By Kallandra Weatherbee
NAIT has been named an Alberta top employer for the 10th consecutive year.
Clayton Davis, human resources executive director at NAIT, said it’s a privilege to be given this recognition.
“For us, it’s a big honour because it’s tough competition. There are hundreds of employers that apply and there are only a handful that actually get selected,” said Davis.
“We do a lot to make sure we can get there and a lot of that is because of our staff. We have such amazing staff and an amazing workplace.”
Davis believes NAIT got this award because they are a valued employer that attracts talented staff.
“We’re really an employer of choice. That means when we’re looking for new talent, whether that’s an instructor, a food service worker, or somebody else, we can attract much better talent. So for the students, that means I can get some of the best employees or best instructors based on our winning of the award,” he said.
Davis believes NAIT’s effort to evolve during the pandemic and help instructors with their online classes is what helped win this year’s award.
“This year of course has been a bit of an odd year with the pandemic and we were really called out for some of our efforts there. One of the things we did that was really noteworthy was that we recalled some of our instructors for two or three weeks to teach them how to deliver online,” he said.
As well as teaching staff how to deliver lessons from home, Davis said NAIT provided proper office equipment for staff to be successful.
“Things like being able to take your office chair home… It sounds silly, but that was one of the biggest things that we got from the feedback was ‘Thank you, because I was sitting on my kitchen table chair or I was sitting on the edge of my bed.’ We said ‘come get what you need from the office and take it home so you can be comfortable when you are instructing,’” said Davis.
NAIT plans to continue evolving and planning ahead to win the award again next year.
