Lauren Johnson 00:00:02
Welcome to another episode of HRD TV. I'm Lauren Johnson, a Journalist with HRD Canada, and today I'm here with Diana Godfrey from Fidelity Investments. Fidelity recently won an award for Best Workplace to work, and today we will be speaking with Diana about what really makes Fidelity stand out as a great workplace. What makes Fidelity Investments one of the best places to work in Canada?
Diana Godfrey 00:00:28
Thanks, Lauren, I would say it's the people. Honestly, I think we're very fortunate that the organization has a set of values that we all feel aligned to our values, our integrity, trust. We work in partnership with each other, we're very collaborative, and I think because of that, our all of our employees feel valued and feel part of the organization's success, and actually have the ability to see their connection to the clients.
Lauren Johnson 00:01:03
And then how do you support employee development and career growth?
Diana Godfrey 00:01:08
Well, it's interesting, so I would say we're very, very dedicated to development. It's part of what sets us apart and part of what helps us create the culture that we have. So, it's not uncommon to see specific development programs for different areas of the business. Our sales organization has a very unique development program. Our client services area has a very unique development program, all of them focus on building competencies and capabilities and about addressing client and customer needs in a way that's effective but also allows our employees to grow. And then addition to the different programs we've created, the reality is we have an extensive catalog of online, you know, to the tune of 1000s of courses that employees can take that really suits them, because it's on their time when they have, you know, the opportunity to do it, and it can be aligned with their interests. So, it may not be job specific, it may be about what they want in the future. It's about removing some of those inherent concerns people have with technology change, you know, the introduction of AI, etc, if you take away the stigma of the unknown and put things in the hands of employees to learn, it helps advance the organization more easily, and it removes the fear, and I think that's part of what our programs are designed to do. It's about building capability, but also removing the fear of the unknown and making it available to everybody and you know, we encourage tuition, you know tuition, we have a tuition reimbursement program, if you will, and we encourage formal education in addition to business based learning and there are conferences that people are encouraged to participate or attend, because they can bring that knowledge back in house. So I would say we really have a culture of continuous learning, and we try to espouse that and share it broadly.
Lauren Johnson 00:03:34
Absolutely, that's amazing. So how does the company then ensure open communication and feedback between employees and leadership?
Diana Godfrey 00:03:41
I think those things are always really hard to do, but we make every effort that we can to communicate and to ensure that information is cascaded down, and it's about removing the barriers to open communication. So, we have Company Town Halls that cover the broad Canada organization, each of the business units have their own Town Halls. We encourage managers to have one on ones with all their people. We ask managers to have skip levels so that they're meeting with people that are, you know, levels below their directs. We send out an awful lot of emails and communications, and then, sort of the underpinning of it all is our intranet site that we call Insight, which allows us to post information about, you know, upcoming events, about the markets, about wins for the clients, we have a weekly meeting called the week ahead that talks about what's coming up in the organization and talks about some key successes that people have enjoyed. So, I think the idea is, you know, flooding the communication channels with information so that everybody has the opportunity to hear, but they can hear in a way that works for them and so some people want more personal, you know, personalized information and some prefer those big corporate moments. And I think by having all of those lines of communication open, and all of them are two way, believe it or not, there's always the opportunity for questions. We encourage them by doing that. We hope that our employees feel heard, but we also hope that they're hearing from us.
Lauren Johnson 00:05:39
Amazing and then, what programs does fidelity have in place to support employee wellbeing, including mental health and work life balance?
Diana Godfrey 00:05:46
Well, it's interesting. So one of the principle the guiding principles we have in in our values program, because we have values, we have behaviors and guiding principles, is balance. Now, it's not specific to work life balance. It's a number of different things. It's work life balance, it's balancing short and long term goals. It's balancing development with getting your work, your day to day, work, done. So, we look at balance as being broader, but the reality is that we're a hybrid work environment, most employees are in a hybrid arrangement. There are, you know, a few dozen that need to come in every day just because of the nature of their work, but because we encourage internal movement. If those people felt strongly about the need to be in a hybrid environment, they could apply for another role. So, I think having a hybrid role has really changed the way in which we work, and it's provided an additional level of flexibility for the employees that we didn't have. I always say the unintended positive consequence of covid was proving we could do these things and doing them well and successfully. But I think when you talk about wellbeing, we have a lot of programs that really are around a personals, a persons, sorry, wellbeing from a health perspective, whether it's mental or physical health, and so we have Mental Health First Aiders in our offices that can be reached virtually or in person and that's really about giving employees a peer network to go to to find out and understand the resources that are available. We're not going to pretend to say that, you know their counselors in the office, but they can tell them where to find the resources. So, if an employee is not comfortable speaking to their manager, they can speak to trained peers. We work with the mental Canadian Mental Health Association. We have done not myself, training for years today, for years now and are continuing along that path of removing the stigma of mental health from the organization's vocabulary. You know, we just don't want people to feel that mental health is different than physical health. We understood through covid that our employees were reaching their max, or their families maybe were reaching their max on their mental health support, their psychology support in our programs, so we increased that psychology coverage significantly, and we look to see if people are reaching those maximums, we introduced Marriage counseling as a separate type of support in our program. So, recognizing that there are different needs that different cohorts have, we've, you know, looked at those things. We've introduced gender affirmation support. We've improved our fertility support, we're now looking at men's and women's health differently. So, I think understanding that there are unique needs of different groups is really helping us address the well being needs of the broader community, rather than thinking one size fits all.
Lauren Johnson 00:09:26
Wow, that's great. So what's being named at Best Workplace mean to you?
Diana Godfrey 00:09:31
You know, I think there's a couple of different things. First of all, in this particular case, this is the result of our employees responses and so to your survey and so, I think that is really telling, because it helps us understand or hear from our employees, and it's their sort of support for saying we are all of those things. We appreciate recognition, obviously, in any way, and we're happy to share our programs, but when our employees say that the programs work for them, it's special. And I would say, as an employer, when we you know, do our searches as an example, we know that candidates are looking for organizations that support their employees and that have a reputation for supporting their employees and recognizing the needs of their clients. And I think being recognized as an employer and being recognized through our employees is really telling for a candidate too, and I think it gives our clients confidence. So, when the clients look at an organization and say their employees are happy, they know it's a safe place to do work and I think all of those things just help us do everything better.
Lauren Johnson 00:10:57
Thank you so much, Diana, for your time today and all those great insights.
Diana Godfrey 00:11:02
Lauren, thanks so much for having me today. Fidelity really appreciates the recognition that HRDC is bestowing upon the organization, and it's a privilege to be here. Thank you.
Lauren Johnson 00:11:14
Thank you for tuning in to HRD TV. For more content, you can visit our [email protected]
Lauren Johnson 00:11:23
Until next time on HRD TV. Thank you for tuning in.
