TMX Group Ltd. was the winner at Benefits Canada’s 2024 Workplace Benefits Awards for its diligent approach to mapping out a future workplace that leaves the one-size-fits-all office in the past.
The financial services company was this year’s winner in the Future of Work Strategy category for its hybrid-first way of working experiment, which was designed to align health and well-being and inclusion with business objectives. “We’re so excited to share this win with the rest of the team, especially the Future of Work team,” says Dominique Côté (pictured left), TMX’s vice-president of employee experience and communications.
When the year-long experiment ended, the Future of Work committee reviewed various sets of data — including employee survey results, turnover, candidate feedback, exit surveys, performance by work style and sick days — and compared office occupancy trends pre- and post-coronavirus pandemic to gauge whether the strategy was successful. The results showed the hybrid format was working for TMX and its employees so it maintained the program, offering flexibility to employees based on their role and their clients’ needs.
The organization, which defines hybrid working as a minimum of two-three days per week in the office, developed a number of human resources policies and initiatives to support its hybrid-first strategy. Managers decide the right work model for each team and member with these models subject to change accordingly to address evolving business or operational needs. Coming out of the pandemic, people wanted to know definitively how many times they had to work in office so they could schedule their lives around it and feel comfortable knowing the company wasn’t going to pull it away from them, says Côté.
To further drive efficiencies across the different work styles among teams and employees, the HR team is piloting artificial intelligence tools to help create work efficiencies, such as meeting summaries and translation, and to establish a distributed, global work model that would see employees who are on a different work style contribute and/or collaborate.
“Like all things we invest in you want to see the [return on investment],” says Paula Ioannou (pictured right), TMX’s head of total rewards. “But we’re also very mindful of the fact that [gaining] efficiencies doesn’t always mean doing more, necessarily, but what you do with the time that you get back. We come back to human sustainability, the profound purpose, [which] I think is what matters.”
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In addition, TMX introduced hiring and retention practices to provide transparency on how employees can continue to advance their careers within the company; adjusted its annual compensation cycle to include analytics based on work styles; offers employees the opportunity to work anywhere in the world for up to 10 days; and increased its number of personal days from two to four. To support the partial return to office, the company offers transit subsidies where available, working with Toronto’s Metrolinx to offer discounted transit passes to staff.
To foster social connections, TMX hosts various hybrid and in-person social events across all of its regions, including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and employee recognition events. It also brings employees together in the spirit of volunteerism and charitable giving; freshened up its wellness program by taking a holistic approach; enables employees to customize their own path to well-being by providing different well-being experiences, including wellness webinars or in-person events, such as animal therapy days; and funds sports teams for employees who wish to join a league or play pick-up games in rented spaces.
The company’s roadmap to its future workplace is resonating with employees. Nearly all (91 per cent) of TMX’s workers who responded to the organization’s April 2024 mid-year pulse survey said they feel they have the right number of touch points with their manager. Another 86 per cent said they feel as connected as they’d like to be in a hybrid-work environment. Notably, in 2023, its voluntary turnover rate decreased to eight per cent, well below its post-pandemic peak of 12 per cent and below the financial industry’s average of approximately 11 per cent.
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