Describe your culture. Why is your company a great place to work?
Engcomp is a great place to work because we care. Our foundation is our people and the mentality of putting them first. Our main focus is our employees, because we strongly believe that happy individuals are motivated individuals. This motivation directly results in high quality work, leading to satisfied clients.
What is something you are proud of about your company?
I am most proud of the effort that we put in to continuously trying to make Engcomp a great place to work. We recognize that culture is such an important driver and differentiator for us and we never stop trying to innovate in this area. A great recent example of this is our Culture Days. This is one of our responses to having most of our employees working from home post-pandemic. Once a month, everyone comes in to the office for lunch and a company update. We then facilitate learning sessions around Mental Health and Wellness and Indigenous Engagement, followed by a fun activity to wrap up the day.
Why does your benefits & pension plan matter? What’s the impact to your business?
Our benefits & pension plan matters because it is one of the key platforms through which we can demonstrate that we care about our people. Having a comprehensive benefits program lets our employees know that we are invested in their long-term well-being.
The impact on our business is multi-faceted. Having a strong benefits program helps in attracting and retaining talent, which is always important in a competitive environment. It also contributes to increased employee satisfaction which, in turn, can lead to increased loyalty, better productivity and higher morale.
What is your most creative/ unique reward or favourite workplace benefit?
I have a few favourite rewards – there are too many to pick just one!
Firstly, I really like our High Fives employee rewards system that rewards our employees for living our values. The really cool thing about it is that our employees get to redeem their points for rewards that are important to them. There’s no guess work on our behalf and there is no one size fits all approach. It’s a great way to give thanks to our employees. Recently one of our employees took advantage of a 2 for 1 electric bike sale from a Canadian website and paid for them entirely with High Five points!
I’m also a big fan of our 15-year anniversary reward. Our philosophy is consistently aligned with providing our employees with choice, and for this reward our thoughts are that people at this stage of their career would value experiences over things. So Engcomp provides $1,000 towards a vacation at either Banff, Edmonton or Waskesiu. We allow our employees to tell us where they would like to go, and what they want to do. We arrange the hotel bookings, car rentals, hockey tickets, water park entrance fees – whatever they want to do. Again, we don’t guess at what they might value, and it isn’t the same gift for everyone; they choose what they would like most.
Lastly, our Momentum Christmas Event is pretty awesome. We work with the crew from Momentum Clothing to provide this to our employees. Engcomp provides all our employees with a $300 credit to do some shopping. Momentum closes down their store to the public to allow us a private shopping experience. They bring in a DJ, we order pizza and beverages and have a great time shopping together for an evening.
What advice would you have for other successful growing Saskatchewan companies in recruiting, rewarding and retaining top talent?
Establishing yourself as a company that cares about its employees goes a long way when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent; work is no different than any other relationship in that people like to be valued and cared for. Rewards don’t have to be expensive, but they do need to be thoughtful. You can’t go wrong putting the emphasis on what your people would really like rather than what “you” think they would like.