Published Articles

September 2014

  • Five Tips to an Engaged Workforce

    Employee engagement is a human resources metric that essentially tells an employer how happy its workers are.

  • Interview with an HR Hero: Antoinette Blunt, SHRP, HRPA Fellow

    By Lisa Gordon

    Human resources is a lot like nursing, according to Antoinette Blunt. After a rewarding 25-year career as a registered nurse – much of it spent at the managerial level with the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) in her hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

  • Focusing on Ethical Leadership

    By Sarah B. Hood

    Can altruism coexist with capitalism? A growing body of thought holds that organizations with a strong ethical mandate are not just a nice idea; they tend to be more productive, better at attracting and retaining desirable employees and ultimately more profitable than those without.

    Nonetheless, the value of ethical leadership can be a hard sell to senior executives negotiating a tough economy. And even when they do buy in, who defines the ethical code, especially when values clash? 

  • It’s Time for HR to Start Talking Risk

    By Laura Croucher

    Although it is an increasingly important term in modern business – from strategic planning, to project implementation, to board oversight – “risk” has not yet become common parlance for HR professionals.

  • Adopting a Successful HR Strategy During Organizational Change

    By Marie-Pierre Lalande

    Organizational change is one of the greatest challenges an HR director or team will face, and maintaining good employee morale while ensuring the retention of key team members in periods of uncertainty requires a proactive approach.

  • Employee Assistance Programs Make Good Business Sense

    By Lisa Kopochinski

    In the not-so-distant past, employers often expected their employees to leave their personal problems at the door.

  • Successful Talent Acquisition

    By David Lahey, MBA

    The lifecycle for human capital within an organization starts with talent acquisition, and only once this critical component is perfected can the following phases of talent development, growth strategy and change management successfully occur.

  • HR Analytics

    By Jason Geller

    For a century, HR has included an analytical bent, but with the rise of big data, HR is rapidly evolving into a data-driven function that offers significant new opportunities to drive business results.

  • Is Workplace Camaraderie Across Distance Possible?

    By Carole Trask 

    Aligning corporate culture can be difficult enough with one office location, but how can a company make sure multiple offices feel connected? What strategies can HR departments implement to foster a sense of community and camaraderie between workers who live across the continent from one another?

  • Accelerating Performance

    By Alyson Nyiri, CHRP

    If you’re envisioning crates of Red Bull as another means of motivating performance, then you might just be on to something. Author, journalist and director of research for the Flow Genome Project, Steven Kotler, has just released a new book on the science of what he calls ultimate human performance.

  • The Privacy Paradigm

    By Melissa Campeau

    In 2008, Colleen Colwell discovered a camera hidden in the ceiling of her private office at Cornerstone Properties Inc. in London, Ont. Her boss claimed he installed it because he suspected maintenance staff of theft. Colwell sued the company – and won, but not on the grounds you might think.

  • Accommodating Caregiving Requirements

    By Sheryl L. Johnson

    Protection against discrimination on the basis of family status is relatively new in Canada. Perhaps its relative “newness” contributes to making it one of the most difficult forms of workplace accommodation requests for employers to respond to.

  • Leadership Matters: World Cup HR Lessons

    By Phil Wilson, CHRP, SHRP

    Like many of you, I spent much of July engrossed in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. It was a fantastic few weeks of brilliant soccer and it was a pleasure to see the world’s best compete using styles of play and strategies unique to each nation.