Saskatoon views its employees as its best assets

Community engagement, a high value for many private employers, is an area of focus for the City of Saskatoon. The front lines of resident-government interactions have always been on the municipal level, notes Angela Gardiner, the City’s general manager of utilities and environment. And that’s one of the main reasons she’s enjoyed her 22-year career there.

“Working for the municipality really provides all of us with the ability to impact the daily lives of residents in everything they do, from the water they drink to driving around Saskatoon,” Gardiner says. “That is one of the things that drew me in when I started out with the City as a traffic engineer – providing services to my community.”

What the city’s government owes its residents is no different from what it owes its employees. “Our employees are our biggest asset,” says Gardiner. “We strive to provide an environment that fosters open communication and wellness.” One ongoing initiative has been the Coffee Talk program, opportunities for small groups of employees to meet over coffee with a member of the executive leadership team and share their perspectives while asking questions in a safe and casual setting.

“The feedback we get from the employees – that it instills a feeling of helping to shape the direction of the city – is positive,” she says. “Which is great. We welcome the ideas employees offer because we encourage them to be courageous and, from an innovation perspective, take risks that could improve the way we deliver City services.”

The City offers good benefits – from defined-benefit pensions to discounted access to city leisure facilities and programs and on-site noon-hour yoga programs – to promote both physical and mental well-being. Last year, the City devoted one of its quarterly all-employee town halls to the topic of mental wellness, where employees were invited to share their personal stories, says Gardiner. “We seek an environment of psychological safety, where employees can feel comfortable expressing their concerns and feelings.”

An open and welcoming workplace is also a safe workplace, says asset preservation manager Carter Hunks, and Saskatoon’s has become increasingly so over his four years with the City. “There has been a lot of effort put into prioritizing mental health issues,” says Hunks, “and recently there was some very valuable training in safeTALK, suicide prevention and trauma-informed response I was able to attend. It was great to see that conversation be normalized and approached with empathy.”

Other supports the City of Saskatoon now has for employees is a mental health resource hub, partnered with a third party, to offer 24/7 support online, which complements the well-established employee family assistance program that provides counselling services. “We recognize and acknowledge that everything we do, all the decisions we make, has the underlying consideration of impact not only on the community but on our people who are delivering the service,” says Gardiner.

“We recognize there are still areas we need to improve on,” she says, “but we’re really happy with how far we’ve come over the last little while and believe we’re heading in the right direction.”

Hunks certainly agrees. “We’re becoming a workplace where we can openly talk about mental health without worry about stigma. It’s been meaningful to be part of an organization where that is happening.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Saskatchewan's Top Employers winners, published February 4, 2025 in the Regina Leader-Post and Saskatoon Star Phoenix. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

For Saskatoon, diversity and wellness are closely tied

When Ola Farah, now an interior design consultant with the City of Saskatoon, moved to the prairie city from Toronto a decade ago she found a community becoming ever more diverse – and a municipal government embracing the change. As did Farah when she became an employee in 2021.

“I’m so much more involved in community events than I was before – some, like Rock Your Roots, a celebration of Indigenous culture and heritage, I wasn’t even aware of – because the City promotes them internally as well as externally,” says Farah. “I never participated in the Pride Parade until I was an employee of the city.”

Saskatoon’s goal is to bring miyo-pimâtisiwin, Cree for “the good life,” to residents and workers alike, says Chelsey Mack, director, HR shared services. “We are primarily focused on the employee experience when it comes to reconciliation, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI), but we also do a lot of work with community organizations to help bring diverse people to us,” Mack says.

For that reason, Saskatoon is updating its website so that people with visual impairments can listen to the City’s posted content. “We know that one of our areas for opportunity is to enhance our recruitment of individuals with disabilities, so we have established a community partnership with SaskAbilities Council which has helped us to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace,” says Mack.

“At the City we want our employee population to reflect the residents that we serve every day and have our community see themselves in our organization. Every year we get better at that.”

The City’s REDI initiatives are wide-ranging and ongoing, Mack says, from seeing more women in Saskatoon’s higher positions to hosting a Reconciliation Town Hall for City employees where a smudging ceremony was held in council chambers for the first time.

“One recent initiative was to improve our self-declaration campaign by giving employees more options in how they tell us about their whole selves in addition to the equity groups identified by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission – choosing to describe themselves, for instance, as members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and of particular ethnicities,” says Mack.

“The data collected was useful but what was more important is that people feel safe enough in the workplace to share that information.”

And it was not simply to help their own causes, adds Farah. “As much as I hesitate as a minority person to open myself up by participating in stuff like that,” Farah says, “I did it because I want to make other people feel more comfortable here in hopes that we can open up more doors for more people.”

The City closely links mental wellness and REDI recognition. “We have a dedicated mental-wellness consultant at the city, and they partner on newsletters or joint video initiatives or joint training where we talk about the importance of people being able to fully express who they are,” says Mack.

“We’ve had current employees change their lived gender identities and we now have a protocol that we follow when a person lets us know they want to transition, detailing how we go about notifications, changes to their profiles, etc.,” she says.

“That is the reason why we have linked REDI to mental wellness. People have personal lives as well as professional lives. And if you have to work so hard to keep them separate, you’re not bringing your best or whole self to work.

“REDI is really about focusing on all of the components that make a person whole.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada’s Best Diversity Employers winners, published February 25, 2025 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.