Hydro Ottawa Honoured with Employer Excellence Award from Hire Immigrants Ottawa

March 10 2016

Hydro Ottawa was recently recognized at the 2016 Employer Council of Champions Summit and Awards conference as an Employer of Excellence in the National Capital Region. The Employer Excellence Awards recognize local employers for their innovative workplace policies and practices around the recruitment and integration of skilled immigrant employees into their organization.

The annual Employers’ Summit brings together more than 100 business, government and civic leaders in a program designed to engage participants in a dialogue about the effective integration of skilled immigrants into the labour force, and to celebrate employer excellence in Ottawa.

Employers across industries are challenged with the greatest demographic shift in the labour force as the boomer generation enters retirement. Hydro Ottawa is no exception. About 44% of its trade and technical workforce is set to retire over the next decade.

A few years ago, the utility created its first diversity plan, as part of a talent management strategy, to attract qualified hires from a variety of groups: women, visible minorities, persons with disabilities, youth, LGBT, First Nations, and new Canadians.

“The quality of our workforce is our strength,” says Bryce Conrad, Hydro Ottawa President and CEO. “Diversity is essential to putting our customers at the centre of everything we do. By embracing a talented workforce that is reflective of the diversity of the communities we serve, we better understand the needs of our customers and offer additional customer value.”

Among its initiatives to facilitate the recruitment of new Canadians, Hydro Ottawa

• works with community organizations that help immigrants secure meaningful employment
• serves on the Employer Council of Champions with Hire Immigrants Ottawa, as well as one of its sub-committees
• maintains a strong relationship with the YMCA-YWCA’s Power of Trades, a pre-employment training program designed to help internationally trained tradespeople and immigrants access jobs and achieve Ontario certification in skilled trades
• employs an improved screening process to increase its pool of qualified skilled immigrant applicants and understand how foreign work experience can translate to a Canadian context