For the fourth consecutive year, Medavie has been named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers, a national, merit-based competition to determine which employers lead their industries in offering exceptional workplaces for their employees. As “one of the nation’s best places to work”, Medavie’s unique story was showcased in a special feature distributed in The Globe and Mail and is republished below.
Medavie Empowers Employees to Use Their Voice
“We emphasize how the individual thinks about their responsibilities, and you can see that in the ways our employees interact with the community.”
- Greg Bambury, Chief Human Resources Officer -
Angela Sereda’s employment with Medavie began in an unconventional way. In 2021, Sereda and her husband sold the contracted paramedic company they had built together in Moose Jaw, Sask., to Medavie and both accepted positions with the company.
“Community was important to us,” says Sereda. “We really invested in our community a lot when we were growing our company. It was important for both of us to choose an organization to sell to that aligned with our own core values, and to know that that organization would continue to move our company the same direction that we would have taken it. Medavie had those core values.”
Sereda began her career as a paramedic at just 18 years of age. Three decades later, she is now senior operations manager, overseeing Medavie’s Mobile Integrated Health programs in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Medavie began 80 years ago in Atlantic Canada as Maritime Hospital Service Association, a not-for-profit organization that addressed the need for medical expense coverage in the region. Over the years, the company expanded its insurance offerings to Quebec and Ontario and now provides a range of health-care services including EMS, community-based health-care programs, clinical training and medical communications across Canada. Today the company is the largest contracted EMS management provider in the country and a premier all-in-one benefits carrier through Medavie Blue Cross.
Looking after the benefits coverage health-care needs of Canadians provides Medavie with a powerful template to guide employee relations as well, says chief human resources officer Greg Bambury. “The mission of our organization is improving the well-being of Canadians,” he says. “That mission starts with improving the well-being of our own employees.”
Bambury says the company works hard to create a culture of support, where employees can shine and excel in both their personal and professional lives. “The challenges that our employees face are broad,” he says. “It’s vital for us to give them the tools and support to deal with those challenges – from a rewards and benefits standpoint, from a development standpoint, a work environment standpoint, a leadership standpoint.”
Creating an environment where employees thrive can mean anything from removing barriers within the organization to seeing objectives through an individual employee’s point of view rather than from the centre of the operation, according to Bambury. Most of all it means finding ways to help employees live their best lives in a holistic fashion, with emphasis on a healthy balance between personal and professional life.
“We always try to think about things from the individual’s perspective first, and then look at the team and the larger construct,” says Bambury. “We emphasize how the individual thinks about their responsibilities, and you can see that in the ways our employees interact with the community.
“When you pick up the phone to talk to someone at Medavie, we want your experience to be differentiated by the fact that this person, this organization, this interaction is one that is values-based and represents our desired culture.”
Sereda says a lot has changed in the 30 years that she’s been in the health-care business. The support she gets from Medavie isn’t something she has always felt in paramedicine. There was a time when individual voices didn’t matter much and everyone was expected to conform.
“Medavie really empowers us to get involved and to use our voices to help create change,” she says. “They support us with things like diversity, equity and inclusion programs. They allow everyone in the organization to feel included and important. It’s really exciting to be part of an organization that puts people at the top.”
Facts:
Over 61,000 job applications received last year
$4,000 mental health coverage per year
$2,500 scholarship program for employees' children
$1,000 maximum financial bonuses for course completion
240 charities helped last year
$500 matching donation for every 50 staff volunteer hours
