FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2011

Thriving Workplace Award
Winners Just Announced
Only four awarded in Canada

This year’s “Top Workplaces Where
Employees Thrive” winners are:

Gap Adventures
Habañero
HR Downloads
OnX Enterprise Solutions

Kingston, Ontario – Employees may like a sense of adventure, but being adventurous can earn you top marks when it comes to Your Workplace’s annual Top Workplaces Where Employees Thrive Awards. Gap Adventures, cited as the largest independent adventure travel tour company in the world, is one of this year’s winners. The company hosts small group adventure tours and independent travel to more than 100 countries.

“We have a group of like-minded individuals who are all really passionate about changing the world through travel,” says Phil Wylie, Global Talent Manager for Gap Adventures (www.gapadventures.com).

Other innovative companies and recipients of the Thrive award included Habañero, (www.habaneros.com), a leading Western Canadian IT consulting services firm known for business advice, original creative design, and technical expertise; HR Downloads (www.hrdownloads.com), an HR research & advisory firm; and OnX Enterprise Solutions (www.onx.com), a company that helps organizations optimize the use of technology and designs, builds and operates complex computing and data centre solutions.

“Everyone who works in these organizations loves to be there,” says Vera Asanin, Your Workplace President and CEO. “In a thriving workplace employees are excited to be there because they are clear about their outcomes. People love working together to achieve them.”

The awards were given by Your Workplace as part of the Great Place to Work® Institute’s gala awards dinner for The 100 Best Workplaces in Canada 2011 earlier this week in Toronto, Ontario. Your Workplace is grateful to Great Place to Work® Institute for assisting with the selection process in reviewing hundreds of applications.

A total of 243 companies were nominated this year, with 232 of these meeting the minimum criteria to be short-listed. These 232 were invited to have their employees complete an online survey measuring employee engagement. From these, the winners were determined by the judges based on overall results from nomination letters, letters of reference, and employee responses to the survey.

Launched in 2009, the Thrive award is sponsored by Your Workplace magazine, Canada’s leading national publication dedicated to assisting progressive organizations in building and sustaining cultures where employees thrive.

The Thrive awards were developed based on five criteria developed by Dr. Sandy Cotton, who taught leadership at the Queen’s School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. They are: collaborative dialogue, trust, clear outcomes, tolerance and teamwork. Winners of the Thrive awards are also required to have employees who are engaged at work. Last year’s Thrive winners included Level 5, I Love Rewards, Chimpanzee and the Ontario Hospital Association at the Gala Thrive Awards Dinner with keynote presenter W. Brett Wilson of CBC’s Dragon’s Den.
Learn more about these award-winning, innovative companies in the upcoming May/June issue of Your Workplace.

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About Your Workplace: For more than 12 years, Your Workplace has been the only leading-edge paid publication in Canada devoted to workplace prosperity. Based in Kingston, Ontario and published independently six times a year, Your Workplace reaches executives and managers in progressive organizations. They recognize that positive culture leads to engaged, healthy employees who contribute more in terms of ideas, effort and results. Along with trusted articles on building a thriving work culture, Your Workplace also hosts events. Our annual conference for 2011 is entitled “Thriving Workplaces”. Your Workplace will partner with Great Place to Work® Institute on May 2 and 3 at the Sheraton Airport Hotel & Conference Centre in Toronto. For more information please visit: www.yourworkplace.ca/conference2011.php

Media Contacts:
Vera Asanin
President & CEO
Your Workplace
23 Queen Street, Kingston, ON, CANADA, K7K 1A1
613.549.1222 • 1.877.668.1945

Karen Richardson
Associate Editor
Your Workplace
23 Queen Street, Kingston, ON, CANADA, K7K 1A1
613.549.1222 • 1.877.668.1945

April, 2011