The guide to the “6 best employers in Québec” makes its appearance on library shelves! In fact, the 2006 edition of the annual guide to the “100 best employers in Canada” will soon be published and features merely six employers from the province – the 2nd largest economy in the country (that’s almost three times less than British Colombia and seven times less than Ontario; the clear winner, with close to 45 employers ranked).
Two explanations:
- Either Québec has mainly “bad employers”;
- Or the methods used by the firm in charge of putting together this famous classification (Médiacorp) are questionable.
Incidentally, the newspaper “The Gazette” does not disguise the fact that the results of this classification come from the detailed study of 1 200 companies’ application, pre-selected (we don’t know on what criteria it is based) among 55 000 initially. The application which allowed them to choose 100 best companies from 1 200 – declared as “long, complicated and exhaustive” by the organizers themselves – was evidently only available in English!
With a questionnaire only available in French, 6 out of 100 best employers would probably not be Québécois…
Over this blatant injustice and the counter-publicity unfortunately bestowed on Québécois employers, you might ask yourself why such keen interest in a best employers classification?
With two pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer and Merck Frosst) and an IT company (CGI) featured among the six chosen, we can guess that “the talent war” has begun. The famous – and up until now controversial– “lack of skilled workers” to make up for the departure of the boomers, seems to have become a real preoccupation for these leading-edge industries, for whom attracting and retaining their best resources becomes a priority at all costs.
Indeed, it is necessary to cite, among others, some of the innumerable efforts made for example, by Merck Frost, for the well-being of his employers: taking charge of university fees and half the gym subscription, dry-cleaning service, on-site doctors, training and development committee chosen by employees, flexible hours, summer schedules, telecommuting, shorter weeks, job-sharing, diversity management program…not to mention collective insurance or salaries.
But incidentally, what do the employees think? Actually, their opinions don’t count towards the classification. Good news though, it seems that they are more and more often consulted by their employer. L’Oréal, for example (which also appears among the six best alongside Laurentides Control and Cascades) regularly conducts anonymous surveys to judge the satisfaction of their employees.
A good idea to pursue if from now on you want to easily recruit and retain the best…