Great Place to Work® is pleased to announce the 2018 list of Canada’s Best Workplaces™ in Alberta. To be eligible for this list, organizations must be Great Place to Work Certified™ in the past year, be headquartered in Alberta, and have at least 15 employees working in the province. We determined the BEST based the overall Trust Index score from their Alberta-based employees.
ATB Financial’s most recent Economic Outlook paints Alberta’s economy as “steady but sluggish”. Employment rates are higher than they were last year, but not yet up to pre-recession levels. In this economic climate, employers must focus on creating workplace cultures which encourage employees to bring their best to work every day, because every employee counts!
CPHR Alberta has recently released their Alberta HR Trends Report – Fall 2018, which shows that though 70% of executives say employee engagement is important to their organization, less than half measure it every year. And of those who do measure it, 55% of employees are engaged at work, 23% are checked out and 11% are actively disengaged, to the point of undermining co-workers.
The Best Workplaces™ in Alberta have found their path to success by building high trust relationships at work, which lays the foundation for employee engagement. Here’s how they do it:
Trust employees to work where they work best
At ATB Financial, they recognize that team members will be more productive, more engaged, and more committed to meeting corporate goals and objectives when they are trusted to manage how/when/where they do their work. Team members choose a “base” location (at home or an ATB facility) and then choose where they work on any given day. For example, if a team member decides they will work best from a coffee shop one day, they can just go ahead and work there. Alternatively, if a team member decides to leave an ATB facility to run an errand, they can. No prior approval is required. They operate from a place of trust that team members will self-manage their work and energy (take breaks!), ultimately finding a balance that works for them while making sure the work gets done.
Build camaraderie
At Capital Engineering, employees plan various off-site, team building events throughout the year, demonstrating the strong camaraderie that exists between employees in the office. From go-cart racing to themed escape rooms to axe throwing, employees use this out-of-work bonding time to strengthen camaraderie and team work. They also build healthy competition between teams with fun events at work, including a pumpkin carving contest on Halloween and a pie-eating contest on March 14 (Pi Day).
Promote equity between management and staff
At True North Solutions, they don’t force their senior technical staff to become people managers in order to earn a higher salary. Instead they encourage staff to perform roles which fit their skill set and provide the greatest job satisfaction. They have Senior Technical Staff, with 25-30 years experience, that report up to a Team Business Manager that may have 10-12 years experience. Employees are compensated on years of experience and performance, and not according to their box on the org chart, which promotes equity between management and staff.
High-trust workplaces fuel innovation
New research from Great Place to Work® shows that high-trust workplace cultures are seeing faster rates of success by inviting every employee into the innovation process. By focusing on Innovation by All, these organizations operate with greater agility, beat sales targets, and outperform the competition. Sign up here to receive this research first!
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About our lists
Great Place to Work® publishes a series of Best Workplaces™ lists based on feedback from more than 300,000 employees at Great Place to Work Certified™ organizations across all industries in Canada. Employees complete an anonymous Trust Index© survey, answering questions about how frequently they experience behaviors that create a great workplace, including, the transparency of communication, degree of collaboration, quality of benefits programs, opportunity for professional development, and support for work-life balance. If 7/10 employees respond positively to the survey, the organization becomes Great Place to Work Certified™ for one year. Results from the survey are highly reliable, having a 95% confidence level with +/- 5% margin of error.
About Great Place to Work®
Great Place to Work® is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. Through proprietary assessment tools, advisory services, and certification programs, GPTW recognizes the world's Best Workplaces™ in a series of national lists including those published by The Globe & Mail (Canada) and Fortune magazine (USA). Great Place to Work® provides the benchmarks, framework, and expertise needed to create, sustain, and recognize outstanding workplace cultures.
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