10 HR TRENDS THAT ARE CHANGING

THE FACE OF BUSINESS

A Keynote Presentation Delivered

By

Dave MacKay
Chief Operating Officer
Ceridian Canada Ltd.
 INTRODUCTION

The business world is changing at bullet-train speed – technology, the global

economy, increasing regulatory scrutiny, the looming talent crisis, the
recognition that mental illness is dramatically affecting the workplace. All of
these are having a huge impact on the HR profession.

The c-level is finally starting to realize how important your role is. They want
you to get out of the day-to-day administrivia - while still making sure
everything is done perfectly, mind you. They want you to measurably
contribute to the top-line and the bottom line, and help mitigate risk.

There are ten major trends that you need to be aware of as your role evolves
to meet these challenges. Let’s start with the most obvious.

#1. The Changing Role of the HR Professional

We need to put the “human” back into human resources. Employees are
humans, not commodities, and HR departments have to start seeing them
differently. With the current push towards strategies that engage
employees, attract top talent, and contribute to the bottom line, this change
is imperative.

We need to stop whining about being at the table. These days, almost every
book or article you read about the role of HR talks about HR needing to be ‘at
the table’ or to be more strategic.

It’s my observation that in almost every respected company, HR is at the

table. So for most HR leaders, the question is not ‘how do you get to the
table’. It is ‘now that you are at the table, how do you best contribute to the
success of our organization?’. ‘How can you be taken seriously at the table?’

Clearly the first step is to make sure that the organization’s HR practices are
effective. The practices should create competitive advantage by building
strong organizations, strong leaders and managers, and strong teams and
employees. But few HR departments do this in a measurable way. CEOs are
demanding that HR stop giving lip service to strategic performance and find
the metrics that prove they are contributing to the growth and performance
of the company through effective people management.

Increasingly, more is being expected of HR practitioners than just being good

at HR. They need to broaden their skill-sets so that they can sit at the

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executive table and understand as much about the business as the other
leaders.

A Finance person who only understands Finance and a financial perspective,

a Sales person who only understands Sales and the Sales perspective – these
individuals will have limited career prospects and very little chance of
succeeding in a leadership role. The same holds true for HR people. That this
is the case is good news for HR. It means that HR and HR people are too
important to be set aside in the corner. It means that HR skills and
knowledge need to be brought to bear on the strategic management of the
organization.

Organizations consist of people. People are real. You can see them, touch
them, hear them. And people have capabilities. And those people with their
capabilities will determine whether the organization thrives or dies. As Jim
Burns, Ceridian’s president, likes to say “people are the only company asset
that increases in value.”

If HR is to be perceived as an enabler of business strategies, they need to be

seen to be making measurable contributions to the bottom line through
expense reduction, or revenue generation, talent management and risk
mitigation. HR people need to be a lot more creative in the way they do
things. The “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work anymore. HR
departments of today need to be the talent departments of tomorrow.

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 #2 - The War for Talent

The most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent:
smart, sophisticated business-people who are technologically literate,
globally astute, and operationally agile. Talent really does matter – for
example “top software developers are more productive than an average
software developer not by 10x, 100x, or even 1000x … but 10,000x” (Nathan
Myhrvold, former Chief Scientist, Microsoft)

According to The Conference Board of Canada, “the war for talent is fierce,
and is likely to become more so with the massive number of employees
retiring in the next five years. Top organizations are moving beyond the
vanilla “employer of choice” concept to a more rigorous strategy of attracting
and retaining the right employees through branding.”

Here are the facts:

The Conference Board of Canada predicts a shortage of 1 million

skilled workers by 2020.
By 2006, for every two workers leaving the workforce, only one will
enter.
2.6 new jobs are expected to be created for every person entering the
workforce.
Younger workers are now bosses of the older workers.

The key to attracting and retaining scarce skills is to be, and be seen to be, a
first-tier employer that can meet the needs of high potential/high
performance employees.

Traditional workforce planning is being replaced by talent strategies and skills

gap analysis. Once they determine the gap, it becomes clear what talent
they need to hire, to layoff, or to develop or transfer internally.

Now is not the time to sit in the ivory towers thinking you know who your
major contributors are. You need to dig deep into the organization to
identify the top talent, the high performers in every aspect of your business.
In all likelihood it’s not the people who are the most politically astute or the
most popular.

Traditional marketing practices are going to have to be applied to

recruitment. Employer branding and unique selling points with a strong
differentiator are imperative. Look at strategies such as changing your
employer brand from the groan-inducing “we’re a big successful company” to
a company delivering on the promise of continuous learning, work-life
balance, personally-fulfilling roles and innovative reward and recognition
programs.

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Some recruitment effectiveness strategies include:

Employment branding
Ongoing recruiting, not stop-start
Nurturing relationships with strong candidates, even though no jobs
for them are currently available
Referrals – this is particularly effective with Generation “Y”ers. They
do everything through leveraging their networks. They are always
connected – using mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging,
blogging or email.
Realistic job previews
Managers trained in interviewing (so that they will create a favourable
impression of company)
Selection criteria – Can they do the job? (Competencies) Will they do
the job? (Motivation) Can we offer them what they are looking for?
(Cultural Fit)
Rapid response and follow up – Hard to hire skills are in high demand
Debrief candidates as quality control monitoring for recruitment
process
Most candidates will not get jobs – but they might be current or future
customers, hence the importance of handling the rejection process
effectively.
Note: Ceridian surveys rejected candidates to get their feedback on
the entire recruiting and selection process. Even though we have not
hired those candidates, their feedback about the process and their
treatment during it is very favourable.

Recruitment, while strategic, involves a lot of administration. Now is the

time to outsource some of those tasks to organizations that have the people,
technology and process so that you can decrease time-to-hire, increase the
quality of your candidates and reduce your expenses…which leads into our
next point.

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 #3. Outsourcing of HR Functions: The Virtual HR
Organization

If you are an HR professional I doubt that you got hired for your ability to
process employee information changes, sort resumes or process the payroll
every other week.

CEOs’ expectations of their senior HR people have changed significantly. The

HR executive is expected to deliver value in areas like organizational
effectiveness, talent management, change management, leadership
development, succession planning, merger integration, strategic
compensation. If you read job postings for senior HR positions, these items
are listed time and time again as the key expectations for HR leaders.

The primary benefit of HR outsourcing is that it will allow you to keep your
job because it will enable you to tackle these more strategic issues!

HR professionals need to embrace outsourcing. They can’t be afraid of it.

Outsourcing of HR transactions is a proven way to reduce costs and get
access to a higher level of service.

There are five good reasons why companies outsource their HR services:

1. Cost reduction – economies of scale, automation and process

improvement, especially for transactional work
2. Focus – allows HR to allocate time to strategic, not transactional,
concerns
3. Regulatory compliance – minimize or transfer legal risk to the
outsourcer and obtain specialized regulatory expertise.
4. Access to best technologies – mutual benefits to ensure technology
is continually upgraded
5. No available internal resources – provides an HR capability for a
company that does not have one, cannot staff it, or cannot afford a
full-time resource, but has reached a size and complexity where
expertise is required

However, all that being said, the administrative, transactional aspects of HR

are key. What you need to do is identify them now – whether it’s your
payroll, your Employee Assistance Programs, your recruitment or your HRIS
systems. Then you need to go out into the marketplace and find outsourcing
partners who can help take them off your hands. It’s the only way you are
going to become more strategic.

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 #4. The Healthy Workplace: Wellness, Work-Life
Balance

There is no competitive advantage in exhausted, sick and stressed-out

workers.

There is growing recognition that there is a definite link between the work
environment and the health and well-being of its employees. Further,
employers are now recognizing the connection between employee health and
the bottom line.

Consider…

Specific types of work stress/strain are related to 2x the incidence of

mental illness and substance abuse, 5x the rate of certain cancers, 2x
the rate of infection/injuries and 3x the incidence of heart and back
problems – (Shain, 2000)

Over half of Canadians working for large employers feel stressed, one
in three feels burned out or depressed, many are thinking of quitting
their jobs, and absenteeism is costing employers billions each year.

Let me talk about a few of the findings of a major government-sponsored

study of work-life conflict in Canada as well as published information from
other credible research sources that point to the importance of a healthy
workplace:

Canadian companies are experiencing the impact of compromised

mental health in an unprecedented manner: 1 in 5 Canadians will
experience a mental illness in their lifetime. Harvard School of Public
Health predicts that by 2020 depression will rank second to heart
disease as the leading cause of disability worldwide, and the cost of
mental illness in lost productivity in Canada alone is estimated to be
over 30 billion dollars annually. (Global Business and Economic
Roundtable).

Canadians report working at a high speed "all the time," in greater

numbers than workers in 17 other countries, according to a new report
released by the Canadian Policy Research Networks. Working
continually at a high rate is twice as likely to result in health problems,
including stress. In turn, this leads to more absenteeism and disability
claims – both very costly to organizations.

So, where does this leave Canadian workers?

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 Long working hours and heavy job demands were the main sources of
work stress identified in a Statistics Canada survey. Poor interpersonal
relationships and the risk of accident or injury were also cited as
sources of stress on the job.

The term ‘presenteeism’ has become part of the corporate lexicon,

describing employees who are able to come into work but are inhibited
from optimal levels of productivity by ongoing health issues and lack of
desire to engage. This has emerged as a new and growing concern.

Rising mental health claims, primarily related to stress, depression and

anxiety disorders, were the top health and productivity-related
concern for organizations in 2005.

Ceridian’s Employee Assistance Practice has seen a significant shift in the

role of EAP services – from a remedial approach of supporting people who
have problems to a proactive and preventative approach focused on wellness
and wellbeing.

When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves as entire human beings – not
just people with jobs and careers, but people with families, friends, beliefs,
interests, passions, responsibilities, worries and futures. We need to look at
our people through the same mirror – not just as employees or colleagues
but as total human beings. If companies ignore the full humanity of their
people, or if people find it necessary to suppress their human-ness in the
workplace, the tensions created eat away at the vitality of the organization.

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 #5. The Diverse Workforce

What does diversity mean? Canada has a reputation for embracing people of
varied ethnicity, religion, culture, language and beliefs. But our multicultural
mix does not make us immune to the challenges of managing a diverse
workforce.

Diversity goes far beyond the traditional employment equity criteria of

gender, visible minority or aboriginal status, or disability. Diversity is not
employment equity. Diversity is a business strategy.

The reality is that today’s workforce and the workforce of the future will be
made up of a diverse, complex collection of employees, all with different
needs and experiences. And this is good, because an organization with a
broad variety of people with a diverse range of perspectives is better able to
do business with a variety of people, to solve a variety of problems and to
make a variety of decisions.

As companies become more global and are using more offshore services, it
creates the need for diversity strategies that go beyond our own national
borders. It will take a whole new level of education, tolerance and a
willingness to embrace change. HR will need to provide cross-cultural support
and training for virtual global teams.

But diversity is not just about race, colour and creed. Diversity is about
managing the demographic and psychographic characteristics of an evolving
workforce.

According to Reed-Lewis in The Learning Café 2005, there are four

generations in the workforce.

Silent or traditionalists 60 – 78 years old, 10% of workforce -

characterized by tradition, loyalty, discipline, commitment, significant
knowledge legacy
Boomers 41 – 59 years old, 46% of workforce - characterized by hard
work (badge of honor), relationship oriented, change agents,
competitive
Generation X 28 – 40 years old, 29% of workforce - independent
(latch-key kids), entrepreneurial, flexible, demand work-life balance
Generation Y or Millennials 27 and younger, 19% of workforce- This
generation was born with computers. They are comfortable in a
multicultural environment and full of confidence

Let’s look at two groups:

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The Generation Y or Millenials, now entering the workforce. They’ve grown up
in a world where the use of computers and the Internet is a basic bodily
function.

They’ve grown up in an inclusive world, with friends and peers from a myriad
of places and cultures. They’re the human embodiment of globalization.

They’ve grown up in a world where, through the Internet or other media,

they have been exposed to a vast amount of information, far beyond the
reach of previous generations.

They’ve grown up in a world in which traditional institutions are weaker and

often objects of skepticism, and where there is no prevailing set of values,
but rather conflicting views and values on the most fundamental issues.

Organizations that will attract and retain high potential younger employees
will have the following characteristics:

They will be relatively non-hierarchical and inclusive

They will provide for a balance between work and life outside work
Their behaviour will be consistent with the values of their people
They will provide an environment with both autonomy and support
They will provide opportunities for learning and significant
contributions at an early stage in people’s careers

Another group, the Traditionalists, also deserves more attention. By 2011,

almost one-fifth of baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – will
be at least 61 years of age and pushing ever closer to retirement.

Much of the discussion about mandatory retirement centres around how to

deal with older employees whose performance is slipping and who used to be
carried until age 65

The challenge for managers and HR is to create an environment in which

older, longer-service employees can continue to be fully engaged in the work
of the organization

Continue to give them challenging work

Continue to give them learning opportunities
Give them a chance to build a legacy – mentoring, developing
others, knowledge transfer
Provide more flexible work environments – part-time work, phased
retirements, retiree on call programs, contract and project-based
employment

Because this group is often overlooked in the labour market, there are
excellent opportunities to get ‘the best of the best’ from them

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As a business strategy, the value of diversity is to bring to a company the
broadest possible spectrum of knowledge, experience and perspective. A
diverse workforce consists not just of people with a broad range of
demographic traits, but, more importantly, a broad range of educational
backgrounds, professional and other interests, work experiences, life
experiences and cultural perspectives. Ultimately the success of a diversity
strategy is measured in how well we capitalize on the skills, intelligence,
culture and experience of every employee.

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 #6. The Impact of Technology

Resistance is futile!

Eventually technology is going to eliminate most HR jobs as they exist today.

Which is another reason for HR professionals to become more strategic.
Technology, with all its self-service and anytime-anywhere communications
capabilities, coupled with outsourcing, guarantees there will be fewer HR
people in corporations.

Technology continues to impact us profoundly, both in our personal lives and

in the workplace, and it will continue to evolve. While most of its impact has
been overwhelmingly progressive and positive, there are some downsides to
its effect on our personal and work lives. Cell phones, email, messaging and
Blackberry-type devices have blurred the lines between worklife and
homelife.

Now we seem to be always on call, always reachable – in our cars, in the air,
at home – virtually everywhere.

To today’s young professionals computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc. have

become appendages, keeping them constantly connected.

Weblogs or blogs are favoured by this group so companies cannot afford to

ignore their use or existence. A web-tracking site called Technorati reports
tracking over 7.8 million weblogs and 937 million links in March 2005. That’s
double the number of weblogs tracked in October last year. In fact, the
blogosphere is doubling in size about once every five months. Employers
need to develop a strategy around blogging. Negative blogs will be able to
destroy a company’s reputation.

We’ve entered the century of the employee and technology has to respond.
CRM or customer relationship management is giving way to ERM – employee
relationship management. Employee self-service has become as important
as customer self-service. Customized and personalized content will be king.

Employees can self-manage activities previously handled by human resource

professionals. This is a cost-saving and time-saving benefit to organizations
and it frees the HR practitioners to focus on more strategic issues. But more
importantly, it is a fundamental expectation of Gen Y’s and Gen X’s.

Technology that protects the privacy and security of HR data is more

important than ever…but more on that later.

It’s important that we continue to embrace technology and keep our eyes on
new advances that may bring even better communication and collaboration
tools. Technology helps people connect within the work environment

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regardless of time and place. It fuels the potential for increased productivity
and creativity. Today’s virtual workers and flexible work arrangements are
made possible through communication technology. Organizations can be
physically local, yet virtually global, thanks to technology.

Organizations are looking for cross-border and multinational HR solutions

that provide a single HR database that gives them access to real-time
information on their workforce – information that will aid in their strategic
decision-making.

They are looking for solutions that provide global compliance capabilities that
can be used at the local level.

They are looking for an HR solutions framework that will enable the
management of employees from hire-to-retire.

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 #7. Talent Management: Leadership Development

Leadership skills are not built through courses. Management is a function of

what you do; leadership is a function of what you are. When planning
leadership development initiatives, the tendency is to first look for courses.

One of the scarcest capabilities, now and for the foreseeable future, is
leadership. As organizations, their customers, their employees and their
environment become more global, more complex, more competitive and
more subject to rapid and radical change, the competency requirements for
successful leadership are increasing exponentially.

Most organizations would acknowledge that they currently have a shortage of

leadership talent or bench strength; how will they fare when the bar keeps
on being raised?

Leadership is less definable and therefore leadership capabilities are more

difficult to build or transmit. Indeed, one could debate whether leadership
skills can be taught at all, or whether they are innate.

So how do we develop leaders?

Take a few seconds and reflect on what were the three most important
contributors to your own development – as a professional and as a leader.

If you are like most people, none of those three contributors was a course.
One of our HR consultants at Ceridian has conducted this exercise with
numerous groups of managers and executives across Canada, the U.S. and
Asia. About one in ten people mention a course – usually a very extensive
and expensive 1-3 month executive development program. But over 90% of
the items mentioned pertain to learning that occurred in the course of their
work. Among the most common are being given responsibility for a major
project – sometimes being thrown off the deep end, gaining experience in
groups outside one’s functional expertise, working on multi-disciplinary
teams, working with customers, suppliers or strategic partners, working for a
really good boss or a really bad one.

An emerging trend in North American executive development is ‘Action

Learning’ – which has been well established in Europe for many years. It
involves assigning groups of executives, with diverse backgrounds, to work
on issues of strategic interest to their organization – with a facilitator to keep
them on track and provide feedback. The advantage of Action Learning is
that it engages leaders and potential leaders in real work and a real work
environment rather than a simulation.

Part of fostering leadership is encouraging and rewarding risk-taking. It is

also giving these leaders, wherever they are in the organization, the

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opportunity to contribute to the development of the corporate strategies and
plans. Leadership comes with empowerment – employees can’t be leaders
unless they have the power to take risks, make decisions, innovate and lead.

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 #8. Talent management: Succession Planning

We now live in a world where the jobs, the job requirements and the
organizations are constantly changing – acquisitions, divestitures, down-
sizing, mergers, technology changes and on and on.

Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from
now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today.

The challenge for HR professionals is to figure out how to look deep into the
organization to find talented, visionary people with a passion for the future.
They need to anticipate the skills they will need in the future.

There are more and more younger people going into leadership or
management positions. What kind of mentoring and coaching do they need?

Traditional succession planning identified who could fill what box in the
organization chart in how many years time, and what skills they would need
to get there.

Even if we have remained, or will remain, in the same box in the org chart,
the chances are very high that the skill requirements of our position will
change significantly.

Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from
now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today. In this context of
unceasing change, succession planning needs to be re-engineered, to focus
not on particular positions, which may or may not exist in the future but
rather on the competencies that the organization will need in the future,
regardless of how the individual positions or the organization chart changes.
Succession planning evolves into something broader – talent management.

Instead of identifying which individuals can move into which position when,
talent management identifies a pool of high potential employees who will
provide the basis for the organization’s success regardless of the changing
organizational structure. Investments must be made in these high potential
employees to help them develop the competencies that will take them and
the organization to success.

Lots of companies have succession plans but very few have done the career
planning and skills gap analysis needed to acquire the best talent. I would
hazard a guess that most of the companies in this room don’t have such a
plan.

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 #9. Corporate Values and Culture

We are entering the third wave of public mistrust about corporations,

according to Market and social trend analyst Daniel Yankelovich. The first, set
off by the Great Depression, continued until World War II; the second,
caused in part by economic stagflation and the Vietnam War, lasted from the
early 1960s until the early 1980s. In each of these periods companies
tended to be reactive, blaming a few bad apples, dismissing values as “not
central to what we do,” or ignoring opportunities to improve because “we
don’t have to make major changes.”

The current wave of disapproval began in 2001 with the bursting of the dot-
com bubble, the ensuing bear market and the financial scandals involving
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others. But this time, corporate response is
different. Companies are going well beyond the PR exercise of displaying
values statements. They’re engaging in values-driven management
improvement efforts, training staff in values and appraising executives and
staff on their adherence to values.

What is clearly evident these days is that more and more firms are unwilling
to tolerate unethical behaviour from their executives. They are taking drastic
action as in the case of the Boeing CEO who was ousted because of unethical
activities.

Ethical behaviour should be a core component of company culture. Ethics-

related language in formal statements not only sets corporate expectations
for employee behaviour, it also serves as a shield for companies in an
increasingly complex and regulatory environment.

But what is culture? What drives it? How do values affect corporate
performance?

Culture is not a concierge serving up free fresh fruit in the cafeteria, nor is it
a values chart hanging on the wall purporting commitment to integrity,
respect, honesty and customer satisfaction. Enron had a brilliantly-crafted
set of corporate values. Obviously it was just there for decoration. .

Organizational culture is the shared assumptions, beliefs and norms of

behaviour of a group. It has a powerful influence on the way in which people
behave.

An effective corporate culture is not about being a nice place to work. It is

about engaging employees at a fundamental level and translating that
engagement to performance that meets the organization’s objectives.
Increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of
corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical

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behaviour, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their
companies’ agendas.

Business leaders are now recognizing that an effective corporate culture is

essential to long-term success. They are taking steps to align corporate
culture to business strategy. Many organizations are now making their
values explicit and that’s a significant change from corporate practices 10
years ago.

Leaders and top management must be responsible for building strong, high-
performance cultures. They are the ones who construct the social reality,
and shape the values of the organization.

Edgar Schein said in 1992, “Organizational cultures are created by leaders,

and one of the most decisive functions of leadership may well be the
creation, the management, and if and when that may become necessary, the
destruction of culture.” This has never been more true.

Consider the impact on corporate culture as more and more companies

become global. How do you integrate culture when you’ve been acquired or
you’ve merged with another company. And what about the expectations of a
younger workforce – the people who ask “what’s in it for me?” Organizations
need to demonstrate that they have the flexibility to adapt to these changes
while still maintaining a strong culture.

A recent study on the factors that drive performance found that corporate
environments where culture is flexible, adaptable to change and ongoing
improvements will increase performance by 22.9%

So what does an effective corporate culture offer?

Branding: the alignment of the vision of the employee with the vision
of the company. In effect, it makes a promise about the values of the
organization and delivers on it.
Engagement: The congruency between employees’ needs and those of
the employer. Culture is a key element in achieving this match.

Culture will translate into employer branding. Employers have to deliver on

their promises – they have to live up to the brand. They have to walk the
talk. Remember that because of technology, i.e., all those blogs, your
employer brand can be damaged or praised easily.

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 #10. Impact of Legal and Compliance Issues

Today’s legislative and regulatory requirements surrounding data privacy,

security, etc., are a bureaucratic nightmare that Kafka would have been
proud of.

Highly publicized instances of poor corporate governance, combined with

growing consumer concerns about security and privacy, have led us to an era
of interventionist and regulatory government involvement in many facets of
our business. Regulations or laws that we have to worry about include:

Affecting financial systems: Money laundering and support of

terrorism (FINTRAC), Sarbanes-Oxley and its upcoming
Canadian equivalent and others on a sector by sector basis
National security: Anti-Terrorism Act, Public Safety Act,
PATRIOT Act (for those of you that deal with or have a corporate
relationship with US based entities)
Privacy: PIPEDA (Federal private sector), Privacy Act (Federal
public sector), public sector in all provinces, private sector in
three, and health information privacy in four provinces

Privacy laws are in the process of fundamentally changing the way in which
the HR department interacts with employees. This may include but is not
limited to:

the creation of employee privacy policies

changing and more stringent rules on HR data
'least privilege' access rules to HR data - restrictions on access
to HR data
restrictions on employee references
restrictions on background checks
changing and more stringent records management practices
implementation of data retention and data destruction policies
employee access to their own data

If you have tried to get specific answers to these or similar questions such as
‘how much security is enough’ or ‘what is the best practice for protecting HR
data?’ from your auditors, then you probably have the same scar tissue on
your forehead as I do. On a case by case basis, the intent of each of the
regulations is grounded in a desire to make sure that we do the right thing.

What's the solution?

Embrace the opportunity. If you take these issues on one by one and
respond, you will be stuck in response mode until the receivers knock on
your door. The silver lining to this regulatory cloud is that by taking positive
control of your assets, data as well as financial, you end up in better control

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of your business or your department. If you do it yourself, you can partner
with your compliance department and your IT group and explicitly define
your objectives and requirements. If you outsource, you can do the same
thing through the service level agreement that you have with your
outsourcer.

So what does all this mean to the HR professional? It means a lot of

responsibility around risk management. It means we need to be looking for
different skill-sets in HR to understand the new realities of privacy and
security of employee data. And it means developing closer relationships with
IT and Finance to understand the new rules.

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 Conclusion

HR professionals need to step up to these challenges. If you don’t, your C-

level executives will make other functional areas responsible. As a COO, my
advice to you is:

Think like marketers. Establish an employer brand. Communicate the

employer brand. Sell the employer brand.

Don’t just preach the benefits of continuous learning to your employees. Be

continuous learners. Be at the forefront of the latest trends and
requirements and react to them quickly.

Acquire a broader range of business skills, in particular, think like a CFO.

What are the metrics that you can develop that prove to the business the
impact you are making.

Get rid of the stigma around mental health issues. There is no workplace
issue more important to your organization, to society, and to Canada’s
productivity. Anxiety and depression in the workplace must be dealt with or
it’s going to cost your organization in lost productivity and a lot of money.

Do real talent management – know who your Stars are, nurture them,
develop them, figure out what support they need to thrive in your
organization – because if you don’t another company will.

Start working on an HR outsourcing strategy today. Otherwise, you won’t

have time to do the rest.

So…if there is a rallying cry for HR professionals, what is it? We need to be

at the table? We need to be more strategic?

No the rallying cry is – we need to change the world of work. To do so we

need to change HR departments into Talent departments, and HR
professionals must become the C-levels of tomorrow.

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