Long-tenured employees, deliberate DEI and career development among priorities at 407 ETR, says VP of HR
For Lydia Iacovou, 407 ETR is much more than a toll highway in Ontario.
“We’re 108 kilometres of highway, but our greatest asset is our people,” says the vice president of human resources and labour relations. “This is who makes our organization who we are.”
It’s a conviction shaped over Iacovou’s nearly 23 years at the company — a tenure that almost didn’t happen. What began as a short-term HR assistant role meant to give her time to “regroup and figure out where I was going to go next” turned into a career spanning HR manager, HR director and now VP of HR.
Embracing people side of the business
Iacovou’s first role out of university in 1999 was at IBM Global Services where she realized, doing project control, that she wanted to work with and interact with people on a daily basis, she says.
That realization led Iacovou to move into HR at IBM’s software lab.
“I really had a passion for that. I loved the people side of the business; I loved being able to make an impact.”
Iacovou went on to join Best Buy in 2002 when it was new to Canada and had just purchased Future Shop. With only four stores and ambitious plans to grow, the company was an exciting place to be.
“We were in the process of building teams so that we can operationalize and expand. And I found myself again ending up on the people side of the business, loved it, working crazy hours and realized it's a me problem — I'm a workaholic and I love what I do, but I needed to slow things down.”
To that end, she accepted the HR position at 407 ETR, and has been there ever since, aside from a brief stint at Loblaws.
A workplace where people ‘grow up together’
The company has more than 500 employees, and over a quarter of them have been with the company for 15 years or more. Iacovou says the numbers reflect a deeper reality: “We almost have grown up together.”
“We’ve seen people that we started working together get married, have children, get divorced, become grandparents. We’ve gone through life’s milestones together and we’ve been there through these changes.”
Alongside formal initiatives, a lot of the culture-building at 407 ETR happens in informal, real-time conversations. A recent milestone-anniversary lunch offered a clear example, as Iacovou realized she wanted to hear from employees more often than at five-year milestones.
The answer was simple: organize casual lunches. Each person at that table was asked to identify five colleagues, and she recently went for lunch with a group of six employees.
“We talked about work. We talked about interests outside of work,” she says. “They hadn’t stopped thanking me for this lunch. And I haven’t stopped talking about this lunch.”
The value was in the insights they shared on the things that the company does well and areas where it could do better. Iacovou made it clear she didn’t have “a magic wand” to fix everything, but there were specific actions she could take.
The initiative is indicative of Iacovou’s enthusiasm for her place of work: “I promise you, I don't have a 407 tattoo… [but] I drank the Kool-Aid. It is a fantastic organization and our people are what make it.”
Understanding employee behaviour
Iacovou’s interest in people harkens back to her original degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Sociology. Today, she says her criminology background helped with investigations earlier in her career — but, more broadly, it underpins her understanding of human behaviour.
“Our ability to understand how people work, what drives people in good and bad is what I think makes me successful in my role. It really is about the people.”
She is quick to add that she is “not dealing with criminals,” but rather with a wide range of individuals.
“Everybody is so unique and everybody brings something different. And so, being able to interact and bring it all together and building a community is one of the things that we’ve managed to do quite well at 407. It’s almost the secret sauce, I think, to our success with our people.”
Deliberate DEI journey at 407 ETR
Another pillar of the culture is a structured, long-term diversity, equity and inclusion journey. Before 2020, 407 ETR did not have a formal DE&I strategy, she says. That changed when the company decided to design one that fit its own context.
“We didn’t jump onto the bandwagon to make it like what everybody was doing. We wanted it to be unique and we wanted it to be appropriate to 407 and to our employees.”
More than five years later, that work is still in progress — by design. “We’ll never land that plane,” says Iacovou, “but it is an important pillar for us. And it’s really important that our employees, all of our employees, feel engaged and heard.”
Employee resource groups (ERGs) are one way that the company focuses on community. The company has a women’s ERG and a next-gen ERG, both “extremely successful,” says Iacovou, who serves as an executive sponsor. “I can’t even articulate into words what this ERG has done,” she says, pointing to how it brings together people from different parts and levels of the organization to network and connect.
New tech driving strategy
Also in progress? The adoption of AI. At 407 ETR, the new tech is helping human resources to become more strategic, says Iacovou.
“It really is enhancing our role,” she says. “We're leveraging AI to deal with a lot of the transactional things, to enable us and give us capacity to do more and to be more strategic… to become more effective and to offer more at the table, and more for our employees as well.”
Importantly, Iacovou does not see AI as simply eliminating jobs.
“I think it's going to transform the work we do. It's going to change the work we do, for sure. It's going to elevate and give us capacity to do more… We are looking at AI as an enabler.”
Growth, mobility and ‘leaving your mark’
Also an important for HR? Career development, which is not solely about climbing a title ladder at 407 ETR. Instead, there is a strong emphasis on lateral moves and internal mobility, according to Iacovou.
That philosophy goes back to early in her career at IBM Global Services, where employees were generally discouraged from staying in a role for more than 18 to 24 months so their skills wouldn’t become stale.
“If you’re chasing a title and rank, that may not happen as quickly as you want it,” she says. “But there is certainly lateral opportunity to grow. And there is so much opportunity and we’re 26 years young and so there’s so much that can be done that needs to be done.”
Many senior leaders, she notes, have built their careers internally, moving between areas such as finance, IT and business process along the way.
“If you’re chasing that opportunity to be able to influence the organization, to leave your mark, this is the place to do it.”
Staying agile for whatever comes next
Looking ahead, Iacovou doesn’t foresee dramatic shifts in HR priorities for 2026. The organization has recently went through some major transformations in the IT department and has entered a new five-year strategy, but she describes 407 as being in “a pretty stable business and a stable economy.”
However, that doesn’t mean standing still. One lasting lesson from recent years, she says, is HR’s need “to be agile and to respond swiftly to whatever comes our way… if anything changes, we’re ready.”
