This article was created in partnership with Co-operators.
What makes people stay where they work? For some, it is stability. For others, opportunity. While Co-operators does offer both, for Cindy Nestman, it is also something less tangible yet more enduring: alignment between personal purpose and organizational values.
After 18 years with Co-operators, she has seen how that alignment becomes a source of both loyalty and performance. “Being a cooperative means we do things differently,” she says. “It aligns with my values, and it allows me to see the impact we have on people’s lives, whether it is helping clients recover from disasters or supporting employees to grow.”
That focus on purpose sits at the heart of how Co-operators defines employee engagement. The company sees engagement not only as satisfaction but as a reflection of how connected employees feel to their work and to the organization’s mission.
Evaluating engagement provides more than a measure of morale. It reveals whether people are contributing to shared goals or merely completing routine tasks. It also shows whether culture and HR initiatives are creating real impact. In this sense, engagement becomes a strategic lens that distinguishes high-performing organizations from those that struggle to sustain results.
“If people feel a greater sense of belonging, they are more engaged,” Nestman says. “Engaged employees create better results, better services, and a stronger client experience.”
Inclusive benefits carry weight only when they reflect genuine understanding. At Co-operators, they are not treated as a tool for recruitment or retention, but as proof that people’s realities are seen and respected. “Inclusive benefits are a key ingredient for employees to feel that Co-operators is serious about their well-being and inclusion,” says Nestman.
That seriousness shows in the details. The company’s benefits program recognizes that employees define family, health, and identity in different ways. Coverage for family-building, gender affirmation, and traditional Indigenous healing reflects that awareness. Each policy decision signals that personal circumstances are not peripheral to the workplace, they are part of it.
This perspective shifts the question from “What do benefits provide?” to “What do they say about us?” Benefits become a language through which values are expressed and tested. When that language is authentic, employees do not need to be convinced of inclusion; they experience it.
Nestman sees the results in how people respond to their work. “When employees recognize themselves in the systems that support them, they bring their full selves to what they do,” she says. “That’s what builds engagement, it grows from recognition, not instruction.”
In that sense, Co-operators treats benefits as a kind of cultural architecture: practical, visible, and enduring. They form part of the structure that holds the organization’s purpose in place. Engagement follows not from programs or campaigns, but from the steady reinforcement of a simple truth, that belonging is built through evidence, not aspiration.
Co-operators’ approach to engagement and employee well-being is guided by its IDEA strategy, which stands for inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. The framework informs everything from recruitment to benefits planning and ensures that policies reflect the varied realities of the workforce.
Each year, the company reviews its benefits offerings to confirm they remain inclusive, flexible, and competitive. Nestman describes the process as aligning the organization’s social purpose with the practical needs of employees. “People need security, belonging, and self-fulfillment,” she says. “An effective benefits program supports all of those levels.”
Recent enhancements illustrate how the IDEA strategy operates in practice. Co-operators introduced family-building benefits, gender-affirmation coverage, and Indigenous health benefits designed through consultation with employees. The Indigenous coverage was added after hearing that traditional healing and ceremony were essential to many colleagues’ well-being.
“We made sure our benefits include access to traditional elders and healers,” Nestman explains. “It shows employees that their identity and culture are respected.”
The results are visible in engagement data. Indigenous employees now report higher inclusion and belonging scores than company averages, evidence that benefits designed through an inclusion lens can directly influence connection and performance.
The company’s reconciliation and inclusion work is built on three pillars of action: respecting Indigenous ways within its operations, embracing reconciliation as a cooperative and investor, and fostering partnerships with Indigenous communities. Each pillar is supported by measurable goals and ongoing dialogue.
“It takes strong, steady commitment to learn and unlearn,” Nestman says. “Building trust takes patience and consistency, but it is through that process that we find shared ground.”
Progress is assessed through multiple indicators. The annual engagement survey tracks inclusion across demographic groups, while the IDEA Index focuses on two key statements: whether leaders value different perspectives and whether employees feel they belong. Most groups meet or exceed company-wide averages.
External validation comes through the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Benchmarks, where Co-operators continues to move closer to best-practice levels internationally. Recruitment feedback echoes those findings. Culture and commitment to inclusion consistently rank among the top reasons people choose to join.
These measures reflect more than compliance. They demonstrate that inclusion, when consistently applied, becomes part of organizational performance rather than a separate program.
At Co-operators, engagement is inseparable from the organization’s cooperative roots. Its values: responsibility, integrity, and inclusion, shape not just what it does but how decisions are made. The company’s internal message, “Who you are matters here,” captures that belief and sets a standard for leadership behaviour.
Rather than viewing engagement as a top-down initiative, Co-operators treats it as a shared outcome that emerges when employees see meaning in their work and in each other. The company’s cooperative structure reinforces that idea by encouraging collaboration and long-term thinking over short-term targets.
This principle is evident in the firm’s Truth and Reconciliation strategy. Developed through consultation with Indigenous employees and communities, it draws from the Indigenous concepts of knowing, being, and doing. The framework ensures that reconciliation is embedded in daily practice, not left as symbolic intent. For Nestman, it represents the cooperative spirit in action, translating purpose into tangible progress.
