April 10 2006 Media Release

April 25, 2006 - Vancouver, BC - Vancity has once again been named the best workplace in Canada, this time by Canadian Business magazine.

The ranking was part of the magazine’s inaugural Best Workplaces issue produced in partnership with the Great Place to Work Institute Canada.

The Great Place to Work Institute is a San Francisco management consultancy which opened a centre in Canada last fall. The organization analyzed 10,000 employee surveys for companies large and small, 30 of which were singled out as best workplaces.

In the story about Vancity, the magazine talks about the role employees play in Vancity's success, highlighting programs such as its employee engagement survey, Vancity’s employee executive visit program, and discoveru, an online training tool. It also mentions Vancity’s Employee Advisory Committee and the Vancity Story as examples of how it's employees that make the organization great.

Several factors set the Best Workplaces in Canada list apart from other lists:

• Research used to create the list is based on a highly regarded international standard using methodology that was developed by the Great Place to Work Institute based in San Francisco.
• Similar lists are published by Fortune Magazine in the U.S., the Financial Times in the U.K., and in 27 other countries around the world.
• Two-thirds of the score comes from employee responses to a confidential Trust Index survey issued to 400 randomly selected employees, which measures credibility, fairness, respect, pride and camaraderie.
• The remaining one-third of the score comes from an evaluation of a culture audit that examines demographics, pay and benefits programs, and companies that exhibit the core elements of the Great Place to Work Institute Model based on six categories: trust, credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.

According to a news release issued by Canadian Business magazine, employers at Canada’s Best Workplaces prove employees are important not by offering rooftop patios and foosball tables or even great dental benefits. Instead, they forge a workplace culture of respect, fairness, camaraderie, and above all, trust.

Companies that have been recognized as having leading workplace cultures by the Great Place to Work model consistently outperforms their peers on the stock market over the long run.

The other companies ranked as the top five included, Back in Motion Rehab Inc. of Surrey, B.C., AdFarm in Calgary, Urban Systems Ltd. with head offices in Kamloops B.C., and Trico Homes Inc. in Calgary.

Vancity was chosen as the best place to work in Canada for 2005 by Maclean’s Magazine as part of its annual Canada’s Top 100 Employers issue. The special issue is unranked and it was the first and only time Maclean’s ever chose a #1 company.

Vancity is Canada’s largest credit union, with $11.8 billion in assets, 330,000 members, and 46 branches throughout Greater Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and Victoria. Vancity owns Citizens Bank of Canada, serving members across the country by telephone, ATM, and the Internet. Both Vancity and Citizens Bank are guided by a commitment to corporate social responsibility, and to improve the quality of life in the communities where we live and work.