These are the most family-friendly employers in Canada

Good news for parents trying to balance their families and their careers–many employers are providing family-friendly benefits and more progressive workplace policies.

As a result, Mediacorp Canada Inc. has comprised a list of the top 100 family-friendly employers. 

“What society considers a ‘family-friendly employer’ is changing,” Richard Yerema, Managing Editor of the Canada’s Top 100 Employers project, said in a news release. 

“When we started the family-friendly competition 19 years ago, a good employer in this area focused exclusively on employees with young families. Today, with many Canadians supporting ageing parents and starting families later in life, progressive employers are responding by providing family assistance at every stage of life,” he continued. 

“The term ‘family-friendly’ has also become more inclusive,” Kristina Leung, Senior Editor of the Canada’s Top 100 Employers project, said in the same release. 

“There’s a growing awareness that policies need to be inclusive of a wide variety of family types – many of this year’s winners offer the same parental top-up across the board,” she continued. 

To determine which employers were the most family-friendly, the editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers evaluated them best on set criteria which included maternity and parental leave; daycare assistance; paid personal- and earned-days-off (EDO) programs; flexible work arrangements; compassionate leave and elder care assistance; adoption assistance; reproductive assistance, including fertility drugs and IVF; and even academic bursaries for employees’ children.

Some of the employers that made the list include: 

• The City of Toronto recently extended maternity and parental leave top-up for new mothers to 75% of salary for 78 weeks, making it one of the best family leave policies in the country.
• KPMG offers new parents-to-be a generous adoption subsidy (to $20,000) and supports new moms with maternity leave top-up payments (to 100 per cent of salary for 17 weeks). The national accounting and professional services firm has in-house employee networks for parents with young children as well as parents of children with special physical, emotional or behavioural needs.
• Fidelity Canada, based in Toronto, provides an excellent package of family-friendly benefits – including a IVF subsidy of up to $15,000 for employees starting new families.
• Along with onsite childcare, Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, offers a variety of flexible working arrangements to help employees balance personal and professional commitments, including telecommuting, shortened work weeks (fewer hours, less pay), and 35-hour work weeks with full pay.
• Toronto-based Salesforce recently increased its maternity and parental leave top-up. The cloud-based CRM software provider also offers a subsidy of up to $10,000 to employees to help offset the costs of adoption.

Those interested in viewing the full list can do so here.