Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER CANADIAN HR REPORTER March 24, 2014 March 24, 2014 FEATUR FEATURES 15 ATTENDING HAS NEVER THE 2014 HRIA CONFERENCE APRIL 9 & 10, 2014 | BMO CENTRE, CALGARY, AB App sponsored by : Enhance your conference experience by downloading the conference app. With this app you will be able to connect with other attendees, add your personal schedule, access session information, browse exhibitors, and view maps of the tradeshow floor and the BMO Centre. To download the app, scan the QR code or use the following link: http://eventmobi.com/hria1404s/ NEED HELP SAVING THE APP TO YOUR MOBILE DEVICE? Visit www.HRIAConference.com/Saving_the_App BEEN EASIER Ontario puts regulatory bill through its paces Bill Greenhalgh, CEO, HRPA G aining new status as a self-regulated profes- sion in Ontario was a major victory for the Human Resources Professionals Asso- ciation (HRPA) in 2013. But while passing Bill 32 was a big accomplishment, HRPA will still put a lot of work into rolling out the new act in 2014. "There's a lot of work to be done," says Bill Greenhalgh, CEO of HRPA in Toronto. "( e act) changes a great deal. Now, we have been anticipating that for some time so many of the things that we needed to do, we'd already started doing, things inter- nally that we could do — changing our processes and changing how we deal with complaints and our adjudicative committee. Many of those processes and much of the governance processes we actually altered in anticipation of the act going through." Even so, there are some notable changes still to come in 2014 as the details are hammered out and bylaws are written. " e act itself is going to take us about 18 months to fully imple- ment, but there's some things we need to do very quickly, which is change bylaws between now and May," says Greenhalgh, who adds the bylaws will be drafted by HRPA's annual general meeting in May. "When you look at the act itself, it's kind of divided into immediate-term and longer term. Some of the things that are lon- ger term, we don't really need to deal with right now, so we'll leave those," he says. "But there are some things that we do need to deal with, for ex- ample, the size of our board and the government appointees, and how we deal with the regulation of fi rms — those are all things we need to do very quickly." New powers for enforcing proper use of the Certifi ed Hu- man Resources Professional (CHRP) designation, as well as tools for dealing with incapacity in the workplace — that is, ac- commodation for professionals dealing with personal issues — are two other signifi cant changes in the act. Another big item on the agenda for 2014 is the professional prac- tice review HRPA has been work- ing on for the past year. HRPA will be examining the impact the practice review will have as the association moves forward, says Greenhalgh. "Now we're looking at, well, what implications does that have going forward? So what kind of education, what kind of compe- tencies HR professionals need to know and how would we go about assessing those?" he says. " is is not a short-term pro- gram — this is a long process." HRPA , which has 20,800 members, will also be working on more white papers this year to expand on those released in 2013 that focused on appren- ticeships, training, education and immigration. The association will also be adding new research in other topics — likely including mental health, Alzheimer's, palliative care and employees who are in caregiver roles. "We found that mental health, the whole question of palliative care and how employees are deal- ing with that is becoming a ma- jor concern and worry for many of our members, because they're trying to provide the advice and support to their employees," says Greenhalgh. "One other area we'll be fo- cused on in 2014… is really promoting the profession and promoting the designation, and adding clear value for senior HR professionals. We do have a sig- nifi cant number of HR profes- sionals and we'd like to expand that number. We offer meet- ings and sessions on topics that suit them, and it off ers them the chance to network with people with similar challenges and issues in other industries." Quebec puts focus on young professionals, increasing membership Florent Francoeur, CEO, CRHA W ith about 9,500 mem- bers, the Ordre des Conseillers en Res- sources Humaines Agréés (CRHA) has already convinced nearly 50 per cent of Quebec's 20,000 HR professionals to sign up. " e membership is still growing and we are happy about that," says Florent Francoeur, president and CEO of Montreal-based CRHA. But building up the member- ship base is still a key focus for the association, which hopes to reach 10,000 members by 2015. Recruiting new members is more diffi cult a task than it may seem, says Francoeur. "It will be more and more dif- fi cult… in Quebec right now, we have more people leaving the workplace than arriving in the workplace." But CRHA has a particular fo- cus on students and young profes- sionals who are just starting out in the profession. "For this year, we plan more and more to focus on young CELEBRATING > pg. 16

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