Canada's Top 100 Employers (2025) Magazine - Flipbook - Page 16
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VANCITY
( 2025 )
Vancouver-based credit union Vancity continues to improve its benefits for employees, offering industry-leading maternity and parental
top-up as well as generous coverage for mental health care.
A Quarter Century of Change
Improving the employee experience is the competition’s biggest legacy after 25 years
W
ork has changed
over the past 25
years – sometimes slowly,
sometimes in a
pandemic instant.
That’s what has fascinated the
editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers
since the annual competition
launched in 2000 to recognize
organizations with the most
progressive workplace policies across
the country. The project, run by
Mediacorp Canada Inc., has been
recording the evolution of work
through more than two decades of
societal change. Looking back,
what’s emerged is a remarkable
archive on the nature of work.
It’s been a journey with real-life reverberations – not only for the organizations, but for the impact on employees’ lives. And change goes on.
Many Canadians enjoy hybrid
work today and value the flexibility
it gives them, but that’s still shifting
as organizations fine-tune the
balance between working in-person
at the office and at home. Yet, it’s far
from the former rigidity of 9-to-5.
Just consider the recent past and
some of the popular trends that
defined how people worked.
Cubicles were a fixture in most
offices in the 2000s, followed by the
open-plan office, hot-desking and
the pioneering days of work from
home – previously only enjoyed by
top execs. Those were nomadic
times, where burdened with your
2.8-kg laptop and a backpack of papers, you carried your office with you.
The biggest leap came with
COVID-19 in 2020, helped along by
technology – possibly compressing
change that might have taken a
decade into a one-year frame.
Companies scrambled to set up
workers safely at home, not only with
ergonomic chairs, but online yoga
and virtual town halls to keep
everyone connected. Barriers were
