| AFSC selected as one of Canada’s top 100 employers |
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| Local Content - Agriculture |
| Written by Trevor Busch |
| Friday, 13 November 2009 19:17 |
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At the government of Alberta’s Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), there is reason to do some celebrating. The Crown corporation that works with Alberta’s agricultural sector to ensure that it has the proper financial services to succeed in the challenging industry was recently honoured as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. “We started on a goal five years ago, we set a goal to become an employer of choice,” said AFSC’s vice-president of human resources, Donna Bryden. “So, we’re proud to have reached this goal, but also we’re honoured to be named as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers.” Now entering its 10th year, Canada’s 100 Top Employers is an annual competition that acknowledges employers that lead their industries in offering exceptional workplaces for their employees. Sponsored by Mediacorp Canada Inc., the award competition assesses a wide range of criteria from workplace atmosphere to community involvement, as well as comparing the employer against the leaders in their field to see which offers the most progressive and forward-thinking programs. Being recognized in this way is no small honour, according to Bryden. “What does it say about AFSC to win an award like this? This belongs to the staff we have. We have really good people that work here, that care about the client that they serve. They take pride in the work that they do, and they’re compassionate and dedicated employees. That is a significant part of what makes this a great place to work.” Employees with the AFSC are never left out of the loop, added Bryden. “Some of the employment practices that we have that make us a top employer, we’ve worked really hard over the last couple of years to build a performance culture. What that means to us is that all of our employees know what’s expected of them, they receive the training and the coaching required to do their jobs well. Finally, they always receive timely and honest feedback.” There are some areas Bryden points to as major strengths as an employer for the provincial corporation. Community involvement plays a big part, too. “Work atmosphere and social, absolutely. We have a safe, respectful environment, we’re really proud of that. Employee communications, I would hope that we excel in that as well. We have a communication plan internally, our goal is always to be providing employees with the information that they require before they need it. Community involvement is really a big component for us. As the vice-president of human resources and community relations, I get to be really involved in that community involvement and community investment. Almost all of our staff volunteer at one point or another in the communities in which we work and do business, and it’s something that’s very near and dear to their hearts, and they’re proud of. They’re very active in their communities, and that’s another area that we excel at.” Now that they’ve achieved a top honour for an employer, Bryden assures that the AFSC is not about to rest on its laurels. “We’ve asked ourselves that here. Especially once we realized, and we’d been told that we’d won this award. We want to really continue down the path of continuing to build upon these initiatives that we’ve set out. I think that seeing that we’re a Top 100 Employer, isn’t an event that happens once, I think it’s a journey. So I think we’re going to have to continue to build upon that. In addition, it was a really difficult path and took a lot of hard work to build this performance culture, and I think we have to be very careful that those good efforts that we’ve made, much of which was feedback from our employees, doesn’t now fall by the wayside. We don’t want to say, ‘We’ve made it so now we can just sit back and coast’. It’s really got to be about what is the next step, and how do we continue to build on that.” AFSC has over 650 employees working in 50 offices across Alberta. Roughly 75,000 employers in Canada were reviewed for this year’s Top 100 competition. |