Canada's Top 100 Employers (2025) Magazine - Flipbook - Page 25
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( 2025 ) SPONSOR CONTENT
Collaboration and culture keep CAE flying high
E
ight years ago, Jihad
El-Hage was an industrial
engineering student intern
with Montréal-based
CAE Inc. Once he graduated
from university, CAE offered him
a full-time job, and now he is
senior manager of the engineering
development solutions department.
“I really liked the beginning of my
career because I grew and learned a
lot,” says El-Hage. He praises CAE’s
internal mentoring program for
helping him develop at the company.
“Past mentors always took the time
to guide me, and give me ideas
and challenges,” he says. “Now I
mentor people inside and outside my
department.”
“I don’t see myself going
anywhere else.”
— Jihad El-Hage
Senior Manager, Engineering
Development Solutions
CAE is a made-in-Canada success
story known for its commercial, business, and defence aircraft simulators
and for training pilots worldwide.
CAE has over 240 locations in more
than 40 countries. El-Hage says
the collaboration among various
departments and employees is what
successfully brings the solution to
the customer.
“We have to work in collaboration
while we’re developing whatever is
required by the customer,” he says.
“We work in parallel to build the
simulator and we have that synergy
with each other to make sure we’re
all aligned.”
Adds El-Hage: “Collaboration is
not only going to bring better ideas,
it’s going to bring solutions.”
According to Hélène V. Gagnon,
chief people and sustainability
officer, a key aspect of CAE’s culture
is linked to the company’s purpose
and mission to equip people in
critical roles needed to create a safer
world.
“We need to create a safe world
and that purpose, to elevate safety, is
really something meaningful to all
of us,” Gagnon says. This mission is
something that motivates employees
and brings them together towards a
shared goal. “Our key value is that
we all collaborate and work together
as one CAE,” adds Gagnon.
CAE’s other values of innovation,
excellence, integrity, and empowerment also encompass CAE’s culture.
“Employees are the driving force of
our success,” says Gagnon. “It’s about
being creative and innovative in
everything that we do.”
Employees can experience that
culture every day through CAE’s
unique, open workspaces that
provide different ways of working
and adapt to different needs. Just
this year, CAE released a guide on
neurodiversity for managers, an
initiative that came from one of the
seven employee resource groups at
CAE.
“We support and foster these
groups and they really make a
difference,” says Gagnon. Among
them are groups for professionals
from different ethnic backgrounds,
for women, veterans, employees with
special needs and their families, the
Indigenous population, and for the
LGBTQ+ community.
Employees also immerse
themselves in CAE’s culture by
attending special events. For the
A pilot at CAE undergoes training at the organization’s Montréal
training centre.
total solar eclipse last April, more
than 1,000 people gathered in
CAE’s park with safety glasses
provided. In September, over 6,500
people, including El-Hage and his
family, attended CAE’s Family Day,
where employees were given the
26
weeks of maternity leave
with top-up pay
opportunity to show their families
the company’s technology and share
what they do every day.
It’s moments such as these that
matter to employees. “I don’t see
myself going anywhere else,” says
El-Hage. ¢
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comprehensive internal
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Ready for the moments that matter
