Trillium In The News

The Mississauga News

Need a job? Start with these companies

November 16, 2003

One of the best places to start a job search is by reading Canada's Top 100 Employers 2004. It is a catalogue of the best employers in Canada written by Richard Yerema from the stance of a job hunter.

Yerema jokes that researching and writing the book has "given me the chance to vicariously work at all these companies...and has made me pretty much unemployable."

The book is also a tool for employers.

"The top employers keep an eye on one another," said Yerema. "This is a vehicle for comparison."

From a database of 60,000 companies, five Mississauga companies made the Top 100 list this year, raising the bar for every employer in the city.

Trillium Health Centre offers employees the chance to try out a new job for a year with the option of returning to their old position.

When Trillium suffered a shortage of critical care nurses, they turned to employees for help. People who want to upgrade get scholarships.

Trillium Health Centre vice-president Caroline Brereton says proudly, "The result is that we have zero agency nurses working in the hospital right now."

Trillium has been on the list of Canada's top employers for four years...since Yerema started it.

"Effective recruitment and retention of staff isn't a goal, it's an outcome of doing things right in the workplace," said Brereton.

These employers are tops

Canada’s Top 100 Employers 2004 offers a number of interesting Top 10 lists.

Finding Patheon on the Top 10 list of employers for ‘Old Dogs’ was a bit of a shock for Corporate Communications Manager Kevin McCarthy. The average age of employees at the corporate office is 44, but that takes into account senior management.

“In the plant, the average age of workers is probably mid 30s,” said McCarthy.

Trillium VP Caroline Brereton wasn’t surprised that her company was listed among the Top 10 employers for women.

“We employ a lot of women,” she said. “Their opportunity to grow and develop leadership skills is significant in health care.”

Trillium was also listed as one of Canada’s 10 busiest human resources departments. With a full-time work force of 2,028, they received more than 38,000 resumes last year.

Cara was featured on that list thanks to the more than 36,000 resumes they got last year.

“Our restaurants are well-known brands that people want to work for,” said Cara’s director of HR Services, Melanie Braaten. “We get a lot of applications through our corporate website. Except for senior jobs, all positions are posted there.”

All these applications and resumes helped fill the 4,500 new jobs Cara created across Canada last year.

Cara also received honourable mention among the 10 best employers for training and development. Braaten credits Cara’s programs with cutting down on employee turnover, the bane of the restaurant industry.

The City of Mississauga received honourable mention among Canada’s10 best employers for its ‘family friendly work environment,’ thanks to a 35-hour work week, on-site daycare and flexible work hours.

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