If the business world were the Olympic Games, Unison Workplace Strategies would be the folks training the athletes, not building the stadiums.

That’s because this nimble crew of highly-skilled coaches and mentors firmly believes that businesses only succeed when their people do. Or, as the Dieppe, N.B.-based company’s President and Innovation Leader Marc-André Alary likes to say: “Better people equals better business.”

Established in 1998 as Direcsys to provide services aimed at assisting SMEs improve their performance, Unison’s strategic vision embraces a philosophy that places people at the centre of an organization’s health. “It’s about having a cohesive management team, clarity of information, excellent communications, and systems built around the people,” Alary says.

In fact, the workplace challenge is real and measurable. According to recent Gallup studies, engagement levels among employees vary across different global regions and among countries within those regions. At the regional level, Northern America (that is, the U.S. and Canada) have the highest proportion of engaged workers, at 29%, followed by Australia and New Zealand, at 24%. “With the concept of organizational health we want to get employees back in the game and engaged in their workplace.”

To do this, Unison offers three services: strategic coaching; interventions for sustainable growth with respect to processes, leadership and behavioural change; and MPO solutions for human resources strategies. Within this framework, the company facilitates programs– Scaling Up Business Growth; Leadership Development; Lean Manufacturing and Management; Human Behaviour Management; and HR Management–that positively affect any business’s people, processes, and profitability.

The collective takeaway for these dedicated professionals–and the value they offer clients–is their conviction that ensuring a collaborative work environment is the very thing that keeps an organization healthy. “It’s not just systems; it’s also the people that work within those systems,” Alary says.

“By sharing our knowledge and experience, we build true business Olympians together. That’s what keeps companies going and growing.” •