Sheridan ranks eighth on Forbes' list of Canada's Best Employers

Highest college ranking ever in prestigious survey

Sheridan ranks eighth overall on Forbes’ latest list of Canada’s Best Employers that was released Tuesday — the highest that a college has finished in the history of the annual survey.

This marks the third consecutive year that Sheridan has appeared on the Forbes list, improving from 14th last year and 87th in 2020. No other Ontario postsecondary institution finished in the top 10 of this year's Canada's Best Employers rankings, and only one other college in the province was among the 300 employers on the list.

Forbes highlighted Sheridan’s coronavirus response when publishing the results, particularly its innovative strategies to keep employees engaged and supported during the pandemic. The ranking is based on an independent, anonymous survey of more than 10,000 Canadian workers employed by businesses with at least 500 employees.“Sheridan is proud to once again be recognized as an employer of choice,” said Dr. Janet Morrison, President and Vice Chancellor. “Our faculty and staff are the best in the business and together, we fuel and sustain a values-driven organization that believes in the transformational power of higher education. An unwavering commitment to putting students first is how we stay focused and resilient.”

Sheridan has maintained full-time employment continuity at pre-pandemic levels and welcomed approximately the same number of partial-load and part-time professors in 2021 as it did in the Winter 2020 semester. Sheridan has further supported faculty and staff during the pandemic by enhancing campus safety protocols, supplying high quality masks, providing ergonomic assessments of home offices, forming the Remote Work Task Force to lay the foundation for a flexible post-pandemic employment experience, and hosting a community vaccine clinic in Brampton that saw more than 100 employees volunteer to give back to our home communities and re-connect with colleagues in person.

Sheridan’s commitment to community wellness — one of five enablers in the Sheridan 2024 Strategic Plan: Galvanizing Education for a Complex World — was also evidenced by the launch of its new Campus Wellness Strategy, including the Wellness Hub, a one-stop-shop for community members to access the many resources available to support their wellness. Supports for employees are organized according to the eight dimensions of wellness: physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental, occupational and financial.

Other employee supports over the past year include the introduction of DevelopMe, a digital toolkit designed to help employees plan, manage and accelerate their career development. DevelopMe contains various learning modules, assessments, articles and podcasts that assist users with identifying their strengths and passions, accelerating personal learning, creating and taking action on a career development plan, and ensuring their aspirations align with organizational goals.

Research for Forbes’ Canada’s Best Employers list was conducted by Forbes in partnership with Statista, its market research partner. Survey respondents were asked to rate, on a scale of zero to 10, how likely they’d be to recommend their employer to others. Statista then asked respondents to nominate organizations other than their own. The final list ranks the top 300 employers from across 37 industries, ranging from large corporations to community-based financial institutions, postsecondary institutions and government agencies.