‘We want HR to feel like a warm hug,’ says UPP’s Omo Akintan
The University Pension Plan (UPP), recently named one of Canada's top 100 employers, sits in an unusual position among the country's pension plans. It's not one of the Maple Eight giants, but it's grown to roughly 260 employees since its founding in 2021.
And Omo Akintan believes that middle ground creates advantages that larger organizations struggle to replicate.
"We're big enough to do interesting, fun things and creative things, but we're also small enough that we kind of get to know each other. I can roll out a program, and I can tell you in a couple of hours how it's going. Because I can just walk out of my office and walk around and talk to people. We value culture and we measure it. We want HR here to feel like a warm hug to the organization,” said Akintan, chief people officer at UPP, adding the real differentiator for the Plan is the constant, informal listening that happens when HR can walk the floor and gauge a new program's reception within hours.
That proximity also allows for a trial-and-error approach, noted Akintan as UPP still has a startup mentality and employees accept that not everything will work the first time. The organization has held firm on hybrid work at two days in the office while much of the financial sector has pushed toward four, she said.
UPP launched during COVID with a fully remote workforce, so demanding more office time now would contradict the record, she said. Small interventions reinforce the message that the organization is paying attention as Akintan argues that employees trust the organization because they see their feedback turn into action.
When something doesn't work, they recognize the effort behind it and understand that experimentation comes with missteps, she noted. While she doesn't pretend UPP has solved work-life balance, as the same pressures exist there as anywhere else, small, deliberate choices signal that leadership is paying attention.
For example, mental health days are timed to extend long weekends, ensuring everyone is offline at the same time. In a high-performing culture, taking a solo vacation day while colleagues are still working and emailing doesn't offer the same relief as a collective shutdown, while internal meetings start five minutes past the hour, giving people a window to grab water or take a break between calls. While none of these policies are dramatic on their own, she believes this emphasizes that the organization knows people are working hard and is trying to make everything else a little easier.
"If you work really hard, we're going to do everything we can to make your life as easy as we can," she said.
On the benefits side, UPP's approach is also about reading signals from the workforce and directing resources where they matter most.
For example, when UPP noticed a sharp increase in fertility-related drug claims and saw high attendance at a session with a fertility doctor, leadership directed a government rebate toward expanded family planning support rather than spreading the money thin across the workforce.
“For the people who need family planning benefits, it's a huge thing just to have this $20,000. It's not going to benefit everybody, but we know enough about our people that people will be proud that they work for an employer who provides additional benefits to support people with adoption and whatever else," she said.
The same logic also shaped a recent switch in EAP providers, Akintan noted, as the old model forced employees to start over with a new therapist after a few sessions while the new one lets them keep the same provider and transition seamlessly into using their regular benefits.
While mental health and massage remain popular draws, Akintan underscored that every dollar spent on employees comes from members' retirement savings, which limits how generous UPP can be.
“We’re always considering what's a reasonable envelope and how do we make that envelope work as hard as it can for our people and direct it to the places that our people need it to go,” she added.
Akintan notes UPP’s culture rests on three pillars: feedback, inclusion and ingenuity. Feedback is treated as a core growth tool, so the organization works to make it safe and normal for employees to challenge, comment and speak up to leaders. Inclusion is tested in practice, using an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (EDI-R) on compensation outcomes to spot and probe any skew, rather than assuming decisions are fair.
Belonging is also reinforced with team-level social time and budgets, while ingenuity is expected. She underscored employees should be able to do interesting, future-focused work, like AI-driven projects, inside UPP, not feel they have to leave to find it.
“We want people to feel a sense of belonging here and so we really encourage team dynamics and put social budgets together for teams to spend time together in a meaningful way. That’s really important,” said Akintan.
According to Akintan, UPP has entered a new phase. After refreshing its overall strategy last year, the people agenda has shifted from rapid hiring to keeping and growing the talent they already have. While recruitment continues, the priority is understanding what current employees need to stay and thrive.
To do that, her team is digging into future-of-work research, especially around AI and emerging technologies. The clear message from that research, she explains, is that breadth of experience now matters as much as, if not more than, a straight, traditional career ladder, particularly as UPP has always relied on “Swiss army knife” talent to build the plan from scratch.
But now they want to institutionalize that mindset. She points to development plans that are being designed to push people to look beyond their own roles, try new tasks and step outside their comfort zones.
One issue she sees with that, however, is that developmental opportunities often go to the same people. Because this runs against the culture UPP wants, her team is exploring a more structured “opportunities marketplace” where short-term assignments and stretch roles are visible and open to wider participation, not just the well-connected, she said.
To that end, she acknowledged each employee can access up to $5,000 a year for development, and everyone is expected to have a formal development plan. Those plans are meant to be specific and personalized, driven by the employee’s ambitions, then shaped with their leader to identify the right programs or learning experiences.
Rather than buying a generic learning library that few people use, UPP channels money into targeted development tied to individual goals.
“The development plans are a big retention strategy,” said Akintan. “We're really trying to build a culture around learning, but also programs that facilitate people learning, because everybody's learning needs are different.”
