Best Workplace in Canada 2010

TO:                 TDSB TRUSTEES

FROM:           MARTIN LONG, PRESIDENT

RE:                 BEST WORKPLACE IN CANADA 2010

DATE:           APRIL 21, 2010

Once again this year I checked the Best Workplaces in Canada list, just to see if I could check off one item on my “Bucket List of Hope” by seeing the Toronto District School Board make the grade.  Once again, it seems I will have to wait another year or more.
 

Employers on the list are rated as a result of a survey of employees who were asked questions that covered credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie, all qualities that we would expect the TDSB, as an employer, to value.
 

While organizations making the list are mostly in the private sector, they are not exclusively so.  In fact, the Toronto East General hospital has established a benchmark we should wish to aspire to.
 

Environics Canada tops the list this year.  Interestingly, this company is reported to thank its staff by, among other things, “…taking employees to sporting events and rock concerts”.  In contrast the TDSB requires its employees to attend, against their expressed wishes, a professional development event in a venue where rock concerts and sporting events take place (or in the latter case, at least, are rumoured to take place).
 

The Board has demonstrated its willingness to engage in ranking its schools and their employees based on surveys, and participating in the Best Workplace initiative, as the East General Hospital decided to do, should not, therefore, be too big a stretch.
 

I will finish with another “compare and contrast”, and encourage you to reflect on which one is more likely to generate a genuine feeling of hope in our workplace:
 

TDSB: “School boards are increasingly asked to do more with less.”

 
Great Place to Work Institute Canada:   “Respect involves providing employees with the equipment, resources and training they need to do their job.”