Manitoba's Top Employers

18 MANITOBA HYDRO GENERATING BRIGHT FUTURES www.hydro.mb.ca INCLUSION & FAIRNESS WORK-LIFE BALANCE GREAT BENEFITS ECO-CONSCIOUS DIVERSE & CHALLENGING LEADER IN SAFETY Available in accessible formats upon request. PROUD TO BE ONE OF MANITOBA'S TOP EMPLOYERS FOR 10 CONSECUTIVE YEARS If Manitoba Hydro employ- ees were not dedicated, there would probably still be people in the province today without power. Thanks to Manitoba Hydro employees, the more than 160,000 customers who experi- enced power outages during the Thanksgiving weekend snow storm had their electricity re- stored as quickly as humanly possible. The speed with which they could once again heat their homes and cool their perishables was far from a straightforward process. Ap- proximately 950 kilometres of hydro lines and about 4,000 wood poles were damaged, some areas worse than others. "It took a couple of hours to a couple of weeks depending on the damage to the area you were in," said Scott Powell, director of cor- porate communications at Manitoba Hydro. "On Kingston Row (in Winnipeg), our crews basically had to turn into lumberjacks before they restored the power because they had to remove so many trees and branches." It's this sort of employee dedication that contributed to Manitoba Hydro being named one of the province's Top Employers for the 10th year in a row. Sharon Harrald, vice-president of human re- sources and corporate services at the provin- cial utility, isn't surprised. Whether they were climbing poles, answer- ing phones in the call centre or dealing with the non-stop questions from the media, Mani- toba Hydro employees approached the tasks at hand with professionalism, energy and gus- to. Considering they had never faced a storm of such magnitude and didn't know the extent of what lay ahead until they were in the thick of it, Harrald said the response showed the em- ployees' commitment to both their jobs and their fellow Manitobans. "It was the worst storm we've ever dealt with," she said. "How they came together was phenomenal. We went from, 'there's a storm' to 'we have things to fix' to 'there's a state of emergency, we need to mobilize.' "People feel like they're part of something bigger than just Manitoba Hydro," Harrald added. "(Providing) reliable services to the province of Manitoba is different than just do- ing a job." Many employees have been with the utility for a significant portion of their careers and have a great deal of pride in the work they do, Harrald said. They spend the vast majority of their work days operating under the public ra- dar, but when they were suddenly front and centre for days on end, they stepped up in a big way. "I had text messages from the spouses, partners and family members of employees working in Lundar and Portage la Prairie saying, 'Thanks for taking care of my spouse, partner, or child.' It extends beyond the people in the field — it's their families," she said. From their employment packages and compensa- tion to involvement with the community to charity work, Manitoba Hydro's employ- ees feel that their company cares about them, she said. "There are over 30 regis- tered charities they can do- nate to through payroll de- duction. They're encouraged to be involved in the com- munity and they're recognized for doing so," she said. Hydro is also proud to have a workforce that reflects the communities it serves. For example, 20 per cent of its staff are Indigenous, but that number rises to over 50 per cent in northern Manitoba. Manitoba Hydro has also developed special training programs to increase the represen- tation of Indigenous people in its workforce. For example, they have two Indigenous pre- placement programs to provide Indigenous candidates with academic upgrading and on-the-job training to meet the requirements of either the line trades or power electrician training programs. One of the ways in which Hydro gets its message out about it being a good corpo- rate citizen, as well telling compelling stories about its employees, is through its social media accounts. "We spend a lot of time talking to our em- ployees and we do a lot of video work and profiles," Powell said. "That could be people who work for us up north, a meter reader or somebody in the dispatch office. "We want to communicate that this isn't a giant faceless company. It's made up of Mani- tobans, your friends and neighbours. Every- body knows somebody who works at Hydro." DEDICATED WORKFORCE POWERS UTILITY BY GEOFF KIRBYSON Two Manitoba Hydro teams raised over $10,000 in the recent CancerCare Manitoba Foundation Ride Inside, a stationary bike fundraising event in support of young people living with and beyond cancer. Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler and his family were special guests and key fundraisers.

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