Unity Health Toronto named to Greater Toronto’s Top Employers for 4th year in a row

Unity Health Toronto has been named one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers for 2025, marking the fourth consecutive year the hospital network has been given the prestigious recognition as one of the best places to work in the region.
“We must have happy, fulfilled staff if we’re going to provide excellent clinical services,” says Dr. Tim Rutledge, president and CEO of Unity Health Toronto. “To make that happen, we’ve really prioritized the way we think about our staff, our training, our support.”

Unity Health Toronto is among the region’s top employers based on criteria set by MediaCorp including: physical workplace; work atmosphere and social; health, financial and family benefits; vacation and time off; employee communications; performance management; training and skills development; and community involvement.
“This incredible recognition is a reflection of the inspiring workplace culture that exists at Unity Health Toronto that emanates from our mission and unwavering commitment to inclusivity,” says Manson Locke, Vice President, People & Chief Human Resources Officer at Unity Health Toronto.
“This is the driving force behind the great work we do to attract top talent through competitive compensation and benefits, vacation and time off, and educational opportunities that help make Unity Health Toronto one of the best places to work in the province.”
As part of the distinction, Unity Health Toronto was profiled in a special feature published in The Globe and Mail, with a special focus on its use of technology, including artificial intelligence and advanced simulation that help our people make the most of opportunities for professional development and growth, advance patient care and improve their work lives.
A unique aspect of training and education at Unity Health Toronto is the Simulation Program, which was established in 1996 at St. Michael’s Hospital and has expanded as part of the network’s integration to serve all three hospital sites, including St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Providence Healthcare.
The Simulation Program uses state of the art technology to train more than 5,000 participants each year – including staff, physicians and students – and is a key part of onboarding new talent to the organization.
“Our Simulation Program not only teaches individuals valuable and lifesaving clinical skills but we have the ability to assess systems, policies, processes and spaces for latent safety threats. The Simulation Program is expert in both individual and organizational learning,” said Beverly Bulmer, Vice President of Education at Unity Health Toronto.
“It is an integral part of training for staff and physicians and teams – designed to assess both individual and system activities.”
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Unity Health Toronto uses complex simulation experiences with anatomically accurate manikins, elaborate sets, virtual reality tools and other advanced technology tools.
“The Unity Health Simulation Program is more than just education and training – it’s a key tool for improving how we work as a system,” says Nazanin Khodadoust, Director of Technology Enabled Education at Unity Health Toronto.
“Through simulations, we uncover latent safety threats and work with our clinical teams to test and refine spaces, workflows, policies, and practices.”

Khodadoust says that by collaborating with partners like Quality and Safety, engineering, facilities, operational readiness, professional practice, and clinical leaders and educators, the program helps evaluate and improve processes, policies, practices, and physical spaces.
“Ultimately, the Simulation Program drives continuous improvement by connecting education, operations, and system design. It informs updates to organizational practices and policies, helping teams and systems work more safely and effectively,” she says.
“At its core, it’s about creating smarter spaces, stronger teams, and more resilient processes to meet the demands of future healthcare and deliver better outcomes for our people and our patients and families.”
Unique to Unity Health’s Simulation Program is translational simulation, the use of simulation techniques for specific situations in a controlled, safe environment to improve processes and patient outcomes – similar to the way a flight simulator trains pilots.
“This simulation methodology engages our staff and teams and walks them through a process that elevates their voice and expertise. Emerging studies have shown that when simulations occur before staff work in new/redesigned spaces, communication, feelings of readiness and overall workspace satisfaction improved,” says Simulation Program manager Lindsay Beavers.
“Our mantra is “no patient should be the first test case for a new clinical space”. You would never get into a car that hasn’t been crash-tested, and patients should never receive care in untested spaces with untested policies and procedures.”
Since simulation touches so many aspects of training and support for many of Unity Health’s team, assessment of policies and practices need to happen within the Simulation Program as well. After recognizing that the Simulation Program only had male-representing CPR training manikins, and that clinical outcomes are worse for those people who have breasts, the team created a custom solution when one wasn’t commercially available.
This solution has now been shared with multiple simulation programs across the GTA, helping ensure that health-care workers practice lifesaving skills on manikins that better represent the populations we serve.
The team has also worked closely on the launch of Unity Health’s new electronic patient record (EPR) system, to improve the care experience for patients, families and care teams and bring all three hospital sites onto one system.
“Our simulation team is working alongside clinical, practice, IT, and other teams to test workflows for optimization, identify latent safety threats, and inform the development of training curricula,” said Khodadoust. “This collaboration is key to ensuring a smoother transition and better outcomes across the institution.”
One of the other inspiring opportunities for employees is that Unity Health Toronto is that the network is a dynamic ecosystem where scientists, clinicians, and industry partners collaborate to develop innovative solutions to address critical health challenges. A national leader in applied healthcare AI, Unity Health Toronto has developed and tested 50+ tools at our sites to enhance operational decision-making, reduce wait times, customize treatments, improve health outcomes and save lives, another highlight of the Greater Toronto’s Top 100 Employers recognition.
Those tools include CHARTWatch, the artificial intelligence (AI) early warning system developed at St. Michael’s Hospital that monitors hospitalized patients in real-time and identifies those at high risk of unexpected death or transfer to an intensive care unit (ICU), and AI scribe.
“We have a ton of AI solutions – products that are helping us reduce wait times, improve treatments, make medicine more precise, improve health outcomes and save lives,” says Rutledge.
“We’re one of the leading organizations in the development of artificial intelligence tools to support clinical practice decision-making.”
Read more about why Unity Health Toronto was selected as one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers for 2025.