The City of Windsor is seeing positive trends in employee retention and experience.
An update was provided to council earlier this week on the Retention and Employee Experience Project.
This initiative has been in place since 2023 following an extensive employee engagement review completed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - which found that labour market had shifted significantly post-pandemic with a growing emphasis on flexibility, work-life balance, and career development.
In April 2024, city council endorsed 93 recommendations and approved $500,000 in funds towards this initiative to improve challenges with staff retention and enhancing employee experience.
During Monday's meeting, a number of stats were provided to show the positive trend over the last year, including a 23 per cent decrease in resignations, an eight per cent increase in applications for city jobs, and an increase of those taking part in the mentorship program.
Ray Mensour, the city's Chief Administrative Officer, says employee morale is much better.
"I've also in my first two months in this role have had the opportunity to meet with all the union association presidents, and the consensus is that things are much, much better, and they are much happier. Nothing is perfect, but we are on the right track."
Andrew Daher, Commissioner of Corporate Services with the City of Windsor, says the city is seeing a 23 per cent decrease in resignations.
"I'm not talking about retirements, or jobs being completed, I'm talking about full resignations. So if we compare it from the base of 2023 to what we're projecting, we're going to be seeing some type of decreases for sure. As we talk about applications, we're seeing an eight per cent increase when we compare our trend for 2025 compared to what we use for 2023 when we started this."
Daher says the mentorship program is completely revamped and is seeing an increase in participants.
"Right now we have approximately 100 participants who are in that program, and they're very excited and engaged based on their halfway through survey results that we've asked the employees. The last time we actually offered this internal program was back in 2018, and we only had about 44 participants, so there's over 120 per cent increase."
Daher adds that multiple initiatives are ongoing to recognize employees throughout the year.
In May 2025, the City of Windsor was honoured with the platinum-level Gord Smith Healthy Workplace Award and celebrated for 20 consecutive years of award recognition.
Approximately 1/3 of the initiatives within the Retention and Employee Experience Project are currently completed or underway. As of May 2025, just over $93,000 has been spent to date, leaving over $406,000 in funds to be used for this project.
City council has asked for another update on the project in July 2026, which was approved.