Once again this year, we asked employees from across the North to write in and tell us what’s so great about the place where they work. Is it the perks? The flexibility? The warm family atmosphere? Or is it the money, straight up? One thing we found out is that there as many different things employees are looking for as there are bugs in summer. We heard stories about the flexibility of hours, the use of the quad, the creative atmosphere, and the Friday beers. One guy even has a snowmobile on standby for any staffer that needs to get out. In the end, we’ve featured 12 companies who go above and beyond the average basket of employee benefits, and in so doing receive back tenfold the loyalty and admiration of their staff.

Pelly Construction

DETAILS: Industry: construction ✱ Number of employees: 141 ✱ Year founded: 1987 ✱ Offices: Whitehorse ✱ Most outrageous job: building an airstrip for the British Antarctic Survey on the Antarctic Peninsula, 12,000 kilometres from home

Jennifer DeHart Contract manager Integrity: “It makes me feel proud to be involved with such a fine place. Throughout the community – in business dealings and personally – when you’re tied to something that is so inherently good, every part of your life is affected by it.”

Daily tailgate meetings: “It’s a talk at the jobsite at the beginning of each shift about what’s happened the night before or maybe something’s come up. When you’re sitting around talking about safety, you’re not earning, but you’re making your job a safer and better place to be.”

Survey says: “Pelly surveys its employees regularly and has augmented many of its existing programs and incorporated employee recommendations, including RRSP matching, relocation allowance and training.”

Keith Byram Employer

Integrity: “We have one of the best names in the North for paying our bills and being fair to people. In the past we’ve paid bills before we paid ourselves. Like every company, we’ve been through ups and downs, but paying our suppliers and the people we deal with has always been a top priority for us.”

Safety: “Safety has always been a concern but it’s become more of an issue lately. If you’re dealing with large companies, often included in your proposal is your safety record. If you don’t have a good safety record you don’t get the work. Plus, it’s all part of treating your employees properly.”

Community support: Pelly gave $50,000 to Yukoner Jeane Lassen, an Olympic weightlifter. “We found out about her. Weightlifting is a sport in which you have trouble finding sponsors, so we gave her pretty substantial help.”

BHP Billiton

DETAILS: industry: mining ✱ Number of employees worldwide: 41,000 plus 61,000 contractors; the NWT: 893 plus 1,169 contractors ✱ Number of operations worldwide: 100 in 25 countries

Harry O’Keefe Environmental specialist Top reason BHP is a top employer: “The opportunity for professional development. They work very hard to develop their employees and move them forward. You always have the chance to step outside the normal parameters of your work and do something more challenging.”

On two-weeks-in, two-weeks-out: “It’s really nice, especially if you’re a younger person without a family. It gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want almost whenever you want. Because not only do you have the two-weeks-on-two-weeks-off, but you have the opportunity for a six week vacation every year taking your two-week holiday.”

Richard Morland Interim CEO

On hiring: “We aim to attract the right people into the right positions and we offer packages that are competitive for the location and the position. We also seek to employ people who have values that are aligned with our organizational values.”

SSI Micro

DETAILS: Industry: communications technology ✱ Number of employees: 70 ✱ Year founded: The Snowshoe Inn in Fort Providence, after which SSI was named, was founded in the late 1950s ✱ Offices: Yellowknife, Fort Providence, Ottawa ✱ Most outrageous job: building the communications network for Nunavut, and then a similar one for the Pacific nation of Kiribati, which has 32 atolls strung across 3,500,000 square kilometres of ocean.

Stephen Walters Software developer

Top reason SSI is a top employer: Passion. “I can have a conversation with somebody about something technical and we can talk about the pros and cons of technology ‘X’, then I can walk across the room and talk with somebody else about something different. You can tell everybody really cares about their job.”

Charlotte Walker Marketing director

Vocational growth: “When I started with the company I was completely green. I had no computer experience at all and I started in computer sales. They saw my potential and were willing to train. From there I took on purchasing, and then logistics. I had to learn this from the ground up, which is what I’m all about.”

The clincher: The lounge – also known as the DMZ or the clubhouse – complete with pool table, sound system, massive TV, stocked beer fridge and liquor cabinet. It’s a place for staff parties, personal parties, kid’s birthday parties, you name it. Plus, people play XBOX and PlayStation when they need a break. Jeff Phillipp The boss

On work: “We’re into things that are interesting and fun. It doesn’t have to be telecom, it doesn’t have to be Internet. It can be solar heating or residential housing. It doesn’t really matter. That’s what I like about this business.”

His philosophy as an employer: “We believe in supporting the people that are helping to support the company. I didn’t build the company to get rich. I built it to be able to play with the toys that I want to play with. The people that are helping to drive it are of similar interests.”

Charles Jeffery Chartered Accountant

DETAILS: Industry: accounting ✱ Number of employees: 7 ✱ Offices: Yellowknife ✱ Best perk: company snowmobile and camping gear

Samantha Merritt Staff accountant

Small-shop syndrome: “If you want a big corporate office in Calgary and you want to move up the ladder, don’t come here: There is no ladder. But if I were in a big firm I would never speak to a senior partner about my work. I’d go through midlevel managers and maybe once a year meet the partner. Here, I deal with the boss every day and I relish that.”

All in the family: “Charles likes family. Our office manager is his daughter-in-law so his granddaughter comes in pretty regularly and hangs out.”

Charles Jeffery OWNER

On keeping a snowmobile for staff: “A few years ago we tried to figure out who comes to work in the North. We figure there are people who use the North as a place to make a lot of money and kill a student loan and go home, so people who never have an intention to stay but a specific monetary one. We have other people who come here, also perhaps for a short stay, who are using their professional credentials almost as economic tourism. We try to appeal to that last group.”

Holiday perk: “For a lot of young people, this may be their first Christmas away from parents. This is not a fun place to be a long way from your parents on Christmas morning, so we try to make sure our staff that come from a great distance get home, so we fly them home.”

Mac’s Fireweed Books

DETAILS: Industry: books ✱ Number of employees: 16 ✱ Office: Whitehorse ✱ Year founded: Roots go back to Mac’s Newsstand in 1949 ✱ Open: 365 days a year. “It’s a tradition that we’ve carried on,” says owner Chris Sorg. “We run a short day and the people who work [Christmas etc.] usually volunteer to do so.”

Meredith Winkelaar Bookseller

On selling literature: “I think all of us read a lot and we’re always exchanging ideas and information on books. Some of us gravitate to the kid’s section and will say, ‘I just have to go to the kid’s section for a minute,’ and 10 minutes later you’ll find us sitting there reading a book.”

The workplace: “On Thursday we don’t say, ‘Thank goodness tomorrow’s Friday, it’s the end of the week.’ All of us walk in with smiles on our face and enjoy being there. Of course you have your bad days, but for the most part management and staff create a great atmosphere.”

Chris Sorg Owner

What his employees like the best: “I think it’s the culture. When people join the organization we’re looking to see how they fit in. If they become a good fit and feel comfortable in our system they’ve found a bit of a home.”

EBA Engineers & Scientists

DETAILS: Industry: engineering and scientific consulting ✱ Number of employees: worldwide – 550; Whitehorse – 30; Yellowknife – 12 ✱ Year founded: 1966 ✱ Offices: Edmonton (HQ), Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Calgary, Lethbridge, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Vernon, Fort St. John.

Shel Schneider administrative assistant

The best thing: “It’s the people I work with. I’ve never had a job that I have not dreaded going to, but I love coming here and I miss it if we have a long weekend or I have to take some time off. It’s bizarre.”

Previous employers: “I’ve had a string of dead-end jobs over the past 13 years, where I was promised career advancement, learning opportunities and familyfirst values that never seemed to come to fruition.”

Feedback: “I remember the first review I had, Richard [Trimble] told me he was completely impressed with my organizational skills and it was really nice to have the positive feedback because I only ever had negative feedback from my previous three employers. It’s really hard to be positive about a job when that’s all you get.”

Professional development: “They had an admin-assistant workshop in Edmonton and I assumed the lady that has been here longer would be going, but she couldn’t so Richard said I should go and it was the first time ever that an employer said to me, ‘We’ll train you,’ and I got to go somewhere.” Richard Trimble office manager

The job market: “We’re still looking for a junior engineer in Whitehorse and they’re still looking for people in Yellowknife, so it’s still an employee market. It was really bad a couple of years ago and now it’s a bit better, but we’re still trying to find people to move to our Northern offices.”

The most surprising thing about EBA: “We’re really easy to get along with and to work with. Maybe employees come from a background of a different employment structure. EBA is all about the employees and career development. We always say it’s your career, EBA is just here to help you get where you want to be.”

The clincher: Friday beers – every EBA office closes its doors at 4:30 on Fridays and provides free beer to the employees. “I believe we were the first company to offer 4:30 beer time,” says Trimble. “We’ve had that for quite a while and now a lot of people have adopted it.”

Sundog Retreat

DETAILS: Industry: tourism and wellness ✱ Number of employees: 7 ✱ Year founded: 2003 ✱ Location: 25 minutes from Whitehorse ✱ Unusual perk at monthly staff meeting: foot bath

Krista Lambier Right-hand-woman

The best thing: “Location: acres of forest, flowering fields, trails to the river, horse pastures and rolling hills. This is such a classy place, but it’s in such a comfortable atmosphere. It’s a really neat vibe. Who wouldn’t want to work here!”

All in a day’s work: “One of my jobs today, I had to go down to the river to take a truck down, so Heather’s two kids came with me. They hopped in the river to cool off and then we took the four-wheeler back.”

Vacation time: “I went to the Atlin music festival, the Dawson music festival, the Teslin folk festival. I’m going home in August for three weeks. I went home for Christmas last year for three weeks. I work around some of the busy times around here, but everything fit perfectly in.”

Heather Finton Owner

On encouraging daily walks: “It’s important to be feeling well. Productivity goes up when people are feeling energized. We think it’s important that they really want to be here, and I think that’s reflected in the service we provide and part of that has to do with respecting who they are as people.”

Flexibility: “The reason we have five parttime employees is because a lot of the employees have said they don’t want to be working fulltime, so we work hard to accommodate them with flexible hours.”

Top of the World Travel

DETAILS: Industry: travel agent ✱ Number of employees: 22 ✱ Year founded: 1984 ✱ Offices: Yellowknife and Iqaluit, with home-based agents in Edmonton and Hay River ✱ Gender ratio: There’s one guy on staff. “It’s great to have one of those around,” says owner Susan Mercredi. “We’d welcome more but it’s not an industry guys are generally attracted to.”

Irene Golchert Vacation specialist

The potlucks: “On any special occasion, we have a potluck. Actually, there doesn’t have to be a special occasion. We have a potluck over the lunch hour about once a month and everybody brings something. It’s always homemade and our recipes are good. It’s awesome food and we just feast away.”

The flexible hours: “In the winter I work from 9 until 3:30 and in the summer I work from home for June, July and August. One girl in our office also works for one of the airlines: She gets off at 3:30 so she can work her shift there. Basically, if you have kids and need to get off early, Susan’s very flexible. Not many companies allow their employees to do that, but Susan recognizes that family comes first.”

Susan Mercredi Owner

The flip-a-chip program: At the beginning of every month, each staffer was given five poker chips to be distributed. That employee could flip a chip to a co-worker when they felt that they really went above and beyond. “It was incredible how it worked in here,” says Mercredi. “The whole dynamic changed. It was really positive.” In the end, workers traded the chips for US dollars and they went to Las Vegas for Christmas.

Native Communications Society of the NWT

DETAILS: Industry: media ✱ Number of employees: 12 ✱ Location: Yellowknife ✱ Number of on-air personalities: 6 ✱ Best known for: radio station CKLB , billed by NCS as ‘The Voice of Denendeh.’

Nadira Begg Announcer

Going deeper: “We make it a point to broadcast every single assembly that we’re at. We go into every community for the assemblies. Everybody across the North is able to tune in and it’s not just pieces or parts. The coverage starts when the assembly starts and ends when it ends.”

Creative space: “At CKLB, you’re always welcome to pitch ideas for different projects you might want to work on. They’ve always provided an opportunity to grow, and every other person that has been here has had the opportunity to grow as a broadcaster.

Dane Gibson Executive director

Empowerment: “We have a very creative environment where each individual talent is able to express himself or herself. We’re very flexible when it comes to looking at opportunities and we’re not afraid to go after them. So everybody is really empowered to be the best they can be and I think that’s reflected in how well the organization has done over the last five years.”

The coverage: “Our live broadcasting of regional assemblies throughout the year is well known and really there’s nobody else in Canada that does it start to finish like we do. Possibly that wouldn’t fly anywhere else but our audience loves it because the issues in the regions are important to the people in the communities, and they would like to be at the meeting but can’t be.”

Listers Motor Sports

DETAILS: Industry: motorsports ✱ Number of employees: 11 ✱ Office: Whitehorse ✱ Founded: 1967 ✱ Best perk: staff access to the demos

Dave Strachan Salesman

The demos: “It works out well for us because it gives us a chance to try out the product and inform customers of the ins and outs of it. In the same breath it’s a chance to go out and enjoy yourself on a day off.”

The top thing: “Pretty much the atmosphere. It’s like coming to work with a whole bunch of friends. Everybody shares your interests. We’re all gung ho about the new products that come out and everybody helps out everybody else.”

Loyalty: “Brian’s willing to step up and say, ‘You’re a good employee, you do what I need done, you have the product knowledge, I’m going to keep you on staff and I’m going to make it worth your while to stay here.’”

Brian Edelman Owner

Loyalty: “We’ve been through the downturn in the ’80s, the downturn in the ’90s and I’ve never laid off or rolled wages back. If you bite the bullet in the bad times, I think the employees will show you that back.”

Multi-tasking: “We’ve always done things where everyone is able to do more than one task. We’ve always made sure that our staff is trained in a little bit of everything so any customer that comes in can get satisfactory answers. It keeps the employees happy, too, because they’re not stagnant.”

Kimik Co-op

DETAILS: Business: grocery store/general store/art wholesaler ✱ Number of Employees: 15 (plus another dozen during sealift) ✱ Location: Kimmirut, Nunavut ✱ Annual sales: $3.2-million ✱ Annual dividend shared among 225 active members: $150,000 to $175,000 ✱ Other enterprises: cable, fuel delivery, gas station

Don Power General manager

Christmas: “After my first Christmas here I said I’d never spend another Christmas down south. Here, it’s not material. We all get together for a week and a half and have games for elders and kids and adults. There are dances at night for the teenagers. The feast is a big thing: Everybody in the community has Christmas dinner together.”

The best thing: “The satisfaction that you’re doing something for the local people, and they give it back to you in the way they respect the way that you run the business for them.”

On buying soapstone carvings: (Which the co-op sells to Canadian Arctic Producers in Mississauga): “It’s very important to this community. We have probably 12 full-time carvers where that is their income. They don’t work at anything else. Then there are a lot of young carvers coming up and learning.”

Midnight Sun Hotel

DETAILS: Industry: hotelier ✱ Number of employees: 40 in peak summer season ✱ Place of business: Dawson City ✱ Founded: the hotel opened in 1984 Kathy Jennings “Jill of all trades”

Welcome home: “As soon as I walked in the door, Nancy said, ‘Hey, you must be Kathy,’ because one of our friends knew them from before. She asked a couple of quick questions and asked when I could start and offered us a place to stay.”

No holidays: “You know what, we love our jobs so much it’s like having a vacation. I’m actually extending my stay. I was supposed to leave in August to go mushroom picking with my boyfriend but I’ve decided to stay behind until the end of September.”

Nancy Wing Owner

Flexibility: “I’ve been here for 35 years and we operate a seasonal business. Many of our employees are students, and I expect honesty from them in terms of how long they’re going to be staying in town, and what they’re intentions for the summer are: whether it’s to make money or have fun or try to do both. Often they’re first-year students that are struggling to pay tuition so for that reason I’m a little more flexible with them than I would be if I were a year-round operator. I need a small army of people for the time that they’re off school and so it works for me.”

Motherliness: “Being the age that I am now, 55, it comes with the territory in terms of perhaps taking a more maternal role with my employees, trying to find out what their interests are and where their path will take them. I can sometimes help them in their career choices or teach them things about the service industry that can help them pay for school.”

Good times: “I like to plan special events. We have a ladies karaoke night every Wednesday night – everything is pink – for going on 10 years now. I have sponsors and give away stuff. We also have a soul Sunday night, where there’s live R&B music and it’s pretty well established in Dawson as a Sunday night thing to do.”