We wanted to learn more about strategic HR leadership and the issues that are important to HR leaders. We recently spoke with Wendy Alderdice, the Owner and Principal Consultant at OutPerform HR Consulting in the Greater Toronto Area. With over 25 years of experience in strategic HR leadership and management, Wendy has had a positive and lasting impact on a wide range of organizations. We asked Wendy to share her thoughts on various HR topics.
Can you share a bit about your journey to becoming an HR professional and what motivated you to pursue a career in human resources?
I was fortunate to have summer jobs in HR while I was an undergraduate student. That exposure solidified my interest in pursuing a career in HR. I completed my Master of Industrial Relations (MIR) degree at Queen’s University which provided a very strong foundation for my career in strategic and senior HR roles. I enjoy partnering with senior leaders to enhance business growth while creating a supportive and engaging environment for employees to perform at their best.
How do you approach talent acquisition and retention in a competitive job market?
Understand and clearly define the true business need for each open role, the unique challenges, and the ideal candidate profile. Be relentless in pursuing the right candidate and always approach talent acquisition as a team priority. Don’t stop at good enough, find top talent. Be creative in your search. Stay connected, create the right infrastructure for new hires.
The journey to a great organization really is only possible when talent retention becomes a deep focus for leaders. Proper structure and process around talent and performance management, together with a people-first mindset and leadership commitment to engagement and career development, make for a powerful formula that pays big dividends.
How do you cultivate a positive workplace culture?
Corporate culture is usually a very important component in the success or failure of most businesses. Simply put, healthy workplace cultures drive performance. Some parts of culture are less visible. Identify and appreciate the positive aspects of current workplace culture and retain those aspects. Identify the culture required to support future business growth. Facilitate a sense of belonging, strengthen essential behaviours, clarify expectations, and create mechanisms to achieve common goals.
A successful method to positively enhance workplace culture is to create a set of shared corporate values and embed them throughout all business processes. I have had the pleasure of helping many organizations define, refine, and improve their culture, leading to incredible results.
What are your strategies for developing future leaders within an organization and how do you ensure continuous learning and development opportunities?
Invest in the learning and development of all team members through appropriate planning, budget allocations, and time investments. Measure results. Identify emerging leaders and top performers and give them unique opportunities to tackle strategic business challenges with mentorship from executives.
My emphasis on the holistic needs of an organization requires a deep focus on leadership development. In many cases a company cannot execute on its strategy or improve on its key focus areas until it gets the right leader(s) in place, and until it maximizes the contributions from the leaders already in the organization. In some cases, leadership changes may be needed if an organization is trying to achieve a new level of excellence.
How do you approach succession planning?
Cultivate internal talent for future transitions. Each leader should work to identify and develop their own successor. Succession planning truly enhances an organization’s performance and long-term stability by developing specific high-potential employees for critical roles. It’s important to create, through open dialogue, individual leadership development plans, including mentoring and coaching and to evaluate succession planning progress through regular reviews with the CEO. I always recommend a relatively formal process – this is something that is too important to leave to casual conversations.
How do you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
Developing and leading my HR consulting business for the past 20 years has afforded me many opportunities to develop as a leader. I often learn as much from my clients as they do from me! I enjoy working with clients across a broad range of industries, providing me with new learning daily, enhanced business acumen, and the opportunity to regularly develop my leadership skills. I have also benefited from formal leadership training throughout my career.
What advice would you give to someone aspiring to a leadership role in HR?
Create a long-term vision for your career with room for adjustments. HR is among the most important functions of any business. Learn each business and be curious throughout your career. Find mentors and sponsors who will help you identify and manage obstacles. Stay current on all aspects of HR and ever-changing legislation. Develop your leadership skills through stretch assignments and formal learning.
What trends and key topics do you see shaping the future of work and human resources?
Generative artificial intelligence will significantly impact how employees perform and how managers lead their teams. Pay transparency legislation will impact many aspects of HR including talent acquisition, compensation planning and workplace culture. Flexible work and mental health programs will continue to be valued and essential.
AI in particular will impact all businesses in ways we are only beginning to understand, but waiting and hoping is not a strategy. Great organizations understand the key trends and adapt to them, through communication with their leaders and employees.
What role does HR play in shaping organizational strategy?
Leadership teams that involve a strong, senior HR advisor in their decision-making process always outperform the ones that design strategy through purely a sales, financial, or operational lens.
Every strategic planning process ends up informing the HR needs of an organization, and every strategy map I have ever seen is essentially an HR map as well.
Strategy is one of those things that can be relatively straight-forward to create, but very difficult to deploy without the right people and management systems and processes in place. I have seen “strategic plans” that advance very little over the years and the reason is always the same – the right people were not involved in the design, the right people were not involved in the deployment, and accountability was not a key priority.
What key qualities do you look for when building an HR team?
HR professionals must:
- Consistently demonstrate leadership including: integrity and trust; change management; conflict management; risk mitigation; collaboration and teamwork.
- Know the business, including: business strategy, operating mechanisms, products and services, financials and key competitors.
- Maintain currency of knowledge
- Be agile, and chaos-tolerant
- Find ways to have some fun along the way. People want to be on a winning team and celebrate successes.
What strategies do you recommend for improving employee experience and engagement?
Engaged employees perform better and enhance business results. An employee engagement survey is helpful if all aspects are well communicated and embraced, not only by HR but by the management team too. Specific and measurable action plans which are directly tied to employee feedback must be implemented and result in tangible results.
When I work with organizations, I have always found that simple things like spending time with employees and listening to them has had a huge impact. When leaders understand that the people are the priority, incredible things can get accomplished.
How do you stay updated with the constantly changing HR laws?
Currency of legislative knowledge is paramount in HR. Partnering with a trusted labour and employment lawyer is essential. I recommend participating in webinars offered by law firms, which are often complimentary. I also recommend using the Compliance Works online knowledge platform which provides instant clarity on HR laws and regulations across Canada. Many leaders I meet do not have the resources or the time to properly process legal considerations. The “do-it-yourself” method can be very risky without the right information at hand and the appropriate level of HR knowledge and support.
What have been some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned in your career?
- Identify your higher purpose and pursue it with due investment and passion.
- Focus on values and culture.
- Surround yourself with the right support.
- Give back to your profession and to your area of greatest influence.
- Be agile and resilient, and have fun along the way.
How Compliance Works Helps HR Professionals
Strategic HR leadership requires time – time to focus on initiative, time to develop a strong culture and team environment, and time to help build leaders within the organization. Compliance Works frees up time for HR professionals to focus on strategic HR. Legal compliance is a key responsibility of HR, and it needs to be done right, but Compliance Works allows it to be done in a fraction of the time, and a fraction of the cost.
Contact us to Book a Demo or email us at info@complianceworks.ca to learn how a subscription to Compliance Works can help your organization to save time and money, and reduce risk.
