While business leaders like to talk about the importance of corporate culture, few understand how it drives — or destroys — value.

Peter Bissonnette, the former president of Shaw Communications and a longtime client, mentor and friend, has written a book, Count on Me, that every Canadian executive should read. It is not a sentimental memoir of corporate life but a clear-eyed account of how "caring leadership" (his term) can drive both profit and performance.

In my decades representing employers, I have seen firsthand how companies rise or fall on the strength of one factor above all: trust. When employees believe in their leaders' fairness and integrity, their engagement and output soar. When they do not, conflict, turnover and litigation follow like clockwork.

Bissonnette, like his own mentor, JR Shaw, understood this. At Shaw, he embedded caring leadership values into the organization's culture. He called it the company's "secret sauce of success."

Far from being soft, it was an operational discipline that aligned the workforce with management objectives. Employees who felt valued and understood responded with effort and loyalty that no financial incentive alone could produce.

Too many corporate leaders still rely on fear, micromanagement and HR enforcement to maintain control — costly mistakes. Workplaces built on distrust generate more lawsuits, more human rights complaints and more grievances. Any employment lawyer can tell you that.

Caring leadership, by contrast, functions as a form of preventative law. When employees perceive fairness — in compensation, performance evaluation and opportunity — the impulse to disengage or litigate disappears. A culture of respect becomes the most effective risk-management tool a business can deploy.

But it goes further. Trust-based workplaces are more profitable. Numerous studies directly link employee engagement to productivity and customer satisfaction.

Workers who feel cared for become bona fide brand ambassadors, defending and promoting the organization's reputation, as well as your most effective recruitment and retention tool. That goodwill, once earned, translates into measurable commercial advantage.

Even in unionized environments, the same principles apply. Companies that maintain open, respectful and transparent relationships with their unions find that bargaining becomes collaborative rather than confrontational. Administering pay and benefits consistently and communicating business decisions honestly reduces conflict and enhances stability.

Embedding these values institutionally through leadership training, accountability systems and communication not only creates a nicer place to work; it builds a legally resilient and financially stronger organization.

In my practice, the employers who succeed long term are those who combine fairness with firmness, empathy with discipline.

Bissonnette's Count on Me offers a timely reminder that "caring" is not weakness. It is good governance. A leader who cultivates trust and fairness inoculates their organization against lawsuits, attrition and reputational harm while unlocking the discretionary effort that drives growth.

The employers who understand this principle rarely end up in court. That alone should convince even the most hard-nosed executive that caring leadership is not only moral — it is money in the bank!

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.