Our Culture and What We Offer

Learning and Growth Plans

Supervisors use Learning and Growth Plans (sometimes called Learning Plans or Employee Development Plans) as a way to provide continuous learning opportunities for their staff. Employees work with their supervisor to create a learning plan to improve and build on their skills. Once the learning plan has been approved, there are options and resources available to achieve the goals set. Employees and supervisors work together to identify on the job learning experiences, ways to learn from others, and potential training opportunities.

Employee Development Focus Areas

The City provides employees with development opportunities focused on five areas to support performance in current and future roles including role-based knowledge and skills, city processes and procedures, transferable skills, culture building, and leadership development.

Role-based Knowledge and Skills

This includes learning experiences that are either required or can enhance knowledge, behaviours, and skills to successfully perform a role/job within a business area, such as how to operate a piece of equipment or how to apply a specific methodology.

City Processes and Procedures

This learning category focuses on building knowledge specific to working at the City of Edmonton, including understanding policies and processes - in other words, ‘how things are done’ at the City.

Transferable Skills

This includes learning focused on building skills, behaviours and/or knowledge that could apply across multiple roles across the City, such as enhancing communication skills or resolving conflict.

Culture Building

This learning is closely tied to the City’s strategic objectives that focus on living our cultural commitments and embedding equity, diversity and inclusion in our policies, practices, mindsets and heartsets.

Leadership Development

The City believes leadership happens at all levels and in all jobs. The skills needed to lead change, projects, or people become more complex as we grow in our roles. For people who officially lead a team, this means they have specific learning needs, on top of general leadership skills, to help them succeed as team leaders.

The City of Edmonton honours and recognizes employees in many ways. Our Corporate Employee Recognition and Appreciation Framework guides how we do this and has several opportunities for recognition and appreciation for employees to utilize, including:

Everyday Appreciation Program

The Everyday Appreciation Program is a way to share words of appreciation, gratitude and celebrate one another by sending ecards, group cards, hard copy cards, and certificates to employees for a suite of reasons including, educational advancements, birthdays, personal milestones, and much more.

Employee Celebrations

The “Celebrating You” program allows leaders to recognize their employees with celebratory events, recreation and attraction passes, and a great list of fun activities to do as a team.

Employee Awards

City employees bring diverse skills, talents and experiences to their work and are recognized for it. The City of Edmonton values and recognizes the contributions of City staff in making Edmonton a great place to live, work and play. To further acknowledge these important contributions, the City offers many employee awards to highlight the exceptional service of City staff.

Cultural Commitments Awards

Each year, City employees demonstrating our Cultural Commitments—Safe, Helpful, Accountable, Integrated, and Excellent—can be nominated by their peers. Employees can also be recognized for environmental excellence by selecting the Charles Labatiuk Award as their nomination category. Winners are chosen by a committee and featured in a livestream video for all employees.

Long Service Recognition

Long Service Recognition begins at 10 years of service and continues every 5 subsequent years. Employees may choose from a selection of gifts; the value of each gift complements the length of service. In addition, employees achieving major service milestones of 25, 30, 35 and 40 years will receive a certificate of appreciation signed by the Mayor and City Manager.

City of Edmonton employees are encouraged to adopt a lifelong learning mindset. Employees guide and shape their learning and career path, receiving support to achieve their learning goals. Learning and growth enable employees to be safe, helpful, accountable, integrated and excellent throughout our work, serving each other and the public.

Key Courses We Offer

Indigenous Awareness

Understanding the history of Indigenous peoples is essential to our mission of serving all Edmontonians. The Indigenous Awareness session provides a unique chance to hear directly from an Indigenous speaker about their lived experiences. Through the facilitated discussion and hands-on activity, we gain practical knowledge about topics like the Residential School system, empowering us to better serve our diverse community with empathy and understanding.

Diversity and Ourselves

Inclusion starts with self-reflection. This course guides you through exploring your own perspectives and social location to better understand diverse colleagues and citizens. You will learn key concepts—including intersectionality, emotional labour, and allyship—and practice strategies like "calling in" to actively challenge discrimination.

Respectful and Inclusive Workplace

As City employees and role models, we strive to create an environment where everyone is valued. This course explores how implicit bias influences our thinking and impacts workplace culture. Using a specific communication model and case studies, you will learn practical strategies to maintain respect and effectively handle difficult conversations.

Leadership - Enabling Conversations

The Enabling Conversations series is a comprehensive program designed to equip leaders with the skills to manage the full spectrum of employee performance. Through three targeted modules, participants learn to set clear direction, foster growth through ongoing coaching and feedback, and effectively address performance gaps. This series provides the essential tools to build a culture of clarity, support, and accountability at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

The Working Mind

This course will help you navigate the mental health continuum with confidence. Designed to reduce stigma and promote well-being, this course moves beyond the myths to focus on real-world application. Employees gain a deeper awareness of their own mental health and learn specific strategies—and the right language to use—to support themselves and their teammates effectively.

Lifelong Learning

All employees contribute to a culture of continuous learning through a combination of learning through experience, through others, and through formal training.

City employees can access a wide variety of courses with a focus on:

• Communication Skills
• Leadership Skills
• Management and Supervisory Skills
• Safety and Wellness
• Data and Technology
• Diversity and Inclusion