John Ferguson, President and CEO at Purolator, describes how the Pandemic accelerated health and wellness programs for their employers.
Russell: During the pandemic, what responsibility did you feel in supporting your people, the Canadian healthcare system, and the Canadian economy?
John: That is something we feel like we do that all the time. Our sense of purpose really is promises delivered or making Canada stronger. We rallied around those things. I feel like COVID was different, because we always have felt we were keeping the economy going. We're supplying. We're a barometer, for the goods and services of Canada. This was much deeper. I feel like there was a lot more of a quick shift to empathy in our leadership, it was a pure crisis - particularly in the earlier days when there was so much anxiety. We went to more of a supportive, empathetic, and community based. That's a big part of our culture. I would say that between customers and people and looking after our teams, that was the focus more than anything.
John: At the end of the day, it's got to be good work and they have to enjoy the work, so we are putting in the tools and the support and everything that they need. We did launch something called Purolator Health, which we're pretty proud of. It's a partnership with Cleveland Clinic Canada, and it also includes a Chief Medical Director that we hired. And that started the process of understanding how to bring in all the health resources, from health care institutions, right into our company. The first place we focused on was mental health, and that included not only just the standard stuff like increasing benefits and making sure we're funding it properly, but also a lot of education.
And we even created a mood app for our couriers so that we could detect through AI when something was awry. Not their privacy, but someone in a terminal or a group in a terminal. And we did have a real-life examples of where we detected some mood issues that can affect all kinds of things, as you can imagine. And we were able to locally deal with it through the technology this mood indicator delivered. We would voluntarily have people sign up for it. It was sort of a series of inputs that would detect and categorize by regions or zones where there might be people suffering from whatever. Then we could go in there with a team and sort of say, look, we're here with resources. We know it's a challenging time. These are very, very creative things for transportation.
“When we ask people what they are grateful for, they always say, ‘it's my health.’ We are really trying to make sure we bring in wellness programs and preventative strategies.”
- John Ferguson, President and CEO, Purolator
Russell: People were tracking their mood at work, and then that allowed you to identify locations or whatever where there was an issue?
John: We're trying to look at how to evolve a program called Purolator Health, that is specifically designed to provide resources to make sure everybody can live as healthily and well - mentally, physically and socially as possible. I’m really proud of that program, and that wouldn't have happened if not for COVID accelerating it and really learning and understanding all this stuff.
Russell: I've heard you say that your approach to management and culture is outside-in. What does that mean to be outside-in?
Listen to the full episode below and learn about Purolator’s unique “outside-in” approach
John’s transcript has been slightly altered in this Q&A for clarity and brevity.