Canadian HR Reporter

HR LEADERS FEATURES Ken Johnston senior vice-president, CHRO at Purolator The Mississauga, Ont.-based company has 11,000 employees in Canada W hen it comes to major changes facing Purolator, Ken John- ston, senior vice-president and CHRO, easily lists three: globalization, automation and the gig economy. "Talent has been becoming borderless for a number of years now but what we're seeing — particularly in Canada with the downward move of our currency, as well as changing tax regimes — is that being able to attract global talent to Canada has become very, very diffi cult, in the last year or so," he says. "I would say it's the most diffi cult I've ever seen it." Purolator regularly tries to recruit top international candidates, says Johnston, but many are fi nding it a signifi cant challenge to move to Canada due to the cost of living and the value they'll get for their dollar. " at's a real issue for us," he says. "You really have to add 30 cents to the dollar on compensation in order to keep somebody whole, so provid- ing somebody with 30 per cent more compensation is not aff ordable for a lot of organizations to do." As for automation, that's probably the biggest, most urgent challenge in the supply chain industry, says Johnston. Just a few years ago, the trend was so expensive and immature that it was hard to make a business case for signifi cant changes to location facilities or vehicles. "But in the last 18 months, the number of players and the advance- ment of technology in our industry has moved so fast that the cost of automation has gone down, making it a lot more attractive; and, at the same time, e-commerce has been growing at 25 to 30 per cent per year, which means there's a huge push in capacity." While people often equate automation with downsizing or a reduc- tion in people, Purolator is not anticipating that outcome, says Johnston, who has been at Purolator for three-and-a-half years. For one, automa- tion brings with it a higher need for skilled labour, which is positive both for the Canadian economy and for the types of jobs people can aspire to at Purolator. Secondly, "we need to be able to create a lot more capacity in our industry, and the only way to do that effi ciently is through automation," he says. But it takes time. "Anytime you're automating, there's just signifi - cant change management challenges associated with that because jobs change, skill requirements change, training, learning and development becomes a signifi cantly higher priority for us as we go through that. So those challenges defi nitely exist for us and we're working through them, but it's not something that's perceived within our organization or our employee base as a looming danger that they're going to have to face, it's just a change management activity." With that comes a strong need for eff ective, innovative communica- tion, says Johnston, particularly at a company where 6,000 of the 11,000 Canadian employees are on the road all day. "Finding ways to regularly communicate with our workforce is just a tremendously diffi cult challenge, so we have to be really innovative in how we communicate with them," he says, citing as examples social media and twice-daily small group meetings. As for the gig economy and changing types of employment structures, that's huge in the industry as well, says Johnston, largely because customers want delivery 24-7. "We will always in our business pride ourselves on having the majority of our workforce — I would say 70 per cent-plus — be full-time, permanent employees with retirement and health benefi ts, a more traditional employment model. But certainly, what was probably 10 per cent a year ago is now 20 to 25 per cent of our workforce that needs to be in a more non-traditional fl ex model. So, for us, that means everything from contractors to fully outsourced vendors, part-time work, casual work, a lot of seasonal work… so we're trying to be as creative as we can to respond to that." As for suggestions employers are just looking to cut costs, and workers don't really want contingent work, Johnston disagrees. "We're very much a service business, a people business, and our competitive advantage is people, so it would be very short-sighted for us if we looked at employment as an area we want to invest less in. So I don't think you would fi nd we spend less money on attracting non-traditional employees than we do on traditional employees, it's just diff erent — it provides us with fl exibility to our customers. But you also have to pay for that — when you want to attract people that are working evenings and night shifts, there's a premium for that. So, sure, you might save on the pension and benefi ts side sometimes, but we want the best people, so we have to invest in order to get the best people." When it comes to being prepared for the change and uncertainty, Johnston cites analytics. "For me, the future of HR is going to be in analytics, predic- tive analytics. Everybody is go- ing to have to adapt to chang- es that occur but the people that are going to win and get the most out of change are the people that can see it coming, predict it, adapt to it before others, and be ahead of those changes." HR needs to take a macro view, he says, and that means being able to predict what's happening with the economy, customer behaviours and techno- logical advances, and what types of behaviours are most easily found in diff erent demographics of candidates. " e advancements in analytics for talent management are extraordi- nary, so we're really trying to get ahead of that curve so that we can be prepared to have the right talent to fi t our customer demands more quickly as we move forward." change Coping with Whether it's automation, multiple generations, globalization or the "Trump effect," today's workplaces are facing plenty of challenges. We talked to five HR leaders from across the country to find out how they're dealing with the change.

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