10/07/2026
On October 6, LiveWorkPlay was recognized as the #2 Best Place to Work in Ottawa before an audience of 400 business and organizational leaders at Best Places to Work & DisruptHR Ottawa 2026.
Thank you to the Ottawa Business Journal and the many partners and sponsors who made the evening possible.
The combination of Best Places to Work and DisruptHR made for a particularly fitting evening. Speakers challenged conventional thinking about trust, belonging, performance, hiring, workplace rules, and leadership.
Those themes connected directly with changes LiveWorkPlay began making about a decade ago.
Our Board of Directors authorized significant investments in people and workplace culture. Our Co-Leaders Julie Kingstone and Keenan Wellar collaborated with the staff team and translated those commitments into organizational systems and practices. Directors and Team Leads brought them into day-to-day operations. Staff throughout LiveWorkPlay have continued to use them, question them, improve them, and identify where we can do better.
One of the most relevant DisruptHR presentations came from Sanita Alias, who challenged workplace rules built around control rather than trust. Her message strongly reflected our own experience of moving away from conventional top-down supervision toward collaborative performance management and coaching.
The Best Places to Work recognition is based on an independent two-part assessment combining an extensive review of workplace policies and practices with an anonymous employee engagement survey.
LiveWorkPlay averaged 98% overall, with every category at 93% or higher.
We are also especially proud that LiveWorkPlay is the first charity providing direct services to people in the community to be recognized as one of Ottawa’s Best Places to Work.
For community-based social services, sustained investment in compensation, benefits, professional development, workplace culture, and new approaches to leadership can be challenging. We hope this recognition demonstrates that innovation in how people are supported at work can and should be part of our sector too.
One of the strategic directions that helped launch this work was called Building A Leaderful Organization.
Looking at the LiveWorkPlay team gathered at Algonquin College last night, that phrase felt particularly appropriate.
Full story, photos, and live video:
https://liveworkplay.ca/2026/10/07/best2026/
Thank you to everyone who came out to represent us! Follow the link above for photos of everyone mentioned below.
[Aby Clarke] [Maggie Dimock] [Shayna Grey]
[Anna Nelson] [Joshua Gray] [Jared Dykler] [Jen Broad] [Rebecca Coxon]
[Mary Gusella] [Daniel Spagnolo] [Kaye Kwok] [Eileen Barak] [Chayne Nerad]
And a shout-out to [Cory Haskins]!
