How Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures negotiated the pandemic

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, the Canada's Most Admired awards program had just celebrated its gala honouring 2019 winners in February and nominations for 2020 were coming in.

“We didn't know last March how bad the pandemic would be or how long it would last,” says Marty Parker, president and CEO of Waterstone Human Capital and founder of the Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures and Canada's Most Admired CEOs awards programs. “We hoped to be back, living normal lives by the end of summer.”

Parker remembers sitting down with his team to discuss the awards programs. Did it make sense to move forward with the awards during a pandemic? Canada's

Most Admired Corporate Cultures, would be entering its 17th year celebrating leading Canadian organizations, while Canada's Most Admired CEOs would begin its seventh year of turning the spotlight on the country's top leaders.

The thinking was unanimous: “More than ever, recognition for the vital role of culture in building and sustaining organizations needs to happen,” says Parker. “There are still organizations and leaders that are going to do great things. We were right.”

Like this year's winners, Parker and his team endured, learned, and made it happen. More than this, they leaned into their own culture and values, understanding the unique role a strong culture can play in times of crisis to bring people together. “This is something we've seen consistently across each of this year's winners: their people pulled together and stepped up for each other, their organization

and the bigger community,” says Parker. “For us, it was even more important to celebrate culture and to focus on the positive things that were happening.”

The first step was to extend the deadline for nominations from the end of April to the end of May. Organizations can be nominated by others or self-nominate to be recognized in the following categories:

❚ Emerging (revenues from $5 million to under $25 million, and over 25 employees)

❚ Growth (revenues must be over $25 million to under $100 million)

❚ Mid-Market (revenues of $100 million to less than $500 million)

❚ Enterprise (revenues of $500 million and above), and

❚ Broader Public Sector (not-for-profit, government, charitable organizations and crown corporations)

Each nominee is asked to submit a detailed online written submission to answer questions in six key areas: vision and leadership; recruitment and hiring for fit/talent management; communication, cultural alignment and measurement; retention, rewards and recognition; social enterprise and corporate social

responsibility; and organizational performance.

This year, nominees for Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures awards were also encouraged to highlight how they were faring during the pandemic, and the role their corporate culture played in navigating these unprecedented times. It was an opportunity to celebrate wins in a tough time.

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, nominees were interviewed in person where possible and by Zoom when necessary. In 2020, all of the submission interviews were conducted virtually.

Country-wide regional in-person summits were replaced with one virtual summit in October. “It took place over Zoom, with keynotes, and panel discussions all online,” says Parker. “It was a great success.”

Voting takes place the first Monday of November, and 2020 was no exception. However, typically the board of governors meets in Toronto at 8:30 a.m. EST and spend the day discussing the nominees and voting in person for both awards programs. In 2020, Waterstone Human Capital hosted vote day virtually, which required pushing the start time to 11:30 a.m. EST to

accommodate different time zones and getting a full day of discussion and voting into a condensed time period. The vote for the CEO Awards took place on a separate day.

“It was terrific,” says Parker. “We figured it out. We came to a consensus over Zoom.” Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures Summit, CEO Summit and Awards Celebration took place on April 21 and April 22, 2021 using a tool called Remo. The tool allows for in-platform networking, which is a big part of the live event, and Waterstone wanted to maintain that.

The team at Waterstone were excited to welcome back event emcee, comedian Steve Patterson, and to have Alan Doyle as the musical guest for the awards celebration. The event also featured video tributes for all winners, who were also asked to provide short videos showing them celebrating with their awards.

“If you had asked me before COVID how we would do these events digitally, I would have said I don't know,” says Parker. “But where there's a will, there's a way. People really want to recognize the impact culture has on performance and on people.”