'I lose sleep over this. This keeps me up at night – making sure we strike the balance,': Canadian tech leader on training efficient and ethical tech practices
A recent report revealed what Canadian HR professionals view as their greatest people risks, and rising health and benefits costs top the list.
Meeting the rising demand for tech talent and a lack of sufficient HR tech tools were second and third, respectfully, revealing that AI implementation is a pressing concern for HR leaders in Canada – among their workforces and in their own roles.
Canadian HR Reporter spoke with two people leaders in the technology space in Canada, to find out how they are dealing with these challenges.
Increased costs in health and benefits require proactive planning
"We need to stay on top of all benefits trends, and have regular conversations with our benefits brokers to make sure that what we're offering to employees is market industry standard," says Judy Liang, Director, People Operations at AI developer Ada CX in Toronto.
As with many things, the pandemic has had an imprint on how Canadians are choosing to spend their lives, and by extension, their spends on employer benefits.
"Having a really strong HR team, strong mandate and clarity on our programs and benefits is really important,” she adds.
“During the pandemic, I think people started to really think about, what are the aspects of their life that they want to spend more time in? We're seeing increased usages in our health spending accounts, lifestyle spending accounts, and people are really just thinking more about that, and spending more time on their overall holistic health, versus just work.”
Succession planning important with increases of vacation and long-term leave
Liang goes on to explain that HR employers need to be planning more proactively for increased use of benefits such as long-term leave and mental health and wellness days. “A lot of that has to do with better resourcing,” she says, such as having enough staff trained to seamlessly “step-up and step-in” to roles when employees take advantage of vacations and flex days, instead of spending on training external staff.
“I think what's happened in the last couple years is, because of all the change management, sometimes people get put into specific roles without the right training, and it stresses them out, it really causes some damage to their mental well-being,” Liang says.
“So we need to find ways to just have more sustainable training, long-term planning, so that people are ready to take on these roles without all the additional stresses that can lead to some of the benefits costs.”
Meeting increasing demand for tech talent
The report, “People Risk 2024” revealed a high concern about tech issues for Canadian HR and risk professionals. Interestingly, while “labour shortages” ranged in the top spots for risk in most countries surveyed, in Canada it was far down the list, at ninth out of ten.
However, when it came to tech talent, the UK and Canada were the only two nations for whom “tech skills shortages” were in the top two, followed by “suboptimal HR technology”. Amanda Stephens, VP of Operations at Ottawa-based digital marketing firm seoplus+, says the problem of how to keep her staff up-to-date with always-evolving technology keeps her up at night.
“This is a huge risk for us,” Stephens says.
“Making sure we're training and upskilling people sufficiently on the new technologies, on automation, on the AI revolution in our industry, it has a significant, direct effect on whether people feel that they could replace us with AI and say, ‘I don't need to go to a human vendor. I can just do it myself.’”
Balancing tech advancements with protecting data
Finding a balance between leveraging tools for the benefit of clients while being mindful of protecting their data is another line that Stephens walks daily, along with how to communicate with clients about how AI is being utilized and ensuring employees are practicing ethical and efficient processes.
“I lose sleep over this. This keeps me up at night – making sure we strike the balance and protect our clients,” says Stephens.
“That they're coming to us for a service and to solve a problem, and that we do that in a way that maybe is more efficient, so we have more profitability, and also help our team grow as professionals. This is a very delicate balance. … I think there's something here about sort of over-reliance on AI-generated content without proper verification.”
Training and stability
The key phrase for Stephens is “stability”, as she says eschewing “starve and choke” hiring methods in favor of slow hiring is a way to reduce employee stress and increase loyalty through instilling a sense of security.
“We have retainers with clients over long periods of time, so we want to make sure that we have consistent staffing,” she says. “That means we want to make sure our team is happy, that they have what they need, that they're not necessarily seeking new jobs elsewhere, that we don't have high risk of losing our people.”
Going back to the idea of succession planning and training, Liang says this is another way to narrow skills gaps and ensure employees have movement internally, increasing stability and well-being in the process.
"A lot of companies are moving towards operational efficiency, and what that means is, employees who are generalists, or maybe are trained and skilled in multiple areas, will tend to be very successful,” she says.
"The more you know, the more you learn, the more you're able to transition to different roles that are available, whether within the company or somewhere else. If we encourage employees to kind of learn more, pick up different skills and training, hopefully that will translate to them having greater results within the business."
