Building an Award-Winning Employer Brand in Healthcare
Employer recognition is never really about the award.
It is about the systems, culture, leadership practices, and employee experience that make the recognition possible.
During my time leading Human Resources at Louis Brier Home and Hospital and Weinberg Residence, I had the opportunity to help advance a people strategy that contributed to the organization being named one of BC’s Top Employers and receiving the Canadian Nonprofit Employer of Choice™ Awardfor a sixth consecutive year.
In a sector as complex as long-term care, that kind of recognition matters. Healthcare employers are facing recruitment pressure, retention challenges, rising workplace complexity, increased labour relations demands, and growing expectations from employees, residents, families, funders, and regulators.
To be recognized as an employer of choice in that environment requires more than good intentions. It requires deliberate strategy.
Turning Culture Into Strategy
At Louis Brier, our people work was grounded in a simple belief: employee experience directly affects resident experience.
In long-term care, culture is not abstract. It shows up in how people communicate, how leaders respond to concerns, how staff feel supported, how teams recover from difficult days, and how consistently the organization lives its values.
The work involved strengthening the connection between culture, engagement, attendance, wellness, recognition, safety, leadership, recruitment, and organizational performance.
Rather than treating these as separate HR activities, we worked to connect them into a more coherent people strategy.
That meant focusing on the everyday systems and behaviours that shape the employee experience, including:
building a stronger and more authentic employer brand;
improving employee recognition and celebration;
strengthening health, safety, wellness, and attendance practices;
supporting leadership consistency and accountability;
creating more visible opportunities for staff engagement;
improving communication and connection across departments;
using employee feedback and external benchmarks to guide improvement;
and aligning people practices with the organization’s mission, vision, and values.
Recognition as a Measure of Progress
Louis Brier Home and Hospital and Weinberg Residence were named a Canadian Nonprofit Employer of Choice™ Award recipient, marking six consecutive years of national recognition. The organization achieved an overall score of 82%, exceeding the required benchmark for the award and reflecting sustained strength in leadership, workplace culture, and employee engagement.
The organization was also recognized as one of BC’s Top Employers, a designation that celebrates organizations in British Columbia that offer exceptional workplaces and progressive people practices.
For me, these recognitions were meaningful because they reflected collective effort. They were not the result of one initiative or one department. They reflected the daily work of leaders, staff, companions, volunteers, and teams across the organization.
They also reinforced an important HR lesson: employer brand is built from the inside out.
You cannot market your way into being an employer of choice. The brand has to be connected to the lived employee experience.
The Consulting Lesson
Many organizations want to improve recruitment, retention, engagement, or culture. But those outcomes rarely improve through isolated initiatives.
A stronger employer brand requires an integrated people strategy.
That means connecting the external promise you make to candidates with the internal experience you create for employees. It means ensuring that recognition, leadership, communication, wellness, safety, inclusion, and performance management all reinforce the same message.
It also means being willing to measure progress.
Awards such as BC’s Top Employers and the Canadian Nonprofit Employer of Choice™ Award can be valuable because they require organizations to look at themselves through an external lens. They create a benchmark. They identify strengths. They reveal gaps. They help leaders understand whether the culture they believe they are building is actually being experienced by employees.
Why It Matters
In healthcare, being an employer of choice is not just an HR goal. It is a care-quality goal.
When employees feel valued, supported, and connected to purpose, organizations are better positioned to retain talent, strengthen continuity, reduce disruption, and provide consistent, compassionate care.
The work of building a great workplace is ongoing. It requires attention, humility, creativity, and discipline.
But when people strategy is done well, it can strengthen not only the employee experience, but the entire organization.
