Canada's 50 Best Employers

It's that time of the year again.

Canada's 50 best employers have been ranked in an annual survey to be published in this month's Globe and Mail's Report on Business magazine.

This year's top performers...

1) EllisDon Corporation
2) Wellington West Holdings Inc.
3) PCL Constructors Inc.
4) Bennett Jones LLP
5) Edward Jones Canada
6) JTI-Macdonald Corp.
7) Farm Credit Canada
8) Envision Financial
9) Intuit Canada
10) GlaxoSmithKline Inc.

The survey also examined other components of the labour market in Canada. An interesting point from the report...

Alberta is once again the province with the lowest levels of employee engagement, being particularly affected by the labour shortage.

Ted Emond, a consultant at Hewitt Associates observed:

To retain employees, the immediate reaction of some employers, particularly in Alberta, was to offer higher salaries. However, in a tight labour market, provided pay is competitive, other aspects of the job become more important in an employee's decision to join or stay with an organization.

Flexibility in work hours came out as a big issue to many employees seeking a better work/life balance.

We've talked about this often in our blog. Employers like Best Buy and others who are innovating with 100% flex time are building a name for themselves with employees.

Let's face it... with more and more business conducted on a global scale, flex time will eventually be a requirement to deal with clients and customers in different time zones. Some employees are currently dealing with this problem by spilling work over to evenings and other non-regular times.

As our labour market continues to tighten in Canada, it will be the companies who take these subtle issues into consideration that will come ahead in the competition for talent.