Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2024)

two employees enjoying an outdoor workplace celebration

Interac Corp. offers employees up to 20 personal development hours each year for development goals, such as mentoring, coaching, volunteering, or formal academic programs.

About the Competition

Background

This year marks the 18^th annual edition for our Greater Toronto's Top Employers competition, which has become the benchmark in the Greater Toronto Area for workplace best-practices. Like the metropolitan area it represents, the competition has become exceptionally strong and competitive — so much so that, for Toronto-area employers, the minimum scores to secure a place on the GTA list routinely rank among the highest in the nation. Our 2024 winners were announced on December 5, 2023 in a special magazine distributed with The Globe and Mail. For more background on this year's competition, read the press release issued on the announcement date.

Interac Corp. offers employees up to 20 personal development hours each year for development goals, such as mentoring, coaching, volunteering, or formal academic programs.

The stunning Circle of Indigenous Knowledge medallion at Seneca Polytechnic, designed by Anishinaabe artist Joseph Sagaj, pays tribute to Indigenous culture. (Photo: A.Bruce)

Selection Process

Each year, the winners are evaluated on the same eight criteria as our national competition: (1) workplace; (2) work atmosphere and social; (3) health, financial and family benefits; (4) vacation and time-off; (5) employee communications; (6) performance management; (7) training and skills development; and (8) community involvement.

The stunning Circle of Indigenous Knowledge medallion at Seneca Polytechnic, designed by Anishinaabe artist Joseph Sagaj, pays tribute to Indigenous culture. (Photo: A.Bruce)

An employee at Durham College in Oshawa shows off her festive spirit at its annual 'Turkey on a Bun' celebration.

Reasons for Selection

Each December, the winners are announced in our huge announcement magazine distributed with The Globe and Mail. For our detailed reasons for selection, please review the full list of winners below. Publishing detailed reasons for selection is a distinguishing feature of our competition: it provides transparency in the selection of winners and "raises the bar" so that other employers can discover and adopt initiatives that work well elsewhere.

An employee at Durham College in Oshawa shows off her festive spirit at its annual 'Turkey on a Bun' celebration.

Eligibility Requirements

Any employer with its head office or principal place of business in the Greater Toronto Area may apply for this competition. Employers of any size may apply, whether private or public sector.

2025 Competition

Applications for our 2025 competition will be available early in 2024. Our 2025 winners will be announced in December 2024. Join our mailing list to stay up to date and receive an application for next year's competition.

The workplace at Dentsu Canada is designed to allow employees to work independently, host team brainstorms and socialize with colleagues.

Introduction

Has home has become more like the office, or is the office becoming more like home?

Looking at the winners of Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2024), it's interesting to see how organizations are continuing to explore what's right for their people post-pandemic. Hybrid remains a popular model, with employees working from a mix of home, office and in the field, but with variations. Best practices are always in play, but may go in entirely different directions. There is no-one-size-fits-all solution.

To encourage more in-person connection and collaboration -- more of a nudge than a shove -- some top employers have purposely designed (or upgraded) their physical workspaces to reflect the work patterns and comforts of home. Since no one wants to sit in a cubicle all day, a progressive work environment allows employees to move in the same way they might in their own home. That means spending time at a desk, but also nestled on a comfy sofa, snacking in a well-stocked kitchen or outdoors on a leafy patio -- all with connectivity for a seamless work experience.

Some of the bigger employers, such as banks and large corporations, have re-designed entire buildings to be interconnected vertical campuses, with multiple adaptable spaces for working, collaboration, well-being and socializing, both in-side and out. For instance, Manulife Canada recently transformed its global headquarters in Toronto to a flexible, state-of-the-art environment, where workers onsite can organically connect with others working remotely.

Influenced by feedback from employees who expressed what helped them during the pandemic, the refreshed space incorporates movement, natural light and plants into the design. But what the company also found was that people were really concerned about having collaborative space to reconnect, so purpose-built spaces for small, medium and large connections became a top priority. Notably, food is central to that, with a barista in its newly renovated lobby and a 21,000 square-foot subsidized cafeteria.

Some top employers, such as Vena Solutions Inc., have completely changed their work model since the pandemic. Prior to COVID, chief people officer Tracey Mikita says that the tech company was basically an in-office workplace, but now lets the vast majority of employees choose their ideal work environment, with flexible arrangements that include hybrid, fully remote or on-site.

"We continue to have really solid business results, so it's hard to justify pushing folks back to the office when people are engaged and lots of great work is getting done," says Mikita. "We've really tried to move the office towards being less of a place where you just go to do your work, to more of a collaborative social space where teams have their meetings.

"I think there was always this worry that engagement would plummet if we moved to a remote or hybrid culture, but I would say culturally, we've proven that wrong. Our engagement scores have been at all-time highs through the pandemic and people are feeling good across the board. We just worked really hard to enhance communication and make the employee experience a priority."

Vena goes further offering a very unique short-term work relocation allowance that lets employees work up to 30 days per year almost anywhere in the world.

"We're a tech company so you're very mobile," says Mikita. "You can pick up your laptop and use any of the great spaces throughout our facility or you can work from home, but people can also spend time working wherever they like. So if someone is planning a vacation in Florida, they're free to tack on a week of work and enjoy that work-life balance we feel is so important."

When meeting in-person matters, even limited real estate doesn't stop top employers. Anna Filice, chief people officer, at Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board / WSIB, says while people work at home most of the time, when they do come in, it's with purpose.

"We try to do that at least once per month -- usually an event with the whole team coming together," says Filice. "Some of our locations don't actually have a physical space, so we'll meet at a local convention centre and spend a few purposeful hours together. Because we're so deliberate about it, we're actually spending more meaningful time with our teams than when we were heads down in a cubicle five days a week."

Filice says that they're always cognizant that people are working from home and do their best to ensure employees have the tools they need to do that safely and effectively, including supports developed to help managers lead in a virtual environment. A recent assessment by WSIB of some of its key workforce factors -- three years before the pandemic, and then three years after the switch to remote work -- shows positive movement in basically every area for key services. These include productivity measures and employee statistics in terms of the number of sick days, engagement scores and overall collaboration.

"Everyone's very enthusiastic about it," she says. "People have been very vocal that they'd like to retain this model."

– Diane Jermyn

©2023 Mediacorp Canada Inc. This story appeared in the official announcement magazine for Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2024), published on December 5, 2023, and distributed in The Globe and Mail. Used with permission.

2024 Winners

Here are the 2024 winners of the Greater Toronto's Top Employers competition. Click an employer name to read our editors' full Reasons for Selection:

Previous winners:
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007

Neil Hetherington is CEO of Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank, one of this year's winners, which provides progressive benefits to their 82 full-time employees, including mental health supports. (Photo courtesy of Seneca Polytechnic)

Toronto ad agency Media.Monks helps staff who want to start a family with maternity and parental leave top-up (to 100 per cent of salary, up to 16 weeks) and hosts a dedicated Slack channel (#gotkid) to connect new parents. (Photo: V.Radics)

Bright Lights, Competitive City

Greater Toronto's Top Employers face unique workplace challenges

It's the siren call of the city -- better job opportunities, better compensation, better social life. But in Canada's largest urban area, it's also the driver of many of the latest benefits offered by winners of the 2024 Greater Toronto's Top Employers competition. Because life in the Big City also brings big challenges.

"Take hybrid work," says Richard Yerema, executive editor of Mediacorp Canada, which runs the Top Employers competitions, "and then think about commuting. People sometimes say it takes an hour to drive from Toronto to Toronto. So GTA employers have an extra challenge if they want people to come back to work in the office, because if you're an employee, there's the cost in time, the cost of driving, the cost of parking or taking transit. If you can work at home a few days a week that makes it a lot easier."

Yerema says this conversation is unique to large urban centres. "If you're an employer in a smaller centre or a rural area, the issue of hybrid work is much less, because your employees may be already out in the field or they're working with a short commute, and there's free parking, etc.

"But in Greater Toronto, you can clearly see a difference -- the traffic is lighter on Monday and Friday, with more people coming in on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Often it has to be structured through teams, and nobody wants to come in on Friday."

Quentin Hanchard is chief administrative officer of an organization you might say is in the belly of the beast -- Credit Valley Conservation, based just north of ever-choked Highway 401 in Mississauga. After considerable staff consultations, the organization, which looks after the Credit River watershed, decided to go hybrid with two days in-office, core hours of 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the option of working "10 in 9" -- 10 days of work time in nine work days, with alternate Fridays off.

"We knew we were in a very competitive workspace in terms of the technical disciplines that we have -- our staff are in demand," he says. "So we're giving them the things they need to make their work experience really meaningful for them. Our focus is strongly on total benefits."

Increasingly, too, employers are bundling time off, so employees can put together vacation days, sick days, personal days and other special days to take time away when they need it. "Some even say you can work from anywhere -- take six weeks in Ireland if you want," says Yerema. And a few have declared "unlimited" time off for employees in consultation with their supervisors.

Kristina Leung, managing editor for Mediacorp Canada, notes that another huge post-pandemic challenge, especially in big cities, has been the rise in mental health issues. "Ever since the pandemic, employers have put greater emphasis on mental health," she says. "They've been extending benefits to make access to counselling and other services easier.

"But what struck us as different this year is that employers are also training their people managers specifically to recognize early signs of problems and employ healthy practices in the workplace. Because if you're not cultivating an environment that puts mental health as a priority, maybe you're not making as much change as you could."

And there are other push and pull forces in the modern city workplace. Tony Chow, president of Kellanova, formerly Kellogg Canada, notes that some of his people like to come to their Mississauga office building for the perks, including an on-site gym and lots of free breakfast food. The hybrid policy is known as Locate for Your Day, and teams have wide latitude in deciding when to come in.

"But we also realize that we have what I call 'moments that matter,'" says Chow. "Being apart helped us realize that there is a lot of value in being together for those moments, whether that be for collaborative meetings or informal conversations or just the energy that you get from other people and the culture that you build around that. We recognize that there's a benefit to having a hybrid approach."

Shelley Peterson, senior vice-president, careers and rewards, at Sun Life, agrees that building that camaraderie is essential. "Culture and the environment of a company are more critical than ever," she says. "People are looking not only for meaningful work, but they are considering the environment in which that work is done. In the context of Sun Life, we have a very unique culture, very caring, very inclusive, very flexible. Those things are meaningful to people and they are playing a role in where they decide to dedicate their time."

Yerema notes that Greater Toronto's Top Employers face the most intense competition for talent in the country, so new trends in benefits and practices tend to be seen there first. "It's a cauldron," he says, "and it boils faster."

– Berton Woodward

©2023 Mediacorp Canada Inc. This story appeared in the official announcement magazine for Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2024), published on December 5, 2023, and distributed in The Globe and Mail. Used with permission.

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