The pandemic and the rise of remote work are turning Saskatchewan’s historical challenges into benefits
Saskatchewan companies have historically hired at a disadvantage to more populous provinces, but the past years saw so much uncertainty in the global employment market that Saskatchewan seems to be acquiring a more powerful appeal to workers. Global swings in traditional work cultures could benefit its workers as much as its big employers — a trend that can be seen by looking at some of the most popular and successful companies in the country.
Each year, the Canada’s Top 100 Employers competition releases its picks for the best employers in each region of the country, analyzing a wide range of factors to help applicants figure out which companies offer the best work environments. Now, 2022’s Saskatchewan ranking has arrived to highlight those companies that have continued to offer creative, competitive compensation and benefits packages even while dealing with a host of local and global difficulties.
The winners are chosen based on multiple criteria, including compensation and benefits, the work and social atmosphere, the work environment, training and upward mobility and community involvement — all of which were pushed forward by a healthy level of competition between public- and private-sector employers.
“I think the past year has continued to present very difficult challenges for virtually all employers,” said Richard Yerema, managing editor at Canada’s Top 100 Employers. “We are now entering year three of this ‘new normal,’ compounding the difficulty of challenges like navigating new safety protocols and transitioning to remote or hybrid work.”
As the world struggles, Saskatchewan still has room to grow
Yerema says that, through the lens of the Top Employers project, “Saskatchewan was very much viewed as stable in terms of employment growth, and that seems to have held throughout the past year.”
It turns out that smaller hiring markets often have basically nowhere to go but up. That has certainly been the case with Saskatchewan, as provinces like Alberta, with a greater dependence on singular industries, have struggled; Saskatchewan employers are more diverse and they can offer the unique lifestyle bonuses that come with more available wilderness.
Overall, last year’s strong hiring from Saskatchewan companies seems to come down to one thing: the rise of remote and hybrid work. While the province itself can present a big draw in hiring, it’s the newly powerful ability to work for a Saskatchewan company — without moving to Saskatchewan — that’s really changing the game.
Stephen Glauser, executive vice president of operations and finance at Concept3 Business Interiors, says that by leaning into remote work, they’ve “retained 100 per cent of those team members who were able to work remotely and have noticed a significant increase in out-of-province applications for external hiring.”
When the going gets tough, the tough get creative
In a tough job market, employees can often suffer from depressed wages — but as the last year played out, the market saw several examples of how hard economic conditions can instead lead to increased competition among employers. Some fast-food restaurants, for instance, have been forced to raise even low-end salaries in order to compete.
This trend is even more evident in higher-paying knowledge-based industries like software development, where companies have to get creative to entice the province’s top talent. These sorts of companies have leaned into the remote work paradigm, benefiting from the fact that most of their employees can easily transition their work to the home.
As power shifts towards candidates in hiring interactions, employers have had to get creative to retain top talent. Attractive benefits packages can often seem to carry more value than they actually cost to deliver, while less standard offerings like increased flexibility in time-off can entice new workers for little additional cost.
Sasktel’s external communications manager, Greg Jacobs, says that as much as 25 per cent of the longtime Saskatchewan institution’s workforce is going to go perma-remote, regardless of whether or not COVID-19 restrictions remain in place; to do anything else could well have left them at a severe hiring disadvantage, going forward.
What makes the best the best?
It seems that 2021 was the year in which it became impossible to ignore that building and maintaining strong teams in Saskatchewan comes down to being the best place to work.
Mike Webb, executive vice president and chief of human resources at Nutrien, says that in order to ensure the company’s employees continued to feel heard and informed, it “hosted monthly company-wide townhalls to share important COVID-19 updates and hear top-of-mind questions directly from employees.”
This communication led them to understand the deep need for flexibility in pandemic times. “Early in the pandemic,” Webb says, “we expanded our volunteer program to allow employees up to five paid days off per year to safely volunteer in their communities.”
The best employers derive their decisions about policies and the work environment from an understanding of what their employees want. Not all types of workers require the same things; younger workers might value compensation alone, for instance, while older workers with children might prioritize extra flex time.
Put simply, there is no one set of benefits that modern workers want; what they want is a company that listens to their feedback and takes whatever steps are necessary to let work integrate easily with the rest of life.
“Necessity often leads to innovation,” Yerema says. “That includes everything from introducing greater work flexibility and new work from home policies, to enhancing support for physical and mental health, to emphasizing more open communication with senior leadership.”
In the end, Canada’s fortunes are Saskatchewan’s fortunes
There was no single formula for success as Saskatchewan employers navigated the pandemic in 2021, but an emphasis on employee experience was a component of every strategy that found meaningful success. By making an effort to offer unique benefits and above all a range of options for employees, employers were able to stand out from the crowd and retain the best talent on the market.
In a world where salary alone varies little across employers, it’s these non-monetary differentiators that will determine where the best talent goes, and where it stays for more than just a while.
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