Sun Life International has been named Bermuda’s top employer for the second year running — and clinched the diversity and inclusion award with a record-breaking 90 per cent score.

The honours were presented at TheRoyal Gazette Top 10 Employer Awards, held this morning at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club. The annual event, sponsored by PwC, recognises the island’s leading workplaces based on employee satisfaction surveys.

Donna Cotter, Sun Life chief executive, said the back-to-back win felt surreal. “It feels incredible. I said in my speech, you know, last year I felt like I’d won the Emmy, and this year I feel like I won the double Emmy,” she said.

She added: “I feel so honoured and so privileged to be recognised by staff. We have created an incredible place to work.”

Ms Cotter credited her team’s values and the efforts of the company’s human resources department for the achievement. “They reflect what all of us want, which is a positive place that fosters collaboration, transparency and honesty,” she said. “Our human resources department is not just transactional. They truly care about the hopeful future for every individual that works here.”

The diversity and inclusion award was presented by Sarah Miller, recruitment manager at Frontier Financial Services Ltd, who described Sun Life’s achievement as “the highest-ever score in this category, a whopping 90 per cent”.

PwC has been the lead sponsor of the Top 10 for 14 consecutive years. Megan Green, partner and human capital leader at PwC, summed up what she believes makes a true winner of these awards: “We have shifted the needle on what really drives a good corporate culture. And when we talk about strong corporate culture, we really are talking about things like trust, like empathy, innovation and growth.”

Ms Green also pointed out a clear trend: “The data is showing that the top employers are those that employ the most women.”

Convex Re, a first-time entrant in the awards, took second place overall. Erika Rance Mill, head of reinsurance underwriting operations at Convex, said she was thrilled by the result. “Anybody would have thought that it was my win, even though I’m just one of many. I was sitting in the audience, literally having heart palpitations,” she said.

She added that the moment was personal as well as professional: “It was a little bit of a family thing, because of the top one and two space. My sister-in-law is at Sun Life and I’m at Convex. So immediately we were in the top two, we were kind of looking at each other. But what an amazing feeling. This is Convex’s first time ever being in this competition, and we came second — like, that’s a win, you know?”

Ms Rance Mill said the success of Convex was rooted in its workplace culture. “First and foremost, it’s the right fit for our culture, because there’s so much talent in Bermuda that finding talent isn’t a hard thing. Finding the right people that are going to come in and just fit in and assimilate the way that we work, because it is a little bit different … we have open-floor concepts, we hot desk. It’s a very different environment, and we have a lot of fun at work as well.”

She also encouraged other companies to take part in future. “First of all, enter … it also helps you challenge yourselves from within.”

Rounding out the Top 10 were, in order: Lancashire Insurance Co Ltd, Frontier, The Berkeley Institute, Coralisle Group Ltd, Marsh McLennan, Fidelis Insurance Group, Carey Olsen Bermuda Ltd and Artex Risk Solutions Ltd.

Jonathan Howes, the chief executive of Bermuda Press Holdings Ltd, the parent company of The Royal Gazette, welcomed attendees at the ceremony, noting: “We’re proud to undertake this leadership role in our community to recognise organisations with strong employee-employer relationships.”

During his opening remarks, event host Michael Grier, the company’s commercial director, challenged attendees to look beyond the obvious factors that distinguish top employers. “The first inclinations are things like the actual vision and purpose, the commitment by businesses, the investments, how safe is your environment, the compensation, the community engagement that everybody here has, that shows up every time.”

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