Recognized as one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2025):
By Richard Yerema and Kristina Leung, Mediacorp Canada Inc. staff editors (Dec 2, 2024)
Here are some of the reasons why Unity Health Toronto was selected as one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2025):
- Unity Health Toronto supports a formal mental health strategy that includes a range of wellness workshops and webinars, as well as unique wellness huddles that feature short departmental stretch breaks, chair yoga, deep breathing exercises and mediation sessions -- and the organization recently made its dedicated mental health benefit a permanent part of the employee health plan
- Unity Health Toronto employees can apply for unpaid and self-funded leaves of absence, up to one year in duration -- employees can also apply for educational leaves of absence
- Unity Health Toronto encourages employees working at the St. Michael's Hospital site to keep fit with subsidized memberships to its on-site fitness centre that features treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical trainers, free weights and shower facilities
Unity Health Toronto uses high-tech to ease stress
Health care is arguably one of the most stressful of industries – one where lives depend on decisions made. Now, Unity Health Toronto is using technology, including artificial intelligence and advanced simulation, to alleviate some of that stress among employees.
“New health care workers are thrown into very complex environments,” says Unity Health Toronto simulation manager Lindsay Beavers. “Opportunities for experiential learning during an event like a code situation don’t come very often. It’s a huge confidence boost if you can practise first on a mannequin instead of a real patient, with an experienced team around you to help you learn.”
Setting up complex simulation experiences, with mannequins, elaborate set designs, virtual reality tools and other technology may sound futuristic, but for Unity Health Toronto it’s old hat. As one of Ontario’s largest health-care networks, Unity Health Toronto includes St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Providence Healthcare and St. Michael’s Hospital and is a pioneer in simulation training in Canada, launching its program in 1996. Today, Unity Health Toronto’s state-of-the-art simulation program trains more than 5,000 health profession learners, hospital administrators and support staff every year.
The program supports hospital teams by creating realistic learning environments to practise a range of skills, says Beavers. The simulations offer realistic scenarios, like a simulation lab set-dressed to look like a bachelor apartment, all to teach public health workers how to deal with drug overdoses.
“We use simulation to teach health care workers how to do their jobs better,” Beavers says. “We use it to conduct research so we can understand things better. We even use it to help design new, better workspaces at the hospitals.
“The simulation program sets us apart,” she says. “It provides clinicians, administrators and leaders with the opportunity to design the spaces and influence the processes and policies where they work. The culture is enhanced, and everyone feels like they’re part of it.”
Dr. Tim Rutledge, president and CEO of Unity Health Toronto, says that in addition to the simulation program, new artificial intelligence tools are helping to reduce employee stress. Unity Health Toronto has developed and deployed over 50 AI solutions, including tools to ease administrative burdens on staff.
“We have a ton of AI solutions – products that are helping us reduce wait times, improve treatments, make medicine more precise, improve health outcomes and save lives,” he says. “We’re one of the leading organizations in the development of artificial intelligence tools to support clinical practice decision-making.”
Rutledge points to an AI early warning decision support tool called CHARTWatch, which monitors patients and lets clinicians know which are the most in need of intervention. Researchers found a 26-per-cent reduction in unanticipated mortality after the tool was implemented at St. Michael’s, and the tool is now in place at St. Joseph’s.
Rutledge says every new technology eases stress levels for employees and makes for a better workplace. “It’s a stressed time in health care globally,” says Rutledge. “We must have happy, fulfilled staff if we’re going to provide excellent clinical services. To make that happen, we’ve really prioritized the way we think about our staff, our training, our support.”
Recognized as one of Canada's Best Diversity Employers (2025):
By Kristina Leung, Chantel Watkins, and Cypress Weston, Mediacorp Canada Inc. staff editors (Feb 24, 2025)
Here are some of the reasons why Unity Health Toronto was selected as one of Canada's Best Diversity Employers (2025):
- Unity Health Toronto diversifies its talent pipeline with programs dedicated to the employment of equity groups, including its summer student co-op program for Black, Indigenous and Tibetan students, where participants receive medical mentorship opportunities -- the organization also partnered with Project Search to facilitate work placements for neurodiverse young people
- Unity Health Toronto applies an inclusive lens to its benefits, making scored EDI requirements and services a key component of the bid for the organization's new employee and family assistance program -- and also recently introduced a gender affirming surgery benefit, to a $10,000 lifetime maximum
- Unity Health Toronto has a strategic objective to hit representational hiring targets for Black senior leaders and Indigenous staff -- to help keep track of this goal, sociodemographic data is collected for physicians, staff and leaders to establish benchmarks, and is stored in the organization's applicant tracking system to provide data on when needed
The Equity-Focused Leadership Mentorship program has been an invaluable experience for me — both as a way to give back and as a chance to learn. Having always been supported by great mentors, it was rewarding to connect with other diverse leaders and gain fresh perspectives. The program also allowed me to learn from my mentee, who brought unique experiences and insights that challenged me to grow in new ways. Fatima Quraishi, regional stroke program director
Equity is good medicine at Unity Health Toronto
Running a health care organization that includes three hospitals and 11,000 staff is a complex undertaking. Even more so when you serve one of the largest and most diverse cities in North America. When Unity Health Toronto was founded in 2017 with the integration of three Catholic hospitals, making sure that staff reflect the diversity of patients became an important long-term goal.
Manson Locke is vice president, people, and chief human resources officer at Unity Health Toronto. He says diversity and inclusion has long been part of the organization’s DNA. “It’s a base of strength for us that we have this mission that was given to us 100 years ago by the Sisters of St. Joseph’s of Toronto. We were a door open to absolutely everybody, and we would strive to get into those parts of society where people are left behind. That’s something that translates very well to our modern efforts around equity and inclusion.”
Unity Health Toronto embarked on foundational work toward addressing racism and discrimination as continuing barriers to people’s ability to access health services and to realize their full potential. This included the establishment of the Council on Anti-Racism, Equity and Social Accountability in 2020.
In 2024, Unity Health Toronto kicked off a landmark equity-based program designed to provide mentorship opportunities to aspiring leaders within the organization. The focus is on recruiting mentors and mentees who self-identify as belonging to communities that experience barriers in leadership, including Black, Indigenous and racialized people, those in the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities.
“We thought about putting a mentorship program on the ground that looked like everyone else’s mentorship program,” says Locke. “But then we asked ourselves, ‘What would mentorship look like if we adapted our program to build a more representational leadership team?’”
Faye Roberts is the manager of volunteer services at Unity Health Toronto and one of the organizers of the program. “We started out focusing on LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities and BIPOC communities because we know that they experience implicit bias in institutions,” she says, referring to Black, Indigenous and people of colour.
The five-month program allowed mentees to learn from leaders who had already experienced and overcome barriers to leadership advancement. “We allowed our mentees to recognize that they could accomplish so much more,” says Roberts. “To feel confident in their abilities. At the same time there was a lot of collaboration and ideas being discussed.”
Health outcomes are actually better when patients feel that their health care team is reflective of their community, says Roberts.
“If someone is lying in a hospital bed and a volunteer walks in who looks like them, they can feel that there’s someone there who understands them and their situation. That contributes to the improvement of their health and well-being.”
Making sure staff and leadership reflect Unity Health Toronto’s patient community is “also about making sure that our people are educated and informed and they understand the needs of those communities,” says Locke. “They need to understand that health care is not always a safe place for marginalized communities, and that’s completely unacceptable.”
