At Logient, every employee experience is unique

Sophie Gaudreau’s unique employee experience with Logient began with her job interview back in 2018. Instead of the technical questions she was nervously expecting, the interviewer was interested in first getting to know her personality and what she was looking for from the company.

“Their thinking was that if there was something I needed to know, they would give me the training,” recalls Sophie, currently a quality assurance analyst with the Montréal-based company. “I felt like I was being treated as a human being first, and I loved that. I love my job here.

“Then, at my first review, they asked what they could do to make my job better and where I wanted to be in a year or two. They offered me training for that and more options at every stage along the way. This is a company that really listens to employees and wants us to be happy.”

As a company, Logient offers a diverse range of software-related services, including development, integration, consulting and management, that adapt to the individual needs of the client, so it takes the same custom approach to each new hire.

Employees are given a wide range of choices so they can build their own tailor-made employee experience – from career development to benefits to work team to social culture. Individuals can even choose their own preferred means of communication according to their personality.

Marie-Ève Marcoux, vice- president experience, who is responsible for guiding the trends in employee experience, says Logient was already thinking about how to innovate and make a difference in the way the company should recruit, mobilize and retain employees a few years before COVID-19 struck, but the pandemic was an accelerator.

“We already had a strong foundation to build on, with a culture of openness, transparency and trust,” says Marcoux. “In redesigning ourselves, we decided to take the same approach with employees as we do with our clients, offering a tailor-made employee experience just like we offer custom IT solutions.

“As part of this transformation in human resources, we redefined our targets, positioning, acquisition, sell strategy, delivery and retention in the same way we do marketing. Step by step we’re reinventing ourselves.”

Marcoux says they are far from finished as new ideas are always on the table, so this reformation is never really done. The plan is to continue to make their employee experience more and more tailor-made, particularly as this kind of flexibility is exactly what the next generation wants.

“It’s a generation that’s very different than the others and they want choice and freedom,” says Marcoux. “They want to travel and be exposed to new projects. They’re not afraid to change, so we need to make sure we have a structure in place to accommodate them.”

When an offer is made, each contract is individualized, says Marcoux, so the package is built based on what the person wants. For example, the employee can choose how much vacation they want, whether to work from home, and whether to be full-time, part-time or contractual.

“Nobody wants the same path of growth so I need to offer all these options, whether for specialized training or shadowing senior people,” she says. “They can even choose their team or project. Everybody loves that kind of flexibility.”

It’s a very different approach, says Marcoux. “In our follow-up meetings, we ask them for feedback. Are you okay? Do we need to adjust? It makes such a difference because they feel we’re taking care of them.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers winners, published April 5, 2022 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.