Manitoba's Top Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 50
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MANITOBA’S TOP EMPLOYERS (2025)
St. John's-Ravenscourt School offers excellence to all
T
ravis Thomas always
felt like the leadership at St. John’sRavenscourt School
valued its employees,
but he saw how true this is during
the pandemic.
“When schools had to close
in March 2020, being an hourly
employee, I was essentially in a
layoff position. The school chose
to pay us right through to our
regular layoff date at the end of
June,” says Thomas, a chef in the
food services department. “I don’t
think many employers would
continue to pay employees when
they didn’t have to. It really made
me see how this is a company that
wants to take care of us.”
Thomas has worked in the
Winnipeg independent school’s
kitchen for 38 years and says he
especially enjoys training new
hires. “But it’s not just in the
kitchen,” he says. “I could walk out
of this office and see any administrator or any teacher and have a
conversation. The camaraderie is
unreal.”
Thomas also appreciates
the school’s generous benefits
package, which includes a coveted
defined benefit pension plan,
which provides a predictable
amount of income at retirement
based on an employee’s salary and
years of service. This differs from
today’s more common defined
contribution pension plan, where
the final pension amount depends
on the value of contributions and
investment growth.
It really made me see how
this is a company that
wants to take care of us.
— Travis Thomas
Chef, Food Services
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Travis Thomas, chef, food services, at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School.
As deputy head, finance and
operations, Jillian Lamothe
oversees administration of these
benefits. “We really strive to
ensure that our pension and our
benefits are comparable to what
a person would experience if they
were teaching in the public school
system. And we apply the same
principles to all of our staff, not
just faculty,” she says. “We want to
have a strong pool of people working with us and we want people to
be happy to be here, because that
helps us deliver our programs of
excellence.”
Lamothe, who just celebrated
her 25th anniversary with the
school, says it is important to her
to work for an organization that is
mission driven. For St. John’sRavenscourt School, this means
“inspiring academic excellence,
creative expression, active healthy
living and social responsibility in
order to develop compassionate
and confident individuals,” she
says.
“In my role, which is behind
the scenes, I get opportunities
