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Employees are expensive, and wages in Canada have been rising faster than productivity levels. As a result, companies want to maximize their most expensive asset: their people. In many cases, that comes down to leadership behaviour and employee experience.

Data consistently show that organizations with high trust among their workforce have higher revenue per employee (RPE) than those who do not. RPE is a key metric that reflects the efficiency with which a company maximizes its human capital, calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of employees.

For instance, the typical U.S. company earns US$104,030 per employee. But for the high trust workplaces recognized on the 2025 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, a list that is also published by Great Place to Work^®, RPE jumps to $883,928 per employee. In Canada, the 2026 Best Workplaces had an average RPE of $814,679.

Great Place To Work research has identified nine leadership behaviours that contribute to building trust in great organizations: listening, speaking, developing, inspiring, thanking, sharing, celebrating, hiring and caring. These behaviours allow leaders to spot early signs of disengagement, prevent talent loss and forecast business performance.

“Trust is the secret ingredient behind Great Place To Work Certified companies,“ according to the Great Place To Work Effect Playbook. “High-trust workplaces perform better during economic downturns and market disruption, allowing those companies to both guard against uncertainty and invest to capture new opportunities.”

One of these companies is Centurion Asset Management Inc., a Canadian asset management company specializing in real estate and other alternative investments, which has been a Great Place To Work company for six years. According to its most recent numbers, the company scored 90 per cent in the Trust Index and had an RPE of $971,554.

“Culture is directly tied to engagement, and engagement drives performance and productivity,” says Laura Salvatore, executive vice-president of human capital at Centurion. “When employees feel valued and supported, they’re more motivated to contribute at that high level. So that, of course, will feed into the employee experience, the customer experience, the organizational success. It really is all linked.”

But, she adds, investing in culture is not a “soft initiative.” Rather, it’s a strategic lever for the sustainable performance of the business.

For example, they focus on developing talent internally and creating equitable growth opportunities. While they offer stretch assignments, mentorship opportunities and continuous development, they also assess key drivers of trust and engagement through anonymous surveys sent to employees every two weeks – such as whether they find the work meaningful, if they feel recognized and if they believe they’re fairly compensated.

At the start of 2026, Centurion promoted 45 employees, representing approximately 10 per cent of its workforce. Of these 45 employees, 53 per cent were women, “showing our commitment, not just to continuous learning, but equity within the workforce and exposure to those opportunities,” Salvatore says.

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Managers also have a door-open (and camera-on) approach. As a result, Salvatore says 93 per cent of employees say management is approachable and easy to talk to, while another 91 per cent feel they can ask management any reasonable question and receive a direct and honest answer.

Their high RPE metric ties back to that idea of trust. “I would say they’re directly linked,” Salvatore says. “It’s really about that sense of psychological safety, and demonstrating that employee voices directly influence organizational decisions.” That, in turn, drives engagement, which in turn drives discretionary effort, or what she calls “going above and beyond.”

“It’s taking people from needing to work to wanting to work,” Salvatore says.

OMERS, which provides pensions to 665,000 municipal workers across Ontario, also topped the list of culture-driven organizations.

“We all know culture is not created by the HR department. Culture doesn’t come in seven steps or 10 steps. It is something that has to be lived and real,” says Dr. Nancy Nazer, chief human resources officer with OMERS.

For OMERS, that meant developing a blueprint for where they want to be – not just today, but in the future. In 2021, they launched a global engagement survey to measure factors that drive performance, such as intent to stay and likelihood to recommend. “So it’s not just guessing,” Nazer says. “You’re putting a level of science, as well as art, to driving the right outcome as it relates to being a people-first organization.”

The company uncovered, through its data, that inclusion and well-being are strong drivers of engagement. While diversity means being invited to the table, Nazer says inclusion is having a seat – and belonging is having a voice.

“We started to see that those who have a greater sense of belonging have a greater intent to stay,” Nazer says. “Our overall belonging is 85 per cent, so it’s quite high. And those who are in our younger workforce, it’s over 15 per cent points higher [than the industry average].”

OMERS also started measuring wellness back in 2020, before it was ‘trendy.’ Mental health training starts at the top of the house, and programs are available to all employees on-demand. “It’s creating a culture [where] people feel safe,” Nazer says. “And we’re seeing that in our own data, that people are getting the support they need.”

Better understanding the needs of their people means they can embed the right programs, “versus putting a bunch of programs in place and hoping that people use them,” she says. “You don’t need a lot of solutions, but the right ones.”

All of this has a direct effect on a business’s bottom line: “Engaged employees are more productive, generate more profits, and achieve higher customer satisfaction for business. They are also less likely to leave their job, reducing turnover and the costs associated with it, according to Great Place To Work research.

Ultimately, workplace culture isn’t static. “It continues to require attention and an intentional effort,” Salvatore says. Employee expectations are shifting. New generations are entering the workplace. “Priorities need to adapt to change to those market conditions,” she says, “so culture truly cannot be something that organizations set once and then leave unchanged.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.