These are summary answers to frequently asked questions that we receive from employers interested in applying to this year's Canada's Top 100 Employers competition. For a complete description of the eligibility criteria and the application process, please see the detailed instructions in the application package, distributed each spring.
If I complete the brief request form, am I obligated to proceed with a full application?
No. All this form does is ensure that you receive an application package. You can still decide not to apply.
Do you publish any of the information I supply on the brief request form?
No. The contact information you supply is used only for internal purposes (e.g. to send you the Top 100 application package) and is not published.
Do you release the names of applicants that aren't selected?
No. The pool of applicants who don't make the list is confidential.
How do you determine which employers are chosen?
Our written Reasons for Selection is a catalogue of best practices in recruitment and retention. We compare your organization's policies to others in your industry and region to see if you're a leader. We also talk to people who know your industry well to confirm our research. More on our selection criteria.
How do we apply for one of your regional "top employer" competitions?
There's just one application form. We'll take the information you provide for the "Canada's Top 100 Employers" competition and automatically consider you for our 18 other regional and special-interest "top employer" competitions. You can't apply for one of the specialized competitions and not the national "Top 100" competition -- you need to submit the national application for us to consider you. As well, you don't need to be selected for our national list of winners to be included on one of our regional or special-interest "top employer" lists.
How do you decide which industry we're in?
We start by comparing you to other employers in your NAICS code. We try to choose just one employer from each industry. Occasionally, we include more than one from the same industry where the employers selected have something out of the ordinary that would be of interest to our readers.
How do you decide which region or province we're in?
We look at the location of your head office. In rare cases, if you have more employees at another location in Canada (e.g. mining companies), we'll consider your principal place of business to be where most of your employees work.
Is there a minimum size requirement before employers can apply? Can only public companies apply?
No, in both cases. We're interested in best practices, wherever they're found. The employers in this year's edition range in size from over 30,000 employees to just 15. If you're very small, we need to be satisfied that you are growing and creating new job opportunities.
Can we meet with your editorial team to explain our application further?
No. Unfortunately, we don't make a practice of meeting with applicants -- we receive thousands of inquiries from employers each year. We will contact you on points of your application that interest us or that require further clarification. Your application should present a complete picture of your recruitment and retention practices.
Can public-sector employers apply?
Yes. We're interested in best practices, wherever they're found. Our current list of winners includes several interesting public-sector employers.
We've laid off employees in the past year. Can we still apply?
Yes. However, we'll compare you to other companies in your industry to see whether lay offs were industry-wide over the past year. We'll also require additional information about why your organization conducted the lay off and how affected employees were assisted. Our list is, above all, a guide for job-seekers and you must have reasonable growth prospects to be included. Some employers mistakenly believe that "laying off employees disqualifies us from this year's Top 100 competition". We applied this rule rather rigidly in the first few years of our competition, but today we're more interested in seeing how your organization treated the employees who were let go. As well, we recognize that ordinary events in the life of an enterprise (such as mergers, acquisitions and divestitures) often give rise to layoffs -- even for a healthy organization. There are also some industries, such as mining and transportation, that are project-based and layoffs almost always occur when the project reaches the end of its life span.
Do you keep track of how many new jobs we've created?
Yes. Our sister company, Eluta.ca, manages the nation's largest searchable database of career-level job postings. We use this data to identify fast-growing employers in various industries and to compare hiring levels at different companies within the same industry. Information on the number of new jobs you've created is also supplied to us on your application.
Do you survey our employees to see how satisfied they are?
An optional employee survey procedure is provided free of charge to all applicants through our research partner, Towers Perrin. This tool allows you to conduct an email survey of your employees and keep the results confidential, if you choose. You will be provided with a report at the end of the process that provides an estimate of engagement levels among your employees. You have the choice of submitting this report to us by email, but you're not obliged to do it. If you do submit your survey results, we will compare your engagement scores to other employers in the same industry and region. You may also submit engagement surveys conducted by other providers, so long they are independent and there are no copyright or contractual restrictions on releasing the survey results claimed by your survey provider. Since our project examines best practices in recruitment and retention, we look at a wide range of factors for the Canada's Top 100 Employers competition. Our objective is to bring to light innovative HR practices that raise the bar for all employers.
Where can we go to learn more about next year's competition?
The only event we speak at each year is the Top Employer Summit, which is a policy-oriented conference organized by our publishing company, Mediacorp Canada Inc. At the conference, we showcase the best case studies from the current year's "Top 100" list and discuss current areas of interest we're considering for the upcoming competition. CEOs and senior HR executives from employers on the current "Top 100" list tell the audience about their most innovative programs. Our blue-ribbon academic advisory panel also takes part in this event, presenting their latest research on the areas that we write about with our media partners. Over 400 people attend this commercial-free conference each year.
Do you provide feedback to unsuccessful applicants?
No. We believe strongly in publishing our reasons for selecting the winners (in exhaustive detail) each year on this website, which generally runs about 120,000 words in length. This makes the "Canada's Top 100 Employers" competition unique in that the reasons for our choices are completely transparent. By reading our written Reasons for Selection each year, you should have a complete understanding of why each employer was selected.
Do you offer consulting services to help us become a better employer?
Unfortunately not, since we're writers and editors only. Each year, we publish our written Reasons for Selection explaining why each winning employer was selected. In addition to making the process transparent, this helps other employers and job-seekers understand the "best in class" initiatives currently available. Our editors' written Reasons for Selection are published on this website (under the Competitions tab) and are available through our sister company, Eluta.ca.
Is Canada's Top 100 Employers still published as a book in print format?
No, we discontinued our print edition in 2007, choosing instead to publish our full Reasons for Selection online. These are the same as our previous printed chapters on each winning employer, but instead are distributed free of charge on this website (under the Competitions tab) and through Eluta.ca, which is used by over two million Canadian job-seekers each year. We made the change so that we could spend more of our time writing and researching interesting employers, and less time dealing with the mechanics of printing and distributing books. Today, job-seekers and employers can find our written reasons for selection on all 100 of our national winners, plus the winners of 18 regional and special-interest "top employer" competitions. The online format also lets us update an employer's information in real-time, rather than waiting for next year's print edition. Lists of winners are still released just once a year, in conjunction with special editorial features planned with our 22 media partners.
If we're unsuccessful the first time, can we re-apply?
Yes, and we encourage you to do so. Some of the strongest employers in the current edition on this year's list are previous applicants that were not successful their first time. Many adapted the best practices and policies gleaned from other employers in the book and improved on them. We're tremendously gratified when this happens. When applicants (and even employers on the current "Top 100" list) improve their recruitment and retention programs, it means the Top Employer competition is working.
