Enriching Lives
Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures Entry 2016 Proposal
Category: Growth and Small Cap
Location: Markham, Ontario
Organization type: Privately held
Years in operation: 40
The organization is a: 2nd time applicant of the Canada’s Most Admired Program
Full time employees: 240 Part time employees: 275
Description of Business:
The Foray Group is a multi-unit business that operates in the areas of preschool education, food, construction and real estate in Canada and Africa. We seek out business opportunities that enrich lives and deliver social benefits, by creating long-term and sustainable value for every stakeholder.
Our current portfolio includes:
The market leader catering company that provides healthy, delicious and child-friendly meals and snacks to childcare centres and schools.
Consists of 9 licensed childcare centres that offer nurturing, educational programming for children up to age 12 in various high need areas of Toronto.
A licensed child care centre in York Region for children, two months to six years, designed to help them develop skills they’ll need to succeed in school and life.
With locations in Milton and Nobleton, gives students the opportunities that build intellectual, emotional, social and physical development using the Montessori curriculum and programs.
The market leader for supply staffing for temporary and full-time staff placements serving the child care industry in the GTA.
Works in the construction sector in Kenya and other parts of Africa. It offers world class solutions in affordable light gauge steel (LGS) construction.
The Foray Group is a charter-based company meaning every decision we make, and action we take, is motivated by the vision and values laid out in our Charter. The Charter, below, is the foundation of our organization, and the driver behind everything we do.
Enriching Lives
“I get to see every day the difference we make in children’s lives. Intellectually, socially, physically. On so many different levels, we are making leaders for tomorrow.”
Tracy Durisin, Teacher, Montessori Country School
Vision and Leadership:
Forty years ago, Aziz and Amina Bhaloo wanted to start a company that would enrich lives in a long term sustainable way. To that end, they launched a child care centre with ten employees. Their vision to enrich lives is the cornerstone of the Foray Charter. Today’s CEO is Aziz and Amina’s son Azam Bhaloo. Over two generations and forty years, Foray has grown from that one small child care centre, to the professionally managed multi-unit organization it is today, with more than five hundred full and part time employees. The family roots of the business can be felt today, in the heart and warmth the employees say they feel, for their clients and for each other.
Foray believes embodiment of these philosophies starts at the top with the behaviour of its leadership. The perspective, outlined in the Charter, that employees are trusted partners with each other and with clients, is fundamental to the leadership philosophy and the company’s competitive advantage. This trust is vital in this type of business because in many cases, Foray’s customers are parents, trusting the company with their most precious gift, their children. The Foray Group companies are educating them, feeding them or choosing the staff who will care for them. This is much more than a standard customer/vendor relationship; The Foray Group staff must be their trusted partners. Therefore, it’s vital that Foray’s leaders are trusted partners to our staff and to the organization. The staff then internalizes the importance of the trusted partner relationship.
“Who has influenced me? The children. Not only have they allowed me to find strengths I didn’t know I had, but they’ve taught me how to grow and enabled me to do the things I do every day, which is enriching lives, and making a lasting difference in the lives of children.”
Arthi Shu, Child care worker, Centres for Early Learning
Leadership is focused on enriching lives, being trusted partners, growing the business and the people, and in doing so, allowing the organization and its people to excel
Other examples of leadership using the Charter as its mandate include:
● Collaboration: Division heads meet monthly with their staff to provide updates on the direction of the business and the organization, so all members of the team feel included and invited to collaborate on the big picture of the organization.
● Engagement: We recognize that in order to maintain full engagement, change management is a core skill requirement, so we provide training to enable successful management of and resilience to change.
● Growth: Leaders participate in training, assessment and coaching to develop their competencies and skills thinking agility and their emotional fluency, in order to raise their leadership abilities and to drive effective performance at Foray.
At Foray, our leaders are top quality professionals, with best-in-class credentials, great experience and great values. This makes them a natural fit with the values laid out in the Charter. We’re proud of the diverse skill sets and experience they bring to the team that allows for collaboration, dynamic thinking and ultimately, better decisions.
Growing
“I’m so proud to be a member of the team that has supported CFEL in their mission to enrich lives.”
Ramesh Monga, Senior Financial Analyst
Our leadership does two things:
● Grow the business: develop strategy and action plans based on our goals of a strong core business and growth, and then ensure execution against those plans
● Grow the people: attract and develop top talent, in order to achieve our goals, while allowing our people to achieve their own personal and professional goals.
Recruiting for Fit:
From the moment a job on the team becomes available, to the time the successful candidate begins their new role, the Charter guides us to ensure the person fits seamlessly into their new position.
When we determine the need to bring someone on to the team, our priority is recruiting for fit. The reason behind this comes back to our Charter. Every Foray Group employee is a trusted partner; it’s critical to what we do and who we are. We always share as much as we can about Foray because we want people to come in with a realistic picture of who we are and what we stand for, not just what we do. Our ask is that they bring the highest integrity to the position, so fit is prioritized above all else.
Human resources and the hiring manager meet to develop a job brief that contains the responsibilities, key qualifications, and experience needed to be successful, plus the personal characteristics and competencies required to ensure alignment in terms of values.
It was important to us to develop processes for recruitment and hiring that support the maintenance of our Charter and our culture. We incorporate the system developed by Dr. Bradford Smart called Topgrading. Topgrading examines candidate career history, personal competencies, and references at a much deeper level than the traditional interview process, and helps reveal which candidates would be “A Players” on our team.
The cornerstones of Foray’s culture are presented to potential hires at their very first interview. At that time, interviewers give each candidate a copy of the Charter, and the candidate must discuss how they exemplify the values laid out within it. We have found that being able to readily demonstrate behaviours that show values like trust, integrity and impact in their own lives, is predictive of how well the candidate will mesh with our workplace culture.
Once a candidate is hired, they become part of our intensive onboarding program that helps them establish themselves within the Foray culture and succeed in their new position. This begins with a 30-60-90 day plan for their work at the company and includes a 4 hour orientation with the CEO where they participate and “get the feel” of what we are all about. New employees frequently mention how important they feel that the orientation is provided by the CEO. This onboarding guidance helps our new hires feel welcomed, provides opportunity to get to know their new team, and start the on-the-job training process.
Trusted Partners
“Thank you for making me a trusted partner!”
Rathy Sivanandan, RECE Teacher, Centres for Early
In combination with the Charter, we have developed our Employee Value Proposition, or EVP, through meetings with employees across our different divisions. EVPs are becoming increasingly common and like most, ours is designed to express what our employees feel is our brand; what makes us great, and then express that to potential new team members. The reasons that our employees tell us that they work with us include:
● Charter (Purpose and values)
● Personal and professional growth
● Support from management
● Growth of the company
● Fun environment
● Family-type feel
Cultural Alignment and Measurement:
We have used the Foray Charter for many years, and updated it in 2014 to the most current version that guides our cultural alignment today:
I Enrich Lives.
I am a Trusted Partner.
I act with Integrity.
I am Fully Engaged. I Excel.
I Collaborate.
I am Growing. I make an Impact.
I am Foray.
We use the same terminology in our written and verbal communication to reinforce, recognize and sustain those values. A key example of this is our performance review process. How well employees are living the values is a component of the performance review, and is one way we can measure our culture. We are working to incorporate our Charter into all of our HR processes.
Another measurement initiative is the Organization Growth Indicator Survey, developed by Dr. Brett Richards of Connective Intelligence Inc. which was completed by all management employees across the organization.
Collaboration
“This is a great company with great opportunity. It’s great to be here!”
Sandra Marto, Account Development Representative, Sentient HR Services
This survey helped us determine to what extent the values laid out in the Charter were being implemented, as well as our level of innovation and potential growth. The results of the survey were extremely positive, indicating that after reestablishing our commitment to the Charter through a values in action process, we had made improvements in creativity, alignment and collaboration.
Our Charter values of collaborating with our staff as trusted partners is embraced in part because we reinforce the behaviours that display our priorities on a regular basis. One way we do this is by presenting recognition cards to employees when their behaviours have demonstrated the Charter’s values.
Retention, Rewards and Recognition
At Foray, we’re proud that our employees are fully engaged. Our voluntary turnover rate is approximately 9%. In child care, the industry average is 18-24% and in food service the turnover rate can be more than 50%.
We intentionally cultivate a broader company environment, using the Charter as our guide, that makes our people love their workplace. We retain our top performers through the enrichment opportunities we offer, and the opportunity to be part of our growing organization. For example, we support Early Childhood Assistants in advancing their education to become Early Childhood Educators, which improves their job prospects and pay as they complete their courses.
The element of the Charter is enriching lives and how we do this is by focusing on our employees wellness. This includes “lunch n’ learns” on nutrition and fitness, meditation sessions, yoga and group fitness activities. We brought in a physiotherapist to demonstrate and offer training sessions on health and safety including proper lifting techniques to staff, and ways to sit at one’s desk to avoid injuries for office staff.
Our Charter values of growth and collaboration come to life through social and team building activities our employees participate in. We have annual spring and fall wellness events that have included curling, painting and treetop trekking. Our social committee organizes our annual dinner dance, Valentine’s Day breakfast, Easter hunts, high tea, BBQ’s, Halloween events, spirit week, and beach day. These activities not only to help us retain staff by increasing their workplace connection, they also help us live our values by increasing collaboration and challenging individuals to grow, both personally and professionally.
We recognize that the social aspect of work is only one part of keeping our employees engaged. We support retention by ensuring staff feel included in understanding the direction of the business through team and town hall meetings with their business unit leadership. Front line management and leaders are kept informed through initiatives such as annual and mid-year presentations by the CEO, and regular CEO breakfast meetings. At these breakfast meetings, front line managers and leaders meet with our CEO and senior leaders for breakfast and have an opportunity to ask questions and understand where the business is going. It gives our leadership an opportunity to engage directly with front line managers to understand the ideas, thoughts and challenges they’re experiencing.
Fully Engaged
“At the end of the day, I’m rewarded with thanks and hugs from the children.”
Freny Khobyar, Centres for Early Learning
Employee recognition and rewards are an important part of celebrating how our Charter is translating to the behaviour we want to see in the workplace; including recognition cards, gift cards or team pizza lunches. Long term employees receive milestone anniversary gifts for their contribution and commitment to the company.
Examples of how we retain our “A” players include:
● Competitive compensation including a bonus program tied to the performance of the organization, their business unit and their strategic objectives.
● Ownership of their role; once budgets and plans are set, management is empowered to make decisions in their areas.
● Multiple formal and informal learning opportunities.
● Professional memberships reimbursement and supports professional designation training.
● The heart warmth of peers who live the values of the business. Organizational Performance Growing Leadership and Team Development. Playing to Win.
Growing / Impact
“The power of Impact Investing is rooted in its philosophy that an investment must not only deliver financial ROI, but must also have a positive social (and/or environmental) impact. Impact Investing is growing globally, and continues to address many worldwide issues like improved
Please note that as a private company, the financial information is from our internal records and we have excluded related party revenue. Our EBITDA is pre tax planning adjustments.
Corporate Social Responsibility
accessibility, education, healthcare sustainable agriculture, clean technology and affordable housing”.
Azam Bhaloo, CEO, The Foray Group
Aziz and Amina Bhaloo began this company forty years ago with the goal of creating social benefit in a sustainable manner. Their aim to provide social benefit to the community is reflected in the first point of our Charter, “I enrich lives.” As a company, The Foray Group is committed to spreading this philosophy outside the confines of our business units, to our community at large. We aim to make a positive impact on social, environmental and community issues by supporting charitable organizations and events that align with our Charter.
Annually our team will participate in initiatives such as a “Build Day” with Habitat for Humanity, organizing a walk for breast cancer research, providing dress down days for the Heart & Stroke Foundation, and selling poppies at Remembrance Day with proceeds going to a local legion that supports hospital programs for veterans as well as financial assistance to those currently serving in our military. We also participate in Movember, fundraising for men’s health issues, and Tim Hortons Camp Day where proceeds from coffee sales go toward sending children from disadvantaged families to camp.
The staff in our Centre for Early Learning (CFEL) division have been sponsoring a child in Indonesia through World Vision for the past four years and have recently begun to support a second child in Tanzania. CFEL also participates in annual food drives and toy collections during the holidays, and the SickKids Hospital Foundation walkathon.
Our Food for Tots division supports the YMCA’s Healthy Kids Challenge each year by participating in a kickoff walk around a local neighbourhood. In addition, the Food for Tots division has been a generous supporter of the Daily Bread Food Bank. We have collected an average of 550 pounds of food each year, enough to fill a minivan, and The Foray Group matches the donations.
Over the last 5 years, our Montessori Schools have been involved in the “Me to We” program fundraising to help build a school in China. The goal was to raise $8,500 and this year, with great enthusiasm and support, the goal was surpassed and $10,400 was raised. The Montessori Schools also participate annually in the Terry Fox Run, which supports cancer research, and the Jump Rope for Heart program fundraising for the Heart and Stroke Foundation (and have raised more than twelve thousand dollars over the past 12 years). In addition, our Milton Montessori School this year won the David Suzuki 30x30 Nature Challenge supporting the environment, outdoor activity and fitness.
We believe our enthusiastic and consistent support of our broader community is a key way we can demonstrate our commitment to the Charter, and put our cultural objective of enriching lives into action every day. Through these activities,employees feel their own lives are enriched as well, by having the opportunity to give back to their communities and make a broader impact
Impact
Impact
Habitat for Humanity Home Build, one of the many team building activities held at the Foray Group.
Food for Tots division collected over 550 pounds in food donations.
Impact
MSC Community for Free the Children Charity, raising over $10,000 to help build a school in China.