[00:00:05] Russell Evans This is Contributors, a show exploring how today's Canadian business leaders are building a better future for Canada. I am here with our wonderful Contributors' producer Jade Towle. Jade, are you as excited for this second season as I am? 

[00:00:20] Jade Towle I am. 

[00:00:22] Russell Evans So we have a lot of great guests for season two. And one of the ones that I'm the most excited about is today's guest, John Ferguson from Purolator. He is the CEO of Purolator Canada. 

[00:00:36] Jade Towle I'm very excited for this episode. Our CEO, Derek Dobson, actually saw John present not too long ago at a Waterstone Human Capital Top Culture Summit, and he was so inspired by what John had to say, talking about his background, how he came to be CEO, and what he's doing for the future of Canada. 

[00:00:58] Russell Evans I think Purolator is a particularly cool organization for a couple of reasons. Obviously, Purolator has been on the front lines, literally, the front lines of the pandemic. So I'm interested to hear about that story. I'm interested to hear what it was like to run an organization not just to was supporting, you know, health care and getting PPE and vaccines and that kind of thing, but also working through all the supply chain issues that we faced as a country, and actually we faced them globally in around pandemic. But I'm also interested to hear kind of what did Purolator learn from that, and how are they approaching the post-pandemic as a result? 

[00:01:42] Jade Towle Absolutely. And I anticipate what we'll hear, to your point, Russell, is the pandemic had such a strong influence on how Purolator had to manage and navigate by coming out of that. They're continuing to leverage some of their insights and learnings to make their culture stronger, make Canada's economy stronger, and to build on their innovation. 

[00:02:07] Russell Evans Yeah. Let's hear what he has to say. 

[00:02:09] Jade Towle Let's dive in. 

[00:02:14] Russell Evans So. Hi, John. Welcome to Contributors. 

[00:02:17] John Ferguson Thank you, Russell. It's a pleasure to be here. 

[00:02:19] Russell Evans So it's it's definitely an honor to have you here today. And lots I want to ask you, but kind of want to start with your career development. So I understand that you spent pretty much your whole career in Canadian transportation. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey? 

[00:02:34] John Ferguson Yeah, it's not just been Canada, actually, just as you probably know, this is a very global industry, so but I'll touch on that. Yeah, I entered the industry in a kind of an unusual way, but my first summer job down in Niagara was at the Peace Bridge as a student customs officer. Many years ago now there was an owner of a company called PBB that happened to cross my customs line as a student, and I was sort of in that process of when I graduate, when I'm going to do. And as he came down the bridge and I saw this big, huge white Cadillac of the owner, I thought, well, maybe there's someone I can talk to. And that turned out to be the founder of this great legendary business in Canadian Forwarding and Customs. You know, we had a little discussion at the primary customs line, and of course, traffic was backing up. But I spent some time got to know him, got to know a little bit about the industry and ended up turning into a long career in transportation logistics from that one ironic, sort of coincidental meeting that I had with him. 

[00:03:43] Russell Evans How did you come to be CEO of Purolator? 

[00:03:46] John Ferguson Well, that's after quite a long career in this industry, and there's been lots of twists and turns along the way in terms of managing all aspects. I've been involved with just about every mode of transportation, worked in the US with a company called Schneider. Prior to coming back into Toronto, we were based in Savannah, Georgia, with my family and we were running a division of Schneider called Schneider Logistics. And anyways, along the way, I just grew into a number of experiences. And you know, there was an opportunity at Purolator where at the time, believe it or not, they were looking at a turn around. This is an older company. Almost it's over 60 years now. The agenda from the board was a turnaround, meaning they you know, the performance  was expected in a number of areas, actually. In a way, it culminated after a lot of years of experience in various organizations and various responsibilities that I had, general manager, you know, responsibilities and things like that. And it culminated really at the perfect timing for Purolator. And I felt like it was just a perfect fit for me in terms of the problem to solve. 

[00:05:01] Russell Evans Yeah, it sounds like your whole career was sort of cross-training for this role, this opportunity. 

[00:05:06] John Ferguson I felt in many ways, I'd never worked at Purolator, but it felt like coming home in many ways. It is a very Canadian entity. Is it, as I like to say, it is maple syrup as it gets because you know, we're in every community, every tiny town. 

[00:05:20] Russell Evans Yeah. And I think a lot of Canadian businesses just to talk about kind of B2B, like any businesses are proud to use Purolator. I know at CAAT, we use Purolator, and part of the reason behind that is because we want to support Canadian business. One of the things that I want to talk about is obviously pandemic. So for business in general, it's been a pretty crazy, you know, two and a half years. But I imagine for Purolator, on the literal front lines, I'd love to know what is this been like for you? 

[00:05:52] John Ferguson Yeah. It's funny because it really gave us a lot of pride and purpose we talk about and also a lot of awareness. I mean, even the last couple of weeks I've been out more to events as we're getting out now from COVID. And people will ask me a lot about the COVID period or what it was like. Almost more intrusive that than our normal day to day business, and through COVID, there was a real sense of adrenaline. I like to say our culture got a shot of adrenaline in a good way because we felt we were part of saving lives, and that might seem dramatic, but we literally were dropping off important goods to hospitals and long term care homes every day. And there is a sort of a sense of anxiety in the air, especially in that early time. And so I think our people bravely went out into the field and got goods to market. And there wasn't just the hospital long term care home or the critical ones, but there was such a shift to goods to home. And people were sort of at home saying, and now what do I do? I got a young family. And so they're ordering important elements to live at home. 

[00:07:05] Russell Evans So on season one of contributors I talked to Victor Dodig, who is the CEO of CIBC. And one of the questions I asked him was about the responsibility that he felt in pandemic. And the responsibility for him was obviously thinking about the bank's customers, thinking about the bank's employees, but also the responsibility that he had to the Canadian economy at large. And that question obviously applies just as equally, if not more so, to you. So obviously, you were thinking about, you know, supporting Canadian health care, you were thinking about your own people, but were you also thinking about your responsibility to keep the Canadian economy functioning. And how did that influence you? 

[00:07:46] John Ferguson Yeah, I mean, that for sure is something that I think we feel like we do that all the time. That would be something that we call it 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, really, 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, and really being focused on, you know, it was a pure crisis and a particularly in the earlier days when there was so much anxiety. So we went to more of a supportive, empathetic, community based, you know, that outreach. That's all that's a big part of our culture. Yeah, I would say that between customers and people and looking after our teams, like, that was the focus more than anything. 

[00:08:45] Russell Evans I was reflecting in preparation for getting the opportunity to chat with you. And I was thinking about my own expectations as a consumer. As I look back, one of the things I recognize is as a consumer, I think my expectations were much higher for organizations like Purolator, that were already coming to my door. Right. Like, I think where an organization had to pivot like a, let's say, like a Loblaws, you know, that you're experiencing going to the supermarket. I think I would say to myself, Oh, well, obviously this isn't going to work properly because Loblaws has to figure out kind of how to work now. But I think with a Purolator, with like an Uber Eats, I was far less understanding, and I was like, well, you know, this should work. This is already their business. Did you feel that at all? Did you feel like you had a higher, higher customer expectations? 

[00:09:35] John Ferguson Definitely higher expectations, or at least there was a need for it. I know first for certain that we outperform the market when it came to service. We consciously overinvested in it. Even so, you know, in the balance of everything you do, operational effectiveness, productivity, we really overweighted customer experience, and customer on time performance is one of our big measures. We were set up very well in terms of our people showing up for work, having hired something like 3000 people in that one and a half year burst with virtual training. And so we went at it hard. I mean, the performance is there, the the engagement, like, you know, in many ways, these were our best years from a overall service performance. You know, even reputationally, we really exploded through the COVID period, except it was hard on everyone. It was very hard on our front line. And so we've since pivoted a lot. And during that time, we were we were overinvesting in health as well and the wellness of our people. 

[00:10:48] Russell Evans Are there any specific examples you can think of Purolator going above and beyond during the pandemic period that you're proud of? 

[00:10:55] John Ferguson Well, there's a bunch of them, really, there's like I said, like a customer stories you were talking about earlier, there's almost like one a day or somebody, you know, helping someone in the community or there's so many individual stories. The bigger projects, though, we partnered with the federal government, remember, and no one could get PPE in those early days. And everybody was scrambling. There were so many issues, right? Bathroom access for drivers and all kinds of things we had to battle through. When I look back at the at those times, we were really, you know, I'd say strong on making sure that we had our team completely ready for those special projects, like the 3M masks and PPE that were wrestled in by the different governments. In this case, the federal government, and I think it was the armed forces even, that came to us to to handle all of this distribution. And then following that was the test kits, and we became the primary provider of all the test kit distribution. And so that created a lot of complexities in making sure that we could do that over weekends and almost 24/7 services which we had to pivot to. So there was a lot of changes that that our team went through to try to ensure we were managing those those big projects that came through that were really impactful. Like we really we felt like we were getting the PPE and distributed quickly when there were so many challenges, even procuring it by the government. Now there's several of those big items, vaccines. So we were partnering with the provincial governments to do vaccine, not only distribution, but also the actual clinics. We used our premises to do clinics for the public in a certain area. 

[00:12:45] Russell Evans So as we come out of pandemic, how is Purolator approach to the business been shaped by the experience you've just been through? 

[00:12:56] John Ferguson The biggest areas are in the the cultural impact I mentioned that the wellness programs. There's a lot of things on the operational side that we have improved, particularly on e-commerce customer access. We launched e-bikes. We put up a national automated hub, a three hundred plus million dollar investment near Humber College in Toronto here. We launched recently. So there's been so much that we've done that will help us in a future investment, large scale investment, sustainability. We've got electric vehicles that we've put out there, kiosks, self-serve kiosks, anything to help a customer conveniently get to a package in Canada. There's I mean, there's a list is endless. Honestly, we've even done something with the Green Parking Authority, where we put in these quick stops, which is basically like a terminal. Which we took, we took a shipping container and turned turn it into a little micro terminal, and put it in the most urban areas of Toronto, and then match it with e-bikes so that we can get around places like the U of T campus, conveniently, sustainably. And also we're taking advantage of really prime real estate that is available, you know, a little corner of it, for example, instead of having to go and put up something that would be more fixed, let's say. 

[00:14:24] Russell Evans I think I saw one of those in Liberty Village. 

[00:14:26] John Ferguson That's right. Yeah. And we even have these mobile quickstart trucks that we kind of park, and we operate them like a food truck. So you can go and get your package from there as well. So a lot of creative things we've done to create convenience for e-commerce and consumers. We're always been strong in B2B. And so again, that's a whole other side of the business. 

[00:14:47] Russell Evans It reminds me a little bit of the space race. You know, when you read about the space race, all of these technological innovations came out of the space race. And this desire to get a man on the moon that we're not intended. But they were like almost the unintended consequences. And as I've been reading about Purolator over the pandemic, it sounds like you've accelerated every aspect of your business for pandemic. But now there's obviously other advantages of that as we come out of pandemic. 

[00:15:15] John Ferguson That's right. Yeah. And it's nothing like a crisis or a compelling event, right, to move things quickly. And there were some programs that we did weeks instead of months that they normally would be done that, so, yeah. 

[00:15:29] Russell Evans Let's talk a little bit about your people. One of the things that that's happened over the last two and a half years is this, you know, different people call it different things. You might call it the race for talent, you might call it the great resignation. But this idea that we're all competing for the best possible people. So did you feel that over the last two and a half years, the desire to hold on to your best people and you know, that need to recruit even more? And if so, how did you respond? 

[00:16:01] John Ferguson Yeah. And that you can break that up by in terms of the front line couriers, sorters and the jobs that we have for the major operations. We did a lot of recruiting. Put a lot of investment into that. It's a big, big net increase in people, as I mentioned, 3000 people. And we did everything we can to train them virtually and so on. And the trick would be retaining them because not everybody is cut out to do this job. And generally our careers, we were a 60 plus year old company. You can go into a terminal and quite quickly find someone that's got 30 and almost 40 years experience. If you can imagine that. In today's economy, it's very rare. And that's what's unique in many ways. That's very unique about Purolator. And there's only so many companies in Canada left that can even have that kind of a situation. So the, I mean, yeah, the thing with our front line is that we have a really good working environment, plus in transportation it's a great job. You know, if you can think of all the different opportunities, long haul, not being at home or whatever, this is a really, really good, good job. And people want to come and work there for their whole career, generally. That wasn't as challenging, but it came with its own. You know, there's the odd area that would get a little tougher based on situations. And so it moved around the country, different places as people moved. The other thing that's kind of really interesting, and this is probably been fairly well publicized, at least it has in my world, the shift from cities to rural. You know, our own sound terminal exploded. We had all these little towns. And so these are towns it would have had, say, six to 10 carriers running routes. And suddenly everybody's moved into the cottage industry and and moving more goods than ever. So how do you get people that aren't even living there to just suddenly work in these jobs? So those are the types of challenges that we met on the front line. Corporately, you know, again, we were voted most Canada's most admired culture. We won an award for that. We've done a lot of things where we've overweighted culture and leadership, and leadership, great leadership always almost amounts to great culture. And therefore, people are really engaged. So we had our pride and purpose going for us. We had this sort of really meaningful work. And a lot of innovation going on, like you just you and I just talked about the space race. So there's a lot of innovation. So really interesting projects, the front end of sustainability, electric vehicles putting up a major, the biggest automated storage facility, as big as anything that's around the world, or at least in terms of the top technology. So, you know, you can go on and on about some of these innovations that were done. So that's attracting people today. They want to learn. They want to be in a vibrant culture. They want to be in a, they want to have purpose. And we so we had a lot of that going for us. And still, though, we found challenges. I mean, I can't deny that. We didn't, the trends or the trends and we had our, we had some share of them. I just think that we were in a pretty good spot. The challenge is actually post COVID more than anything, where we see this sort of a little bit of a hangover with everybody. You know, everybody wants change. Nobody wants to come back to the office. So it's actually become a little bit more challenging. I think business leaders, I talked to, you know, in the current times. 

[00:19:32] Russell Evans Let's talk a little bit about retention. What were the moves that you made to make sure that you took care of your employees from a health and wellness perspective, but also retain them? 

[00:19:42] John Ferguson Well, I mean, the end of the day, it's got to be good work and they got to enjoy the work, and so it's back to that. You know, terminal level culture and are we 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 started with, 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. So the first place, of course, 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 privacy, not their privacy, but actually someone in a terminal or a group in a terminal. And we did have a real life example 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 through the technology that was providing us this mood indicator through, I guess, what you would call artificial intelligence or data. We would voluntarily have people sign up for it. And then 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. And 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 a transportation. 

[00:21:27] Russell Evans That is cool. Yeah. I'm picturing, you know, those wheels. Like, I don't know if you've ever done one of those Nielsen things where you watch a TV episode and you turn the wheel if you like it or you don't like it. 

[00:21:36] John Ferguson That's right, ratings. 

[00:21:37] Russell Evans And it sounds like that. But basically people were tracking their mood at work, and then that allowed you to identify, you know, locations or whatever where there was an issue. 

[00:21:48] John Ferguson And we ask people what they're grateful for, they always say, it's my health. So we are really trying to make sure we bring in wellness programs and preventative strategies. And we're you know, we're trying to we're looking at how to really evolve a program called Purolator Health, that is specifically designed to provide resources to make sure everybody can live it's health and well and mentally, physically and socially as possible. And 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. 

[00:22:23] Russell Evans That's really admirable. Can you tell me a little bit about, I've heard you say that your approach to management and culture is outside in. What does that mean to outside in? 

[00:22:35] John Ferguson We really think about listening as a skill here, and making sure that we're understanding our clients and our employees in terms of what's happening. So we try to make sure that we are getting out to the field, we're listening to, you know, our front line, and we have a culture of continuous improvement which makes sure that we have everyone included. A very inclusionary type of system where we have people voices that can be heard, and where you can look at how do we potentially support and solve those problems. We have a unit manager training that goes on where I almost guarantee everyone the top three or four issues that they bring up, and I participate in every one of them. We have hundreds of unit managers. These are the front line manager. And for sure, if the top three or four issues that come up, I have them pretty much fixed or working on fixing them within about a week of hearing about them. So we've got a very supportive, you know, highly engaged listening type of culture. 

[00:23:45] Russell Evans So let's pivot a little bit to the future. What do you believe the future of transportation looks like in Canada, and what do you see as Purolator's role in that, John? 

[00:23:56] John Ferguson Well, I definitely see a changing climate where we have e-commerce here to stay. But in the moderate term, I would say that the period we had through COVID is probably not repeatable in the next few years. It's come back a little bit. That's in terms of our what we see in terms of the volume side of things. Inflation, labor, talent, supply chain disruption have all been things we've been working through, and I see a lot of that moderating into the future. We seem to have a little bit more regionalization happening in the business, which is good for Purolator. Because we're primarily a cross-border domestic Canadian company. I do think that the importance of sustainability will be very important to the investments that we all make. So we're investing in automation. I think automation is going to be a part of the Canadian landscape that hasn't been because of this scale, and now it's becoming more affordable, and the business cases make sense. But there will always be a lens of ESG around this now of how sustainable, are you meeting your carbon emission goals, diversity, equity and inclusion is a big part of our culture and making sure that we, as I said back to our listening culture, are making sure we can do everything possible to improve. And though those are things where I see that as our next big investment is in the sustainability field. And that's fleet, but it's also in the facilities that we have. Our clients are starting to demand it, but I think the world and the communities are expecting it. We expected of ourselves so. I mean, those are just a few of the things I think that business, you know, beyond automation and a lot of the innovations we've spoken about. It's still a people business. And so I think the importance of leadership and culture and being a great place to work are going to be real key to differentiating. 

[00:26:05] Russell Evans This show is called Contributors. And one of the things that we try to do with this show is tell stories of Canadian businesses and business leaders who are contributing to a better Canada. How do you see that Purolator doing that? 

[00:26:19] John Ferguson I think there's a couple of things. One is I think we're going to be a real role model in ESG, sustainability, and how you can have a great culture that really, really does prioritize its people, and how you can still get great performance from that. So our work in the community through tackle hunger and all the great work we're doing with food insecurity in Canada, which has been with us for 20 some years. So it's really a part of our fabric now and what we do and how we give back. And I think there's a bunch of things. I think today people expect great companies to have a real sense of purpose and to do more than just make financial returns. So I think the future for us is going to be a lot about that. It's going to be a lot about Purolator to continue on its journey of being at the heart, a great company that delivers packages throughout businesses and homes. But much more than that to the people that work for it, and also the clients and the communities we serve. And we do that every day. And it's not just words. I mean, we you know, you're going to see us if you watch The Grey Cup, of course. But even this Thanksgiving, we've got a major food activation at the Argos game. All our people that are volunteer are people that work as couriers all week long and take their personal time and bring their families out to help give back to the community. So that's a really big part of what we do. And I think we're very proud of it. And also the kids love Purolator because we have trucks and planes. They always think that such a cool business when we see, you know, kids out in the field, they think planes and trucks and packages, they think this is the coolest industry going. So do I, actually.

[00:28:08] Russell Evans Absolutely. So one of the questions that I love to ask CEOs is what we call the secret sauce question. And this actually came from our listeners. So our listeners said, you know, you have access to these amazing CEOs. Find out the secret behind their success. So as I researched you and talked to people that knew you, one of the things that came up as sort of the secret behind your success is that you are a fantastic leader. But people described you as a team member first. Can you tell me a little bit about that and your leadership approach overall? 

[00:28:45] John Ferguson I really do believe in the power of a team and the ability to have everyone. In 50,000 people at Purolator, and if we have everybody rowing in the same direction, it's incredible what you can get done. And so when we focus on great leadership, we often look at those that can work well on teams. And that's you can imagine what that is. So that is a big part of what I believe in, and what has helped me throughout my career is to being able to lead and manage great teams, because it's always the team is always better than the one individual star and so on, and always outperforms that situation. So my style on leadership is very, you know, strong communication. I, I learn a lot by listening. And you know, I've been described as maybe being authentic, humble, down to earth, and in the transportation business I mean, it's you just have to have the people engaged in, and it's more about the team than the leader in many ways, so or even the front lines and everybody that's contributing. So you know, for me, this industry in my style has amounted to what I hope is a great culture, because I'm trying to lead that way by example. I'm trying to show that you can have, you know, you can be empathetic, and you can really try to be supportive and still get great results. So I would categorize, you know, the secret sauce for me has been a number of things, like learning and working from every aspect of the industry helps a lot. And I think I've always tried to really be a student and continually learn about the industry and so experienced, but then coupled with leadership, you can get a lot done when you've got great teams. 

[00:30:40] Russell Evans Well, thank you so much for being on Contributor today. It was a real pleasure. 

[00:30:45] John Ferguson And thank you, Russell. I really enjoyed it. 

[00:30:52] Jade Towle I found it really interesting when John had said their experience was sort of like a side of adrenaline, and they saw a lot of different impacts on their culture, their wellness program, and even some of their operational pieces, because they're moving so quickly and so fast, but at the same time growing along with it. Did you take anything out of that, Russell? 

[00:31:18] Russell Evans Absolutely. And think about that saying, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And I think what we had in pandemic was the necessity to do things differently, to invest in technology, to really fine tune the business in ways that it sounds like Purolator and John have always wanted to, but they just haven't had the opportunity. I had compared it to John to the space race. It really reminded me a lot of that space race, which is, you know, it's the confluence of factors that really allowed them to think creatively, to invest in that business. And it sounds like there's going to be advantages for decades to come as a result of that two and a half years. 

[00:32:02] Jade Towle So one thing we talk very often about with other leaders on the show and with what we do, our pension plan is around talent and attraction. So let's talk about that a little bit, Russell. What did you hear from John in terms of how they're approaching their talent strategy at Purolator? 

[00:32:23] Russell Evans I was struck by a couple of things. So one of the things that struck me was the degree to which John and the team of Purolator was really prioritizing employee health and wellness holistically. So investing in technology to make sure that employees not only are happy and healthy, but really that from a psychological safety perspective, they feel like this is a healthy culture. So that kind of literal investment in culture, to the point where he was talking about moods and people using the the Nielsen dial to say how happy they are at any given date or time. That's just really innovative stuff, and I've never heard of any organization doing that, so that was really cool. The other thing that struck me was, it sounds like Purolator employees were really happy before pandemic. He talked a lot about like, this is a great job. People love this job. And if you're coming into this kind of turmoil, and you're already that engaged, and the culture is already that healthy, that is that insulates you. Right. So it sounds like Purolator was insulated from the worst elements of whatever you want to call it, the great resignation, because they were already coming in to pandemic, feeling good about their jobs, feeling respected by their leaders, and feeling like this is the kind of place that they want to work. 

[00:33:58] Jade Towle Hmm. I really like that. But thinking about, you know, how John approached this outside in concept where anything they were seeing in the health care industry, they wanted to bring some of that in and take care of their people, that's amazing. And that that truly shows their commitment to employee wellbeing and putting their people first. 

[00:34:22] Russell Evans Absolutely. And it sounds like Purolator staff really returned the favor. He talked about people working all week, and then it comes time for the weekend, and they're signing up for the volunteer food drives, and they're bringing their families. And I think that's really that's reciprocity, right, that's employees who see the commitment that the company has to them, and then they're returning the favor. 

[00:34:46] Jade Towle Absolutely. And I guess as we end the episode today, what's the biggest takeaway or two to three big takeaways for you that you think other organizations might want to keep hold of as they make their decisions moving forward? 

[00:35:04] Russell Evans I think the number one takeaway that I had from talking to John, was the idea of the long term impact of investing in culture. So if you invest in your organization's culture, that becomes an investment that pays huge dividends down the road. And in particular, it's like, you know, I was almost thinking about, like an insurance policy. It's like John and the team made this investment in Purolator and it was like health insurance. And then when the pandemic hit, and there were some symptoms, there were some ailments, they had that health insurance to call on, and that helped them sail through a pandemic much more easily than other organizations might've been able to. So that was my key takeaway is make that investment in culture, and when a rainy day comes, you're going to be glad you did. 

[00:36:02] Jade Towle It's a great way of putting it. Awesome. 

[00:36:06] Russell Evans Well, thanks, Jade. It's been great chatting with you. I look forward to our next episode. Thank you for listening to Contributors. The podcast for Canadian Leaders. We hope you'll take some valuable key insights and lessons from today's conversation. To help us reach even more listeners, please subscribe, rate and review Contributors on Apple Podcasts. If you'd like to learn more about CAAT, be sure to visit CAATPension.ca.