Canadian HR Reporter

O ne of the trials for HR is it needs to do more strategic stuff , and less HR for HR people, according to Serge Auclair, vice-president of strategy and HR at the Port of Montreal. "We need to fi nd a way to be connected with the corporate strategy and to be at the forefront of the changes and the innovation that will need to happen to the organization to make sure that we put the resources, the program, to basically bring the company where it needs to be." But the challenge to being strategic is there's been a tendency over the years for companies to work in silos, including HR, he says. "When you work in silos, you start doing things for yourself, things that you know, you have expertise in, that you like and that please you... We need to lead the organiza- tion to break the silos, we need to be the ones helping to break the silos… which means… we need to be more open to input from other partners." Also testing HR are the changing de- mands of employees, says Auclair. While on the one hand, people are looking for perks such as daycare in the workplace, they are also asking for greater privacy and respect of their rights. "There's an expectation that employ- ers will do more for them and that's a big challenge in the sense that to what point do you go to? What do you do? What does it mean in terms of delivering services to meet the expectations of employees but, at the same time, managing costs, managing privacy and basically staying aligned with the corporate strategy? So that's a big issue for employers." A third challenge concerns the economy and the global environment, with increas- ing competition, says Auclair. "You're trying to plan for three, fi ve years ahead of you but, at the same time, the re- ality is every year there's something new happening and although you have plans for the long term, you need to make adjust- ments every year and sometimes every six months. So that's extremely complicated," he says. "If you put in place a comp program and, six months later, something happens — you need to downsize, you've lost con- tracts, you have a new competitor coming in — you need to adjust, you need to man- age costs, and it's quite complicated. So now you need to build into what you do the fact that it might have to change within a very short period of time… you need to be able to adapt, change your models quite rapidly." As for all the data available, it's easy to get caught up in the big data movement, he says. "We have all this information and data but, at the end of the day, what does it mean for us? Especially if we want to put that into KPIs (key performance indica- tors) that will matter for the organization. Even some of the traditional KPIs like turnarounds don't mean a thing — you need to go well beyond that to try to un- derstand what's happening. "Having two per cent turnaround in your organization used to be considered extraor- dinary but today it doesn't mean anything — we need to go to the second, third, even the fourth level of information. So it's not that technology's not there, I think that the user of technology will still have to fi gure out what he wants to do with all the of data." Down the road, generational diff erences will be another issue for HR, says Auclair. "You have a new generation that sees things a lot diff erently than the older one but, at the same time, all these generations are working together so the big challenge is to make sure that you get everyone together and to look at the other generations and see the possible benefi ts." For example, the Port of Montreal is re- confi guring its building and some of the people who have been there for 25 years like it the way it used to be, while newer employees are keen to go further. "How can you create a result that pleases everyone?" says Auclair. "You need to be a lot of things to a lot of diff erent people and, at the same time, create a lot of alignment — to me, that's a huge challenge." "If you can get these people to work to- gether, that's incredible, you can leverage and you can create something quite inter- esting in terms of value for the companies — but it means working diff erently in terms of HR and what we've been used to." Twenty years ago, employers would tell employees " is is the way it is and if you're not happy, well, move on," he says. Now, it's about understanding and integrating their feedback. "You have all these corporate surveys, you have the CEO doing meetings with em- ployees, town hall meeting with VPs and… it's good to communicate more but you're creating expectations, you need to manage expectations after that and employees need to feel that their voice is being heard by the management and management is caring about what they're saying, management is making decisions, is adapting things ac- cording to what they're saying. But they're not speaking with one voice, which means everyone has diff erent expectations — how do you connect all of that?" HR's radar We talked to five HR leaders from across the country to find out about the top issues and challenges facing human resources. Not surprisingly, recruitment, retention, succession planning and talent management top the list. What's on "You need to be a lot of things to a lot of different people, and also create a lot of alignment." Serge Auclair vice-president of strategy and HR at the Port of Montreal The company has about 250 employees FEATURES HR LEADERS

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