"That's true even in the age of COVID-19," adds Leung, senior editor at Mediacorp Canada. "We've always made the point that the GTA applicant pool is the most competitive in the country. And that's still very much the case. Over the past two years of lockdowns and working from home, GTA employers have had to really take stock of their benefits, especially in health and wellness, and improve their offerings. The outcome is that our entire GTA applicant pool has become much stronger."

With continuing pressure to do more for employees than other GTA rivals -- and be recognized for it -- the quality of applicants from the region has continued to rise. "Many organizations are now going above and beyond our benchmarks, pushing the conversation to the next level," says Yerema. "We're seeing new benchmarks being set for many benefits."

Helen Ashton, vice-president, human resources, for Campbell's Company of Canada, which is on the list, offers a breakdown of what's going on. "It's a very competitive market," she says. "With so many head offices based in Toronto, our candidate pool has a lot of options in terms of where they can work. That's number one.

"I also think that COVID-19 taught us a lot of things, including the fact that we don't always have to hire in the GTA for a job in the GTA -- people can work virtually. So your talent pool is expanding, but the same thing goes for the candidates -- they say, I live in GTA but I don't have to work for a company in GTA. I can work for a company anywhere in the world.

"And then the third piece for me is the skill set. There are certain jobs that require such unique skill sets that we as a society just don't have enough people with them, because it's evolving really quickly." Beyond the intensifying shortage of tech skills, she points to data analytics and artificial intelligence expertise.

"There is a war for talent in the GTA and I think it is going to continue getting more and more competitive," says Ashton.

Certainly the demand for software engineers, developers and other IT professionals is off the charts, as Caroline Stephens, chief human resources officer for Interac Corp., can tell you.

Around May 2021, she says, "we kind of had a perfect storm, when all of a sudden the demand for technology resources for various projects went through the roof and the supply was low. Our folks in technology were being headhunted to the tune of $30,000 or $40,000 more a year for developers. We did a full market review and as a result, we amended our salary ranges to ensure that we were remaining competitive."

But as a model Top Employer, Interac also paid close attention to what employees were saying -- and took steps to ensure that workloads were reasonable and the company's "human-centric" culture was intact. "This is why we have a relatively low attrition rate," says Stephens.

Yet while so many of Greater Toronto's Top Employers are household names, the list also includes organizations as small as Canadian Roots Exchange, a social advocacy organization for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth that has only 20 employees. Along with offering a wellness spending account and other measures, in 2020 it deliberately skipped the annual performance review, notes Leung. "It may be a smaller organization, but it's very enlightened in recognizing that everyone could use a little compassion given the past year."

To Yerema, the pandemic has brought home to C-suite leaders the importance of the benefits that they may sometimes have reluctantly authorized. "They're not arguing back anymore," he says. "It's more like, oh, we have this mental health benefit -- that's great. And what about these flexible policies -- are they enough? There's a new understanding. Now it isn't just a perk we can give you -- this is something essential for running a successful business."

– Berton Woodward

This story appeared in the official announcement magazine for Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2022), published on December 3, 2021, in The Globe and Mail. Used with permission.