Montreal's Top Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 3
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MONTRÉAL’S TOP EMPLOYERS (2025)
MONTRÉAL’S
TOP EMPLOYERS
Anthony Meehan,
ABB CANADA
PUBLISHER
Editorial Team:
Richard Yerema,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Kristina Leung,
MANAGING EDITOR
Chantel Watkins,
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Sonja Verpoort,
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Juliane Fung,
RESEARCH EDITOR
Cypress Weston,
SENIOR RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Vithusa Vimalathasan,
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Krista Robinson,
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Advertising Team:
Kristen Chow,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLISHING
Ye Jin Suhe,
MANAGER, PUBLISHING
Chariemagne Kuizon,
PUBLISHING COORDINATOR
Vishnusha Kirupananthan,
SENIOR BRANDING & GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Sponsored Profile Writers:
Berton Woodward,
SENIOR EDITOR
Brian Bergman
Brian Bethune
Deborah Bourk
Abigail Cukier
Mary Dickie
Jane Doucet
Steven Frank
Patricia Hluchy
D’Arcy Jenish
Sara King-Abadi
Allison Lawlor
Michael McCullough
©2025 Mediacorp Canada Inc. and Postmedia Inc. All rights reserved.
MONTRÉAL’S TOP EMPLOYERS is a product of Mediacorp. The Montreal Gazette
distributes the magazine online but is not involved in the editorial content,
judging or selection of winners. MONTRÉAL’S TOP EMPLOYERS is a trade mark of
Mediacorp. Editorial inquiries: ct100@mediacorp.ca
ABB Canada recently revised its vacation policy to recognize an employee’s overall years of experience,
rather than just basing it on their tenure at the company.
T
his year marks the 20th anniversary of our
Montréal’s Top Employers competition, which
we have published with the Montreal Gazette
since the project’s inception. As one of the
regional competitions organized within the
annual Canada’s Top 100 Employers project, we have
gained some experience watching the progress that
Montréal employers have made in the past two decades.
Each year, our announcement magazine for Montréal’s
Top Employers tells the story of a remarkable city where
the best employers from industries new and old compete
to attract and retain employees. World-class employers in
the city’s traditional industries, from finance to aerosplace,
cast a careful eye each year through our list of winners to
improve upon best practices they find in Montréal’s
technology and creative industries.
And the process works the other way too, with start-ups
and other small companies copying time-tested benefits
and programs from established company’s in the city’s
traditional industries. The Montréal region is home to 15
universities and over 90 post-secondary institutions, so it’s
little surprise the area has long been a hotbed for new
start-ups. More than half of Canada’s most active venture
capital funds are located in Montréal, which explains the
impressive number of start-ups that apply to the Montréal’s
Top Employers competition each year.
The acute competition between these two categories of
employers is seen across the metrics that our editors
review, but particularly in three important areas: vacation
and paid time off; maternity and parental leave top-up;
and community involvement. It’s rare to see an innovation
in any of these three areas stay unique to one employer in
Montréal’s competitive labour market.
The steady improvements in vacation and paid time off
come as welcome relief to the city’s residents, who long
received annual vacation allowances at a lower average
level than the nation’s other large cities, particularly
compared to Western Canada. This is no more, with a
record 22 employers on this year’s list offering four weeks
or more of annual vacation allowance to new employees.
More than two-thirds of this year’s winners also offer two
or more paid personal days off during the year, in addition
to paid vacation allowance.
Exceptional family-friendly programs are a distinguishing factor for Montréal’s Top Employers. Benefits like
maternity and parental leave top-up for new mothers are
now found at nearly 90 per cent of this year’s winners.
Parental leave top-up for new fathers is found at over 60
per cent, with top-up for adoptive parents found at nearly
the same level. Just over 40 per cent of this year’s winners
offer employees financial assistance for IVF and similar
fertility procedures.
Community involvement is perhaps the area where
we’ve seen the greatest cross-pollination between
Montréal’s traditional industries and its thriving technology and creative sectors. Paid time off for employees to
volunteer at local charities is common at most of this
year’s winners. Matching funds for employee donations is
another program we see at many of this year’s winners, as
is employee involvement in choosing the charities that
receive company donations.
This morning, our editors released detailed ‘reasons for
selection’ explaining why each of this year’s winners was
chosen. I encourage you to read these reason, which are
available free of charge via the competition homepage:
www.canadastop100.com/montreal. If your organization
would like to be considered for next year’s competition, I
encourage you to reach out to our editorial team at:
ct100@mediacorp.ca
– Tony Meehan
