How Calvert Home Mortgage Achieves 90% Employee Retention with Monark’s Support
Background on CHMIC
A culture-driven mortgage company
In 2025, Calvert Home Mortgage will celebrate 50 years of operations. The company’s strong commitment to people and organizational performance has been a driving force of its success over the past half-century.
Collaborative partnership supports retention and growth
Calvert’s dedication to organizational performance is supported by its partnership with Monark, which began in 2019 with Calvert’s use of the Organizational Health and Effectiveness Profile (OHEP). This evidence-based assessment is designed to uncover organizational strengths and blind spots to support strategic planning. The two companies have since expanded their collaboration to include continuous leadership training and a Leadership Vigilance Profile (LVP) for Calvert’s CEO, Dean Koeller.
Developing a seamless leadership experience
Using Monark’s leadership development platform and engagement tools has allowed Calvert to invite more regular employee feedback and better prepare annual strategic planning. With Monark, Calvert has also increased employees’ learning capabilities, upholding its commitment to both culture and performance while creating a consistent management experience across the organization.
“We’ve created action plans from the results we’ve gotten through Monark, and some are huge company changes. It’s improved our decision-making and given our people a common language to use as they work toward goals.”
Julia Smithers
HR Manager, Calvert Home Mortgage Investment Corporation
A fresh approach to mortgages
Calvert Home Mortgage Investment Corporation does mortgages differently. This family-run mortgage investment corporation provides alternative mortgages to customers who may not be approved through a traditional lender.
Calvert Home Mortgage is a trusted name in the Canadian mortgage industry, lending in Alberta and Ontario with a goal to expand into B.C. In addition to serving Mortgage Brokers, Real Estate Investors and Homeowners, Calvert also serves approximately 600+ investors whose investments fund the mortgages.
Goals & Growth Ambitions
Putting people first
Calvert Home Mortgage is a team of high performers committed to a big vision, prioritizing company culture above all else. The organization has been one of Canada’s most admired cultures for two years in a row. It is also a four-year winner of a top mortgage employer award through Canadian Mortgage Professional Magazine.
“Culture drives everything we do, and we won’t do something if it sacrifices culture,” says Julia Smithers, HR Manager.
Calvert has an ambitious plan to grow its assets under management by more than triple over the next five years. Investing in its people is critical to achieving this goal.
CHMIC’s Relationship with Monark
Investing in leadership development
Calvert has always known that company growth requires a corresponding investment in people. This approach has been central to the organization’s success thus far. It’s also why the company was open to a new leadership development platform that could connect employees, collect 360 feedback, and drive measurable change.
“Our CEO’s philosophy is you should always be learning and growing, and you can always be better. So providing our employees with those opportunities to learn and grow and improve is vital to our operation,” Julia says. “It’s a non-negotiable.”
In 2019, Calvert launched its first OHEP assessment with Monark. The aim was to gather confidential feedback that would provide tangible, actionable outcomes for management.
With the data and insights the OHEP has provided Calvert since 2019, the next step was embarking on training to support leaders to scale the company. Three key factors were appealing to Calvert when making the decision to engage Monark in further collaboration:
Leading from a higher standard
“The annual engagement survey helps guide how we build our five-year strategy,” says Julia.
By gathering consistent, quality feedback, Calvert can develop action plans based on OHEP scores and create specific plans for each department, leader, and team to ensure people are heard and strategies are aligned across the organization.
“If your talent feels like they have a voice and that voice is heard, that’s going to encourage them to stay,” Julia says. “For instance, the underwriting department is passionate about volunteering and wants more opportunities for that. The OHEP helps us nail down how we can make their employment journey here more enjoyable.”
An ongoing commitment to future leaders
Calvert now leverages Monark to provide training that helps proactively develop its leaders. The goal? Empowering Calvert leaders to reach peak performance, in order to retain top talent, grow the organization, and create a lasting impact in the community.
“We were already on board with Monark, but what really sold us on expanding our partnership was the 360 feedback happening within the manager training portion of the app. We love any way to give people a feedback loop.”
Julia Smithers
HR Manager, Calvert Home Mortgage Investment Corporation
As Calvert has grown, a key focus of its strategy for this fiscal year was its management layer, and giving them the tools and resources to be good managers. Reassuring staff that Monark’s training would not be a significant time commitment helped with the seamless adoption of the product.
A CEO dedicated to improvement
Calvert Home Mortgage has also recently implemented a Leadership Vigilance Profile (LVP) with Monark for its CEO. This extensive 360 assessment of a leader gathers feedback and ratings from the leader, peers, and direct reports to illustrate personal strengths and potential blind spots.
“When Dean did his 360 leadership review, Monark was very clear that he didn’t have to share the results, but he immediately shared them with his entire board and his leadership team,” Julia says. “This helps the rest of the organization who are going through Monark training to know the value.”
This commitment to transparency from Calvert’s CEO demonstrates a critical component in succeeding to create a strong, cohesive team. Leaders who are transparent about positive and negative information in the company enable their teams to have a clear line of sight on how strategic goals can be achieved.
Key Outcomes
Empowering strategic growth company-wide
Calvert’s proactive approach to leadership development and use of Monark’s products has contributed to high retention and low turnover.
“Our average retention right now is 90%,” says Julia. “A big part of that is because our employees know that we invest in them. People stay with us because they see their career path lined up for them. Creating those career paths was part of an OHEP plan from a few years ago.”
In addition to higher retention, Monark’s product drives behavior change, long-term organizational growth, and contributes to overall financial performance. Calvert’s embracing of development and its commitment to change across all aspects of the organization, including up to the CEO, is making a real difference.
“At the manager level, the Monark training helps us set expectations for how you show up as a Calvert leader. How do you manage your teams? Are you creating psychological safety?,” Julia says. “From what I can see, people are quoting what they’re learning in the training on a daily basis.”
Providing a consistent training experience to all managers ensures that every employee will have a similar experience working for a Calvert leader. This is an uncommon but impactful outcome, allowing all managers the opportunity to learn the same approach, with the flexibility to adapt the concepts to their management style.
Beyond that, Calvert’s partnership with Monark has also helped the company enhance relationships with clients by applying the skills gained through leadership development when interacting with and supporting customers.
“Sometimes our borrowers can be in a tough financial position,” says Julia. “Our people learning these concepts like psychological safety and empathy also helps them in those difficult conversations.”
Plans for ambitious growth with culture at the center
Calvert Home Mortgage is optimistic about its future growth and its culture. The company has ambitious goals to continue developing its leaders, to keep retention high, and to always offer transparency and care at every stage of scaling.
“I joke with Dean – there’s Disney training executives can go to, and they learn the Disney way of leading,” Julia says. “I want Calvert leaders to be the new thing. I want people to ask, how do we send our people to learn how to be a Calvert leader? That’s my big, hairy, audacious goal.”
