Pay rises won’t retain your top talent – this will

Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) was praised as one of Alberta’s Top Employers for 2018, which really shows their unrelenting commitment to employee happiness and morale. In fact, AFSC has been named as one of the Top Employers for 10 years – not something that many organizations can boast. We spoke to Karla Kochan, vice president, human resources and communications at AFSC, and speaker at our upcoming HR Leaders Summit in Calgary, who explained how investing in employees is about more than just wages. “Our values based- culture sums up who we are as an organization,” she told HRD. “Whilst I concede that technical skills are important, we want to ensure that our personal values and our corporate ones are aligned. “We have a lot of staff who hold professional designations in the industry and work for us – but they’re also farmers. They’re producers – and this extra element is something which keeps our top talent here. We invest a lot into ongoing education, learning and development, both internally and externally. We really do build a fence around our talent in order to keep them engaged and motivated – and eventually promote them into higher positions.” Agriculture Financial Services Corporation is a Crown Corporation – and they suffer with the same budget issues that other similar Albertan organizations do. However, despite cash flow concerns, Karla reiterated that they refuse to cut back on staff development.