Empowering People, Transforming Cultures

The BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee talent development. The winners use learning as a strategic business tool to get results. View the entire list of 2025 BEST Award winners.

Building organizational cultures that put the employee experience at the center is a key to success. At India-based Wipro Limited, a 19-time BEST Award winner, and TELUS, a 20-time winner, valuing differences is paramount to employee learning. The companies are the first two inductees of ATD's Best of the BEST.

Wipro, a technology services and consulting company, demonstrates a deep commitment to building a high-performance culture and elevating the associate experience. It drives cultural transformation through its Five Habits: being respectful, being responsive, always communicating, demonstrating stewardship, and building trust.

Last year, approximately 3,600 associates across business units and geographies voluntarily engaged in the organization's unconscious bias training programs. Measurable outcomes of the effort include an increase in staff understanding, collaboration, and engagement.

Virtual instructor-led learning initiatives, which the L&D team structured as learning conversations, foster safe spaces for dialogue.

The L&D function also embeds inclusivity and awareness by supporting maternity in the workplace via e-learning modules that provide step-by-step guidance for expectant mothers and managers, promoting disability awareness sessions that help all staff understand the challenges employees with disabilities face and how to create an inclusive workspace, and championing LGBTQ+ inclusion with an e-learning module that empowers individuals to become advocates for change.

In 2021, TELUS, a communications technology company, launched a multipronged, multiyear reconciliation program to create a meaningful and inclusive culture for Indigenous team members—those from First Nations, Inuit, or Métis communities across Canada.

One course educates TELUS staff about Indigenous history, culture, reconciliation, and the impact of colonization. More than 20,000 team members have taken the course. Quarterly workshops feature topics such as navigating Indigenous identity in the workplace.

The organization also offers the Pathways Membership Program, an Indigenous-person-led L&D initiative that provides Indigenous team members with guidance, support, and networking opportunities. During the past year, the program facilitated connections between 17 Indigenous mentees and 30 mentors.

"Our company strongly believes that to bring out the best in our people, we need to empower them to grow professionally. This means we must ensure all TELUS team members have the skills needed for today and the future," says TELUS CEO Darren Entwistle.

TELUS is also a proud partner and sponsor of the digital Witness Blanket, an educational installation by artist Carey Newman that amplifies the stories of survivors of Canada's Residential Schools system. The project has garnered more than 1 million views. In addition, the organization integrates Indigenous ways of knowing and being that reflect the traditions of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Ojibwe-Anishnaabeg, and the Haudenosaunee into its office and retail location design.

View the entire list of 2025 BEST Award winners.