Nov 26th, 2020

OCH wins Canada’s Most Admired Cultures Award

Ottawa Community Housing is proud to announce that we have won Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures Award for 2020 from Waterstone.

“I came to Ottawa Community Housing for the opportunity to engage in my community in a more meaningful capacity,” said Scott.

Scott is an OCH employee who was asked what drew him to OCH. What he said is a common thread. Pride and dedication to building stronger, better communities are part of OCH’s corporate culture and are among the reasons why Waterstone chose OCH.

The award annually recognizes best-in-class Canadian organizations for having cultures that enhance performance and sustain a competitive advantage.

At OCH, core values are centred around Collaboration, Accountability, Respect and Excellence. Those values are reflected in the work the staff does every day to improve the lives of tenants.

“I am proud of the active participation of our employees at OCHC in our journey in working together to define and achieve our desired culture,” said OCH Vice President, People, Culture and Communications, Shaun Simms. “We are not done yet, and I am excited to continue to strive towards the future by continually trying to improve what we do and learning from when we excel and when we could do better.”

Waterstone looked at three key themes when selecting this year’s winners.

“At Waterstone we believe corporate culture drives performance and that it’s an organization’s greatest asset,” said Marty Parker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Waterstone Human Capital and Chair of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures Awards. “This year’s winning organizations have all demonstrated an outstanding commitment to corporate culture and to leveraging their culture as a competitive advantage. They all align to three key themes: they are focused on building a high-performance culture, committed to employee career development and growth, and focused on creating a workplace culture that supports physical and psychological safety for their team members.”

SUPPORT FOR STAFF

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the organization to rethink the workplace last March. Almost overnight, 70 percent of the workforce began to work remotely.

Ottawa Community Housing employs nearly 400 employees across the city. Working remotely required the dedicated Human Resources and IT departments to start furnishing employees with the tools they needed to work from home. Throughout the pandemic, OCH’s priority has been to keep employees safe, informed and connected by continually supplying critical and up-to-date communication and centralizing communications into a single source for easy access.

Through innovative rotational scheduling, we have been able to provide employees with the flexibility they need during these troubled times, and still ensure we are able to provide critical services.

Staff can also access expanded virtual health care offerings as part of their benefits package.

SUPPORT FOR THE COMMUNITY

Ottawa Community Housing’s dedicated staff work with partner agencies every day. At the beginning of the pandemic, OCH became part of the City’s Human Needs Task Force, to ensure vulnerable residents received the support they needed during the pandemic. Between March and July, OCH staff and partner agencies contacted more than 16,000 tenants. That dedication is part of the reason the organization was selected for the 2020 Most Admired Corporate Culture Award.

“At OCH, we are extremely proud of our corporate culture and our commitment to engaging our employees in contributing to an environment where, together, we are making a difference each day. This means working together in building stronger communities through collaborative efforts and providing a true sense of purpose as we serve the 32,000 diverse tenants living in our communities”, said OCH CEO Stéphane Giguère. “We are honoured to be recognized as having one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures as this is a true testament to our employees and the incredible work that they do.”