Nov 30th, 2023

News Release – Ottawa Community Housing recognized with Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures of 2023 Award  

OTTAWA, November 29, 2023 – Ottawa Community Housing is proud to announce that it has received the 2023 national Waterstone Most Admired™ Corporate Culture Award. 

This award recognizes best-in-class Canadian organizations with cultures that enhance performance and sustain a competitive advantage. It is a national competition, and entries are peer-reviewed by past award winners.  

Since 2017, OCH has been actively progressing its Culture Roadmap, which continues evolving our foundational programs and investing in key areas such as diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as our agility as we transform as a business. OCH’s Culture Roadmap is a key initiative designed to enable us to adapt as we continue to evolve as a high-performance organization as we transition to the workplace of the future.  

OCH is immensely proud of this recognition, which highlights the contribution of its dedicated team.   The work they do every day to change lives by providing a place to call home for the 32,000 residents in OCH communities. The teams’ work impacts in numerous ways – whether it is providing support and advocacy to a vulnerable resident or helping with a beautification project in a community to make it more welcoming for tenants and their guests.   

OCH extends its gratitude to Waterstone Human Capital for this award and offers congratulations to the other award recipients. 

Quotes

“Being recognized amongst top Canadian leaders is an honour. At OCH, we are extremely proud of our corporate culture and commitment to engaging our employees in contributing to an environment where together, we are making a difference every day.   
For our team, at OCH, this means working together through collaborative and innovative efforts and providing a true sense of purpose as we serve the 32,000 diverse tenants living in OCH communities.  
We are honoured to be recognized as having one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures as this is a true testament to our amazing employees and the incredible work that they do daily”. 
Stéphane Giguère – Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Community Housing  

“I am proud of the active participation of our employees at OCH in our journey to working together to achieve our desired culture, and I am excited to continue to strive towards the future by continually working to improve what we do and learning from when we excel and when we could do better.”
Shaun Simms, OCH Chief Officer, People, Communications and Strategy 

“The 2023 Canada’s Most Admired award recipients exemplify how culture drives performance, 
especially in the face of economic uncertainty and other recruitment and retention challenges. This year’s winners are leveraging culture to drive growth and success in today’s highly competitive talent market through the acquisition, retention, and optimization of high-performance leaders, teams, and corporate cultures.”  
Marty Parker, President and CEO of Waterstone Human Capital and Chair of the Canada’s Most Admired™ program  

Quick Facts 

• 423 full-time staff in Canada  
• 894 staff volunteer hours last year 
• 100% employer-paid health premiums 
• 25 weeks, parental leave top-up pay 
• 18 paid sick days 
• 7 weeks, maximum vacation allowance 

About OCH 

OCH provides approximately 15,000 homes to more than 32,000 tenants, including seniors, parents, children, couples, singles, and persons with special needs, within many communities across the City of Ottawa. OCH houses a diverse population of varying languages, ethnicities, and cultures.  OCH is the largest social, community and affordable housing provider in Ottawa and an industry-leading builder of affordable housing. Over the years, we have built partnerships with local service providers, support agencies and other groups to improve residents’ well-being and increase services and support provided to tenants. 

 About Waterstone Human Capital 

Waterstone Human Capital inspires organizations to build high-performance cultures. They are a human capital management consulting firm specializing in retained executive search, cultural measurement and assessment, and leadership training and development. They have successfully helped hundreds of entrepreneurial-minded, high-growth organizations across North America recruit, measure and train for fit. Waterstone is also the founder of Canada’s Most Admired™ Corporate Cultures and Canada’s Most Admired™ CEO programs. These national programs annually recognize best-in-class Canadian organizations and CEOs for fostering cultures that enhance performance and help sustain a competitive advantage. For more information, please visit waterstonehc.com or canadasmostadmired.com. 

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