a number we can't stand behind. Holistic benefits design starts with a simple idea: keep the good people you already have, and give them a reason to stay.
What to ask yourself before next year
You don't need to set anything up today. You need an honest answer to three questions.
- If your two best people got the same offer elsewhere, with a retirement plan attached, would they stay?
- Do you actually know what a group plan would cost you, or are you guessing high?
- Has your current broker ever once brought it up?
That last one tells you a lot.
Sources: Benefits & Pensions Monitor — Canada's pension coverage gap (19% / 37% coverage); employee replacement cost 50 to 200 percent of salary (SHRM / Gallup); CPP Investments, 2025 (retirement worry and money as the top stressor). First-party figures (20 to 60 percent lower turnover, CPP and OAS replacing under 40 percent of income) are from RiskX and its partners.
RiskX is a family-owned Canadian group benefits brokerage and the Official Common Wealth advisor, with over three decades of helping Canadian businesses keep their best people. If you want to know what a retirement plan would really cost you, and what it might save you in turnover, book a call with Gordon Smith, Executive Chairman & Founder: https://ro.am/riskx-founder