Roche Canada, YVR and Surerus Murphy discuss talent strategies focused on supporting future-ready workforce
Canadian HR leaders across sectors are heading into 2026 with a mix of pragmatism and enthusiasm, knowing that even the best-laid strategies will need to pivot as the year unfolds.
“The one thing about HR is you have to be incredibly agile,” says Michelle Dulmadge.
“It does come down to agility and how do you pivot to ensure you’re meeting the needs of your employees in real time to the best of your ability?”
The executive VP of HR at Surerus Murphy was one of three panellists participating in a recent roundtable with Canadian HR Reporter that included Richard Beed, vice president of people & culture at YVR, and Alvin Raskina, head of people & culture at Roche Canada.
Despite the differences in their industries, the panellists described a strong convergence around a few core priorities: building fluid, skills-based career paths, integrating AI in a responsible way, elevating inclusion and belonging and doubling down on employee wellness.
The HR leaders are also bracing for volatility and emphasizing the need to keep people at the centre of change.
“The absolute guarantee is whatever we’ve said today will ultimately change because of… the environment that we’re working within at the moment,” says Beed.
Putting talent first
At pharmaceutical company Roche Canada, one priority topping the people and culture agenda is “talent fluidity.” The company has 2,000 employees across nine functions in the GTA and Montreal along with employees working in global, scientific and deeply technical roles in integrated teams, he says.
The opportunity for employees to move across roles and develop is significant, but the barrier is access and navigation rather than availability.
“Our employees have amazing opportunities for career development to grow new skills and capabilities," says Raskina, but the challenge for a global organization like Roche is having a large and complex career management system that can be hard to navigate.
As a result, Roche’s people and culture team is prioritizing talent fluidity so employees can better find and move into new roles and development paths, according to Raskina.
At Surerus Murphy, a pipeline and infrastructure energy construction organization operating in Canada and the U.S., HR strategy is shaped by the project-based nature of the work: “We require proactive planning, not reactive,” says Dulmadge. “We need to be very intentional about how we look at our workforce to account for expansion and contraction as the projects come and go.”
That includes looking at AI and job design, and building a future-ready talent pipeline, she says.
“We're looking at things like workforce planning, skill development, which is a really big key focus, and our leadership capability so that we are ensuring our workforce planning is as critical as financial planning.”
At YVR (Vancouver’s airport), Beed is also reworking programs around a “talent-first concept” to support an evolving workforce. The organization has about 1,000 direct employees along with 27,000 who work in and across the airport
Leaders there are responding to “a convergence of opportunities” in how people want to work and how the organization wants them to work in “a more agile manner” and transition from a skills point of view, he says, citing the implications of AI
“We believe that it’s critical to invest in the talent today… so… all of our programs are being redeveloped to look at that talent-first concept to ensure that we can support our staff and, ultimately, retain them.”
AI integration: thoughtful and multi-dimensional
Across the three organizations, leaders are moving quickly on AI — but stressing deliberate and ethical integration.
At YVR, HR is “being very considered in this space,” says Beed.
“We 100% believe that AI can help us make quicker, faster, better decisions,” he says.
“When we look at roles and job descriptions, we’re looking at ‘How is the work going to change? And, therefore, how can AI support that approach?’ So, it’s not AI-driven, it’s work-driven.”
The organization has a number of corporate ChatGPT licenses and is working to ensure that all staff have access to Microsoft Copilot, says Beed.
“Like any change management, we're going through that concept of why and where it can be important, train and then practice, to ensure that it's an enabler.
“What we don't want to do is that it becomes a support infrastructure where, in fact, employees can come lazy because they're just relying on Copilot to answer the questions. So, the human is critical… in deciding the process. The human is critical in ultimately deciding the outcome.”
At Surerus Murphy, AI is present in talent processes and operations, but the company sees itself as somewhat in the early stages, says Dulmadge.
“You can see AI being used in talent, attraction, the recruitment process — we have a lot of uses of AI in order to help create efficiencies in our processes,” she says.
Given its construction focus, the organization is “powered by our people,” says Dulmadge, so HR is “looking at ‘How can we integrate it to utilize it so that perhaps we're lifting some of those very specific task-level opportunities off of them and allowing the people to do the jobs they're really good at?’”
That's where skill development is going to become critical, she says, “because if we are removing some of the administration, how do we allow people to grow and advance and develop while AI does some of that lifting for them?”
Looking ahead, governance is expected to be the next major challenge: “What is the bias, the transparency, privacy? How are we ethically using AI in any people decisions?” asks Dulmadge.
“AI is coming. You can’t ignore it. It’s going to be a part of the future. I think it’s ‘How do we use it in a responsible way?’”
Roche Canada is similarly taking a cautious, reflective approach. Raskina describes the use of tools for performance management, recruitment, workforce analytics and talent predictions, but notes that HR is “also facing ethical dilemmas about how to use the tools.”
AI is reshaping the company’s core business in disrupting diagnostics and research, he says, and Roche is looking at AI at a multi-dimensional level through an initiative called “everyday AI” to “get people to really find ways to integrate AI into day-to-day tasks,” and build common language.
“Very importantly… [it’s to] build understanding around guardrails and governance” while encouraging people “to be experimental versus being fearful of AI,” says Raskina.
Flexibility and office returns
On return-to-office and flexibility going into 2026, all three leaders emphasized outcome-based approaches shaped by their operational realities.
At Surerus Murphy, the construction environment means most employees must be on-site but in looking to retain key talent and offering a “differentiated employee benefit,” the company is “intentionally” maintaining a flexible work model, according to Dulmadge.
“Part of it is a commitment to our employees, recognizing evolving workplace expectations, but also it isn’t necessarily about where you’re working, it’s how the work gets done,” she says.
“For us, it’s about measuring outcomes and not just activity.”
The challenge with a hybrid model is making sure to deliver on outcomes but also maintaining culture development, team-building and connections, says Dulmadge, so it’s about prioritizing in-office time where everyone can connect.
In the same, way, front-line workers at the Vancouver airport have largely remained on-site, says Beed, while office workers are expected in-person at least three days each week.
“We believe it’s important to be… together to solve issues. And sometimes the physicality of that is important,” he says. “At the same time… it’s all outcome-driven.”
YVR also recognizes that flexibility comes in differing forms, such as varied start times or allowing for medical appointments, says Beed.
“We try and adjust that flexibility to suit the team and the employee and not [be] too focused on the return-of-the-office conversation.”
For Roche Canada, flexible work is seen as a must-have and not a good-to-have, especially when employees are spread out in different time zones, says Alvina.
In that environment, an employee might take a call at 7am, then drive to the office for a few hours and then go to pick up their kids from daycare later in the day, he says: “It’s all an important part of our value proposition as a global site.”
But the company is also trying to be supportive in encouraging office returns, says Alvina, whether that’s through carpooling, toll highway subsidies or EV charging stations.
“We’re trying to create a lot of excitement around coming back to the campus but also ensuring that we set clear expectations… because culture and community is a hallmark of our culture and that will not change as an expectation.”
Adapting to pay transparency push
With pay transparency legislation emerging in multiple provinces, the three HR leaders described a largely proactive stance.
When new rules were introduced in Ontario, the change “did not feel like something new,” says Raskina, because the organization has been committed for many years to fair compensation practices that promote wage equity.
Rather than limiting its response to a single jurisdiction, the company “applied the same guardrails and the legislation to all roles and offices across Roche Canada in multiple provinces,” he says, as “a way of showing our commitment to transparency and to both our employees, but also to potential candidates.”
At YVR, pay transparency has also been in place for some time, according to Beed.
“We’ve been transparent with our ranges internally for the last six years and externally for probably the last couple of years,” he says. “It just drives the right conversation… why wouldn’t you share the range on a posting?”
Despite concerns in some organizations about disclosing confidential information, Beed says he hasn’t found a negativity to doing that.
“It drives the right conversation, and it drives the pay conversation upfront. So, therefore, it’s not an issue later on in the cycle. Transparency is everything and I think it’s a good hallmark of a strong culture.”
Dulmadge agrees that while some employers are concerned about market confidentiality, greater transparency allows organizations “to be more consistent with their market analysis in terms of what their competitors are doing” — plus, candidates “know where you're at early on in the process, so that has to help for sure.”
Dulmadge expects pay transparency to spread further across Canada and sees it as an opportunity for employers “to be more open and transparent about how they structure compensation, making sure employees have access to clear, understandable information and that you’re fair and consistent across your organization and building that trust.”
Employee experience during economic uncertainty
As to economic uncertainty brought on by U.S. tariffs and other global pressures, the HR leaders described strengthening employee experience as a priority in another “tough year.”
At Surerus Murphy, HR relies heavily on listening mechanisms, such as employee engagement surveys, to highlight any challenges or areas in need of improvement, according to Dulmadge.
“Their inputs help determine where we direct our energy and our finances to help support them. We want everyone to have a voice in shaping that,” she says, citing a multi-generational workforce and culture differences.
“That requires very intentional initiatives.”
At Roche Canada, the external context in 2025 included pressures on the company's inclusion and belonging strategy and approach, says Raskina.
“We had to really think deeply last year on how to maintain employee engagement and experience through a very tumultuous year and we decided to double down our investments on inclusion and belonging.”
Having a sense of community is also important when there’s a “tough” external environment, he says, so Roche Canada has worked on building community and the employee experience, such as employee benefits.
“People are also asking, during this very difficult time around economic pressures etc., ‘What's in it for me?
Why should I stay with this company?’ So, of course, we're very purpose-driven. People enjoy working with a company that's innovative and scientific-driven but we need to be very pragmatic about talent management, career development, things like promotions, skills and capabilities.”
Beed agrees on the tumultuous times, citing a society “being stretched last year and the risk is it gets stretched again.”
For YVR, that means going back to the basic in terms “connecting with people from a human point of view,” he says, citing the importance of leadership connections with employees in “understanding who they are, understanding what’s working, what’s not working. And then how can we adjust in service of the business and in service of them?”
Agility, wellness and retaining talent
Looking ahead, the HR leaders expect plans to evolve quickly and see agility and wellness as central themes.
Given the external environment today, a focus on wellness is even more important to support employees, says Beed, “recognizing that a lot of the time, the outside world comes into work so how do we support them in different ways?”
Dulmadge also notes “a heavy focus” in Canada on employee wellness, mental health and psychological safety. She describes a growing emphasis on supporting the whole employee, with things outside of their control, “and how do you go beyond just an employee family assistance program to help support them and educate your leaders in how to respond to those situations?”
Importantly, Raskina also points out that HR and people and culture professionals themselves need to safeguard their own wellbeing.
“I have decided to pay attention to my own wellness this year. I can only offer how much I have," he says, which is why he's "intentionally" replenishing his cup to be an effective leader.
