Were you wondering how the finalists for Alberta’s Best Workplaces made it there? We did too, so we got them to fess up.
Create an Internet café
Tired of policing employees’ social networking at their workstations, Agriculture Financial Services Corp. opened an Internet café at its headquarters in Lacombe where employees can check their Facebook or Twitter accounts during their break time.
Open the floodgates
Other employers, including Deloitte & Touche and Print Audit, now permit social networking at the workstation, during company time, on the grounds that it helps promote the organization for recruiting purposes, spur creativity and treat employees like adults capable of managing their own time.
Make commuting cleaner
In many workplaces, the carbon footprint involved with employees just getting to work looms larger than the one for actually doing business. DIRTT Environmental Solutions addresses that problem by offering a transportation allowance to employees who own electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles.
Reward the returnees
Habanero Consulting Group does not offer new parents any income top-up beyond what Employment Insurance provides during parental leave. But it does pay them a bonus worth a month’s salary when they return to work, helping ensure the company’s investment in the employee doesn’t get lost somewhere on the mommy track.
Nurture employees’ dreams
We all like to play the lottery. At Rogers Insurance, employees don’t even need to buy a ticket. Every year, the company’s Dreams Come True program doles out up $10,000 each to three employees with a specific dream: one picked by management, one by co-workers and one by a random draw. Every employee also has a “dream account” to which the company contributes $100 a year, with one lucky winner receiving $1,000.
Feedback, feedback, feedback
Sovereign General Insurance interviews employees three months after hiring to find what’s working and what’s not. It then has an outside firm conduct a confidential survey once a year and conducts town hall meetings and breakout sessions with the chief operating officer twice a year.
Offer transferable benefits
A mid-sized company in a competitive industry, Williams Engineering can’t afford to give out non-taxable benefits for everything. So it lets employees choose. Each is entitled to a “Total Wellness Benefit” worth $350 a year that they can dedicate to Wellness of Self (their own fitness regimen), Wellness of Environment (earth-friendly purchases such as transit passes or energy-saving appliances) or Wellness of Community (donations on their behalf to a charity of their choice, matched by the company).
Send head office to the front line
Mao and Pol Pot gave it a bad name, but for just one day a year it’s not a bad idea to make administrative employees work at front-line jobs in the field. Carewest’s “Day in the Life” program sees employees from headquarters help prepare food and care for patients, serving as a not-so-subtle reminder of the organization’s true mission.
Coach your new hires
In a bid to lower its high rate of turnover – down to 46% last year from a high of 112% in 2007 – the Cash Store Financial Inc. this year started pairing each new employee at its payday loan outlets with a personal coach for the first three months. It also delivers its training during slower moments on the job with its own internal network, Cash Store TV.
Adopt a code of ethics
Amid widespread disillusionment over corporate behaviour, SAIT Polytechnic codified the principles by which it expects every aspect of its business to be conducted under the rubric of FIRST: fairness, integrity, respect, safety and trust. The code is backed up by training and an ethics hotline for confidential reporting of suspected breaches.
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