Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 31, 2016 FEATURES 13 Scott Phillips senior vice-president of HR at Gateway Casinos and Entertainment The Burnaby, B.C.-based company has 4,000 employees H aving blossomed from roughly 3,000 to 4,000 employees, Gateway Casinos and Entertain- ment has kept Scott Phillips busy in the three years he's been there. Not surprisingly, recruitment and retention are among the challenges faced by the Burnaby, B.C.-based senior vice- president of HR. "We're always recruiting for the perfect fi t or the best fi t, and the dynamics of the business are such that the best fi t today might not be the best fi t in a year from now. So it's a matter of how do people evolve their positions, how does the business need those positions to evolve? ere's not always perfect alignment as far as that goes." e challenges were evident this past summer when Gateway added 300 employees for a new location in Ed- monton, he says. "You can take a look at the unemployment numbers and say, 'Well, these areas are struggling to a certain extent,' but again it comes down to fi nding the right talent and skills. I mean, Fort McMurray is a good example where there may be some people out of work in that area and close to Edmonton but their skill sets aren't aligned to being a chef in an upscale restaurant or a maître d' or customer service as opposed to being… in some of those positions affi liated with the oil and gas industry. So there's still recruitment issues, there's still turnover issues, there's still those types of challenges." e company has used social media to help with recruit- ment, along with web scraping programs that aggregate ads, but it's hard to beat employee referrals, he says. "It's good to get a good referral from a good employ- ee and it gives you that much more confi dence. We do (have incentives for that), we've got a formal program that's built around that with some modest incentives but where the position is critical or particularly challenging, we have provisions and we have in the past bumped that up signifi cantly." And when it comes to turnover issues, employee data is a big help, according to Phillips. "I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to the data, I think it's critical to understand what's going on in the business, and then making good decisions to make sure that you're impacting on the areas you need to impact on," he says. "When things make sense from a fact-based perspec- tive, there's not much pushback on 'Yeah, we need to make sure we need to take care of that.'" For example, turnover at the company is a bit higher than 20 per cent — which isn't bad considering it's cus- tomer service and the company has seen a jump in staff numbers, he says. "But then when you drill down into it, you take a look at where the turnover has really been, the majority of it has been for employees within the fi rst two years of service, so that data, the ability to analyze that data, has allowed us to dedicate and target some of our programs towards taking care of those people a little bit better." e company has also put a "big eff ort on orientation, making sure new employee as well as existing employees go through a re-orientation and understanding who we are and what our business is about," says Phillips. As for the elusive goal of HR being more strategic than administrative, dealing with day-to-day issues, it's tough to fi nd that balance, he says — but it's about being prop- erly organized and structured throughout the business. For example, a recent restructuring included a signifi cant investment in the HR team, which is a help for a company that's two-thirds unionized and has nine diff erent collec- tive agreements. " e idea is I won't be pulled into negotiations with unions two weeks at a time. I'm almost completely un- available to work with on building the business so we'll have a labour relations expert that can actually dedicate some time to that," says Phillips. "It's a matter of having the right people doing the work to allow everybody to do their job a little bit more appro- priately… as we grow the business, we defi nitely need to grow the support." Valarie Dillon executive director of HR and volunteer services at Scouts Canada The Ottawa-based organization has about 200 employees F or Valarie Dillon, employee engagement is an all- encompassing issue and it's a major focus for the executive director of HR and volunteer services at Scouts Canada. "If you're able to engage your workforce, recruitment be- comes less of an issue, retention becomes less of an issue, productivity is good. It's all good." As a result, the 200-employee not-for-profi t organiza- tion has moved to a diff erent type of engagement score, using a monthly measure — with one question about rec- ommending Scouts Canada — in addition to its annual survey, she says. "It's very similar to the net promoter score that you would see in marketing, so it looks at the number of pro- moters versus detractors, and that gives you a pulse as to what's going on. We can look at it in terms of seasonal trends or monthly trends, we can slice and dice, and what that enables us to do is get a better measure in time." e annual survey is more reactive so the monthly query helps Scouts Canada be more proactive, says Dillon. "Managers can look at that monthly score and ensure that they're having discussions with their teams to say, 'OK, so what's going on, what can we do diff erently, what can we help you out with, what obstacles are there, what improvements can be made?'" Another focus for the organization is succession plan- ning, as baby boomers are retiring and leaving gaps in terms of corporate knowledge, she says. "(It's about) being able to identify the career paths that are necessary for growth, which kind of provides a dual purpose as well because certainly the millennials are look- ing for those career paths. So being able to identify which positions are critical, which positions are going to be va- cant within the next few years, and how we can best ensure that they're fi lled." And with the diff erent generations in the workplace, it's not a matter of one-size-fi ts-all, says Dillon. " ere are very distinct needs and interests of the dif- ferent generations, and diff erent behaviours that you'll see within those diff erent generations as well, so it's really be- ing able to speak to all of them and fi nd a common ground among them and really focus on that, while still trying to customize." For example, millennials want more collaboration, hav- ing been taught that teamwork is important, so it's about breaking down the silos in an organization, she says. "If you have been used to working in your silo, de- pending on what generation you may be in, are you still comfortable in being able to collaborate and being able to understand collaboration is good thing and sharing of knowledge is a good thing?" Opportunities for learning are another focus of millen- nials, which leads into career development and succession planning, says Dillon. "It's looking to identify common issues, not necessarily common interests, but where you can leverage the inter- ests and benefi ts of one generation with the other, and sort of marry the two of them together." Dillon is also a fan of data and analytics, especially the newer ones that are less reactive. "We subscribe to a third party where we get a lot of help in terms of our analytics, and exploring the use of pre- dictive analytics as well. And, similar to that, to the way we're approaching our engagement with that pulse (sur- vey), it's not a direct measure of engagement but it's going to give you an indication of where engagement is going. And I think that that's kind of what's exciting about the predictive analytics is it's more business-focused and less HR-centric." And when it comes to technology, Dillon sees it more as a help than a hindrance. "I fi nd our lack thereof being a hindrance," she says, as Scouts Canada doesn't currently have an HRIS — but it's on the business plan for this year. "It hasn't been the end of the world but it's going to change this year, which I'm quite looking forward to." But it's important to keep things in perspective and keep them relative to actual needs, says Dillon. " ere are a lot of systems out there with wonderful bells and whistles, which are all time-consuming to be able to load or to use in some situations, and if you're not going to actually make use of them, then why bother? I quite like being able to build as we go for our needs." "It looks at the number of promoters versus detractors."

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