As Time Goes By
Over the past 25 years, Canada's Top 100 Employers have vastly improved time off for their staff
2025 Winners
Meet the 2025 winners of the Canada's Top 100 Employers competition. Click on any employer name below to discover our editors' detailed Reasons for Selection.
Mississauga-based pharmaceutical company Roche Canada starts new employees with four weeks of
annual paid vacation allowance, plus two paid personal days off each year.
As Time Goes By
Over the past 25 years, Canada's Top 100 Employers have vastly improved time off for their staff
When editor Richard Yerema was working on the first edition of Canada's Top 100 Employers 25 years ago, he recalls a recurring thought passing through his mind. "I remember talking about how one day there'll be four-day work weeks," he says. "In fact, I remember even earlier, in high school geography, talking about how this will come."
Well, we're still not quite there yet, even as now-executive editor Yerema and his colleagues at Mediacorp, which runs the annual competition, celebrate the Top 100's quarter-century anniversary. But it's fair to say that vacation and time-off policies, always closely watched by job-seekers, have improved dramatically since the year 2000.
"We've looked back at the data," says Yerema, "and in 2000 a starting vacation allowance of four weeks was offered by just eight per cent of the employers. It was a very small sliver, and mostly restricted to software and tech companies. Three weeks was the norm and a major chunk of the employer applicant pool gave people just two weeks to start."
Today, you can almost turn around the figures. Fully 31 per cent of this year's winners provide at least four weeks to start, and a mere seven per cent are still hanging back at two weeks. Moreover, notes senior editor Kristina Leung, "it's four-plus weeks. Some companies offer a lump sum of, say, 25 working days that can be used flexibly. And a few are moving to 'unlimited' time off, saying 'we're not putting any sort of parameters on how you use this time.'"
What has driven the change? For one thing, the unchangeable. "Time is limited for all of us," says Yerema. "It's one of the most important variables that an organization can offer and that people will value. Many employers compete on vacation time."
He notes that Canada's Top 100 Employers itself has been influential in offering transparency to the process. He remembers when one of Canada's largest employers learned through the competition that others were moving from two weeks to three and it had to match them. "Once you shine a light on it, the idea that two weeks was acceptable to recruit new talent or compete just couldn't hold, and you might need to up your offering."
As you might imagine, the biggest turning point came at the start of this decade, sparked by the lockdowns for the pandemic. "There was a notable shift coming out of the pandemic, in the sense of folks feeling like they lost time," says Leung. "They were realizing the value of their time, whether it's through vacation policies or hybrid work in general, because they lost so much time commuting, they lost so much time staying at home. They really wanted to reclaim that time and have a little bit more time off."
As it happens, that period coincided with the advent of Gen Z, born from 1997 onward, coming into the job market. "There's quite a bit of literature that talks about Gen Z valuing time off and flexibility above financial compensation," notes Leung. "So that may be driving some of the trend as employers respond to the needs of younger job seekers."
She notes another very modern concept - inclusion - has also had an effect. "There's paid leave for Indigenous employees to attend cultural and spiritual events, which used to be unpaid and offered sparingly. And there are often flexible statutory holidays so you don't have to use them on the standard days, since not everyone celebrates Christmas, for example. There's been an overall expansion of 'how can we make our benefits more inclusive?'"
Among Top Employers offering unlimited time off is Calgary-based Mawer Investment Management Ltd., where board chair Craig Senyk notes that people often need breaks for such issues as sickness, kid problems, stress or a death in the family. "And they just go, because we say it all the time - take the time you need. We don't even have a vacation policy. Just take the time you need for vacation as well. People will make sure that they're covered - that's part of the responsibility and accountability that comes with that philosophy."
In St. John's, fraud-detection firm Nasdaq Verafin, a long-standing winner, has offered unlimited time off for years. To executive vice-president Stephanie Champion, it's essential to company strategy. "This benefit is highly appreciated by our employees," she says, "and it plays a crucial role in fuelling recruitment as we scale our business for growth."
All of which means there's almost surely more time off still to come, little by little. "My thoughts in the last couple of years have been, is this how change comes?" says Yerema. "So many people want to work from home now. Policies like unlimited vacation didn't exist 25 years ago. Do we accidentally trip into these things? I find that an interesting aspect that we can see in the data." In other words, we may be inching, almost by stealth, toward the four-day week.
– Berton Woodward
This article appeared the the official magazine announcing Canada's Top 100 Employers (2025), published November 15, 2024, and distributed in The Globe and Mail. All rights reserved.
Vancouver-based credit union Vancity continues to improve its benefits for employees, offering industry-leading maternity and parental
top-up as well as generous coverage for mental health care.
A Quarter Century of Change
Improving the employee experience is the competition's biggest legacy after 25 years
Work has changed over the past 25 years – sometimes slowly, sometimes in a pandemic instant.
That's what has fascinated the editors of Canada's Top 100 Employers since the annual competition launched in 2000 to recognize organizations with the most progressive workplace policies across the country. The project, run by Mediacorp Canada Inc., has been recording the evolution of work through more than two decades of societal change. Looking back, what's emerged is a remarkable archive on the nature of work.
It's been a journey with real-life reverberations – not only for the organizations, but for the impact on employees' lives. And change goes on.
Many Canadians enjoy hybrid work today and value the flexibility it gives them, but that's still shifting as organizations fine-tune the balance between working in-person at the office and at home. Yet, it's far from the former rigidity of 9-to-5. Just consider the recent past and some of the popular trends that defined how people worked.
Cubicles were a fixture in most offices in the 2000s, followed by the open-plan office, hot-desking and the pioneering days of work from home – previously only enjoyed by top execs. Those were nomadic times, where burdened with your 2.8-kg laptop and a backpack of papers, you carried your office with you.
The biggest leap came with COVID-19 in 2020, helped along by technology – possibly compressing change that might have taken a decade into a one-year frame. Companies scrambled to set up workers safely at home, not only with ergonomic chairs, but online yoga and virtual town halls to keep everyone connected. Barriers were broken as the CEO shared recipes from her kitchen and introduced the family's French bulldog. Then Black Lives Matter happened and businesses addressed diversity more seriously, adding structure and accountability. Employers learned to listen.
That fundamental shift towards a more collaborative and caring culture continues, with Canada's Top 100 Employers at the forefront of creating that change. Some have won many times. For instance, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, or Vancity, a multiple winner since 2003, offers leading-edge benefits such as mental health support up to $10,000 a year, generous maternity and parental top-ups, and a new defined benefit pension plan, designed using employee feedback and a team of pension experts.
Liz Stretch, Vancity's interim chief people officer, says the biggest change is how communication – the way employees connect with management and with each other – is different from a decade or two ago.
"We've seen an overall generational shift in employee expectations when it comes to leadership," says Stretch. "We've moved from broadcasting information from the centre out to the organization, to more of an organization-wide conversation among all employees and leadership. The bar is much higher when it comes to authenticity and transparency. People expect greater context around decision-making – including the opportunity to ask questions of senior leaders.
"The same applies to creating opportunities for employees to connect," she adds. "That's why we've set up social platforms so employees can interact informally at work, sharing what matters to them."
At employee-owned PCL Construction, ranked as one of Canada's Top 100 Employers for 16 consecutive years, the focus is on unlocking the potential in every team member. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, the Edmonton-based company curates personalized experiences to help each employee thrive – whether that's advanced training, mentorship or lateral moves to expand skillsets.
"Sixteen years ago, we had development, learning and mentoring, but one of the biggest changes is that we're creating these very thoughtful curated programs," says Jaime McGavin, human resources director at PCL. "It's not just about checking boxes. We want it to be something that fosters engagement on the employee and manager side"
Another change McGavin notes is the role of the manager, so PCL is heavily invested in equipping its managers with the tools and skills to support their teams.
"As a manager now, you are a coach, a mentor, an advocate of the company – you wear all these different hats," says McGavin. "We've always had leadership development programs for our future executives and leaders, but there's that broad base of middle management that is holding so much of the employee experience and engagement on their backs. We're focused on whatever development tools we can offer them so they feel more confident."
But how does the business side fare out of all these progressive policies?
Desjardins Group/Mouvement Desjardins, headquartered in Lévis, Qué., and a multi-year Top 100 winner, would say that, as whole individuals, employees deserve personalized HR solutions, such as a customizable wellness program to suit their physical and psychological needs, as well as those of their families. But business is a big part of it too.
"In the past, human resources primarily focused on addressing the basic needs of employees," explains Catherine Grondin, director, talent and people development at Desjardins. "Today, however, we're working toward finding HR solutions that touch multiple aspects of an employee's professional and personal life. This is because we know, without a doubt, that the employee experience largely shapes the customer experience."
And indeed, a much-improved employee experience may be the biggest legacy of 25 years of progress in Canadian workplaces.
– Diane Jermyn
This article appeared the the official magazine announcing Canada's Top 100 Employers (2025), published November 15, 2024, and distributed in The Globe and Mail. All rights reserved.
Methodology
Although the selection process to choose the winners of Canada's Top 100 Employers evolves to include new subjects and topics that reflect changes in the workplace, the underlying methodology has not significantly changed since the project began in 2000. The competition is and remains a catalogue of best practices.
The methodology used to determine Canada's Top 100 Employers is based on a comparison with employers in similar industries, region and size. Each employer's application is judged by rigorous criteria in eight key areas: (1) Workplace;(2) Work Atmosphere & Social; (3) Health, Financial & Family Benefits; (4) Vacation & Time Off; (5) Employee Communications; (6) Performance Management; (7) Training & Skills Development; and (8) Community Involvement.
Over the past five years, the first criteria — which was named Physical Workplace before the pandemic — has been expanded to include home office environments, flexible work options and hybrid work, workplace safety initiatives. While this area of the competition is still evolving, the editors are watching the changes closely to see how the nation's leading employers are managing the transition.
Canada's Top 100 Employers is an annual national competition. Any employer with its head office or principal place of business in Canada may apply regardless of size, whether private or public sector.
– Diane Jermyn
Montréal-based CAE Inc. provides employees with a healthy work-life balance through its CAEcontinuum flexible work
program.
Apply
If you are an exceptional employer with progressive HR programs and policies, consider applying for next year's edition of Canada's Top 100 Employers. Now entering its 26th year, our project is the nation's longest-running editorial competition. Applications for 2026 open in February. Join our mailing list for more info.
