Jen Reid: Rebuilding Canadian pride at Shell Canada

After 12 years abroad, Jen Reid came back to a changed company in Canada. When she left Calgary in the early 2010s, the company had 8,800 employees; she came back to fewer than 3,000.

"There were a lot of divestments, there was a lot of downsizing, there were a lot of reorganizations," she says. "That's really taken the toll on the country."

What was also surprising was how few people understood the position that Canada occupied within Shell globally, says Reid, who is vice-president of HR at Shell Canada, where she has been for nearly 21 years.

"Canada is one of the top 10 value generators for the company," she says. "We have the third-largest oil reserves, fifth-largest natural gas reserves, first-largest uranium. We're sitting on a hotbed of resource that is low cost, low carbon to produce…. And so last year, I'm like, ‘How come nobody's excited about this? We are in a very fortunate position.’"

Rebuilding that sense of pride — and the business case behind it — has become one of Reid’s defining missions since returning home.

Bringing the story to life

Her approach to the engagement challenge is deliberate and multi-channel. She helped launch a group called the Canada Leaders Forum, bringing together just over 200 leaders from across the country on a quarterly basis to hear the broader story of Shell Canada's role and significance.

"Data really matters," she says. "We've been WestJet's biggest supplier for 30 years — nobody knows that."

Alongside it sits the Canada Leaders Coalition — a smaller group of ambassadors who meet regularly to provide feedback, test how messages are landing, and help shape the narrative from the ground up.

Reid is also working with corporate relations and the country chair to write "the story of Canada," in talking about what Shell Canada is, what it represents, and what it means both to the country and to the company.

Part of the challenge, she notes, is structural. Many employees now have virtual teams and report to leaders sitting in Houston, London or the Netherlands.

"They don't feel that natural affiliation and they generally stay in their line of business. They don't really see the broader [picture]," she says. "So [it’s about] really trying to bring that to life for the country as well."

The timing, at least, has been helpful. Shell's agreement to acquire ARC Resources and the potential for LNG Canada to reach a Phase 2 final investment decision this year have given Reid fresh material to work with.

"We're becoming a heartland for Shell in Canada and could potentially be one of the biggest heartlands for Shell globally," she says. "It's a super exciting time."

Building the capability to lead

Reid also returned to find a leadership capability gap that needed addressing — and not just at the strategic level. In both unionized and non-unionized environments, she found managers uncertain about their own authority.

"They're almost afraid to be able to performance manage their own people," she says.

Reid’s response has been to reinvest in leadership development — practical, grounded work that helps people understand their rights and responsibilities as managers. It runs alongside a broader effort to reinvigorate a cross-Canada talent forum she first created years ago during an earlier posting in Sarnia, Ontario.

The goal: make sure country leaders know who the talent are, and then connect that talent to mentors outside the organization.

"It's critically important that I understand the business partnership, particularly in this role, because I'm one of the only people that sees across all of the country and the company in Canada," she says. "I can help to draw parallels, help to connect dots.”

Reid stresses the importance of understanding the business to make sure it’s competitive and decisions are made in the best interest of the organization: “You need to speak the language… it's absolutely a given.”

'One of the best experiences'

Reid did not set out to be an HR leader. She came out of Dalhousie Universitywith a double major in biology and psychology, planning to become a doctor. She ended up in a summer job at the CP Hotels in the Canadian Rockie but, frustrated by entitled guests, she moved from front-of-house into HR and became assistant director at the hotel.

By the time a friend of a friend told her about Shell's "people machine" in 2005, she was ready for something bigger and joined the team. More than 20 years later, she has no regrets.

“I absolutely love what I do. I continue to get so much joy out of it… I feel also such gratitude to be in this role.”

That openness was tested early: Reid was posted to the Sarnia refinery in Ontario during a difficult personal period — recently divorced, deeply rooted in Calgary — and said no twice before saying yes.

"It ended up being one of the best experiences," she says.

Then came The Hague, where Reid spent more than a decade working across global roles, including international mobility — a function she knew almost nothing about when she started.

"That was probably one of my most favourite jobs — but it never would have been one I would have naturally applied for."

‘I’m driving the push for competitiveness’

Her advice to HR leaders eyeing a similar path is straightforward: have honest development conversations and resist the urge to be fixed in your career path.

"Make sure that you have those really robust development conversations and be open to whatever comes your way.”

Reid says she’s always appreciated having leaders who were intentional about getting her to focus on what she needs in terms of skills, capability, experience, and development.

“If anything, I would say my role has gotten more and more business intimate. I'm the one driving the push for competitiveness. I'm the one driving for performance focus and ‘What are the numbers? What's the value, what's the risk?’” she says.

“I feel like I've had multiple different careers and I've never had to leave the company and gotten to do so many cool different things.”

Embracing AI at Shell Canada

Reid's HR team in Canada is small — 19 people in-country, with broader support from HR operations teams in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Krakow. So, when Shell offered access to Microsoft Copilot premium licences, she saw the potential immediately.

Five or six members of the team now use it regularly, and Reid is among the most enthusiastic.

Her use cases span the practical and the genuinely strategic. She's used Copilot to condense a 10-slide deck into one, to map Shell's historical safety performance on a single slide, and to research what it would take for Shell to become Canada's leading integrated energy company.

"It is so powerful, I use it for so many things… it just does amazing work," she says.

But Reid is careful. She always requests sources and she flags that some outputs — particularly financial calculations — warrant a second look before being relied upon. For example, looking at the unit operating cost, is it calculating based on values that are comparable?

“Don't know. I always ask it to give me sources,” she says. "But it's gotten much better. There's less I need to actually change now."

The team uses it on the employment relations side as well, helping draft demand letters and related documents — freeing up capacity for the higher-order work.

"It's a wildly powerful tool that I think we're just starting to use."