VP of people, culture and organizational effectiveness at Northumberland Hills Hospital mixes numbers with people in leading HR
"When I think about it, I think it's been one of the biggest blessings of my life."
So says Lola Obomighie, in talking about HR — a field she never intended to enter or knew much about. Her undergraduate degree was in economics and statistics, so she imagined a career built around numbers, maybe academia.
Then her first job happened, and everything changed.
"It's given me the opportunity to enjoy different flavours," she says. "One day I'm helping shape organizational strategy; the next day we're dealing with really complex labour relations, or we're implementing new HR technology, or we're thinking about a strategy to reduce workplace violence or wellness strategies to improve engagement.
“I'm truly privileged and blessed to do what I do."
Now vice-president of people, culture and organizational effectiveness at Northumberland Hills Hospital — a role she has held since 2022 — Obomighie brings more than two decades of experience spanning England and Canada, private and public sector, financial services and healthcare, to a demanding people environment.
"I definitely have not had a job for life, but I've had a career for life," she says.
An HR career for life
Obomighie’s career began in England, moving through HR roles before landing at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was essentially like the Johns Hopkins of England, she says: “A very world-renowned, academic centre… Oh my god, [it was an] amazing training ground."
She spent nearly four years there, and the experience planted a seed: "Somewhere in my heart, I always knew I wanted to go back to healthcare."
After Oxford, Obomighie made the leap to Canada — joining the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) in Toronto, then the University of Toronto, before joining Cota as director of people and culture, leading HR for a not-for-profit providing community mental health and developmental services.
Looking back, she says career highlights have included developing enterprise-wide people strategies, advancing EDI work, implementing HR technology, partnering with exceptional leaders and leadership development.
“I always see myself as a custodian of people's professional experience. If you're coming to me for advice, what a privilege to be able to say, ‘Here is what I think’ and for people to take it seriously."
“So, highlights by far is the ability to influence, to partner, to problem solve, to build, to codesign and to see the output at the end of the day where people are like, ‘Oh, look at our engagement scores.’”
Leading at Northumberland Hills
When the Northumberland Hills role came up in 2022, Obomighie was happy to return to the healthcare industry. She also appreciated the opportunity to work in a nearby community and have more than the traditional HR function in terms of organizational effectiveness piece.
“I have complex portfolios that I'm also looking after in addition to HR and broadening my ability to think operationally as a leader, but also as an HR professional, as my core background,” she says.
The portfolio reflects the scope: HR, culture transformation, leadership development, organizational design, and change management across close to 1,000 employees — roughly 80 to 85 percent of them unionized across three separate unions.
"What keeps me interested is that variety and the complexity of it,” says Obomighie.
Mixing numbers with people
And the economics degree didn't go to waste. If anything, Obomighie says it made her a sharper leader.
"I think about my background in numbers and statistics and how that makes me a better HR practitioner in the sense of data-driven decisions, thinking about the numbers and what that information is telling us,” she says.
"Don't tell me you asked five people and five people is representative of an organization of a thousand — I’m going to be like, ‘OK, give me a little bit more’… But, at the same time, I like the place of anecdotal where you can layer on the storytelling.”
The best HR leaders are the ones who can lead with both their head and their heart, says Obomighie. “Their head in the sense of those numbers and the data, but their hearts in the sense of leading from a place of compassion and empathy."
Physical and psychological safety
In a hospital, the stakes around safety are particularly high. Northumberland Hills launched a three-year workplace violence prevention strategy, now in evaluation, she says.
"Sometimes there's the assumption that it's OK to accept that and it's not OK — How do we care for you as the carer?"
Obomighie draws a distinction between the notion of safety and the perception of safety: “Sometimes people are safe, but they don't feel safe."
The work involves dealing with it at a broader, holistic level, she says.
"I like the good old traffic-light system: ‘What do we need to stop? What do we need to continue? What do we need to start?’ And then… ‘Is it working?’"
Also important to Obomighie is psychological safety. At its simplest, she says, it means one thing: "Come as you are. I will meet you where you are with no questions asked."
But there’s also the correlation between psychological safety and output and performance, which is discretionary effort and not just driven by the paper contract.
“This is the psychological contract: ‘You let me finish early so I can take my parents up to the cottage.’ You get 100% out of people when you invest in them that way."
Making that real requires authentic leadership, she says.
"I think it's culture in the sense of ‘How do we promote leadership development so the leaders can show up more emotionally intelligent, [with] more deep listening, more able to read the room?’" she says. "I also think there is a place for baking and hardwiring it into policies and practices."
At Northumberland Hills, it’s also about encouraging people to speak up, says Obomighie.
"If someone wanted to speak up and they have to jump through hoops, fill 20 forms on a system, that is not intuitive — that is a process inhibiting psychological safety.”
Evergreen priorities amid AI surge
On AI, Obomighie is optimistic but grounded.
"AI in healthcare looks a bit different because there’s the governance and those boundaries that need to be drawn — we're not just working as an HR team in a silo; we're working within a broader system and ecosystem."
On the change management side, though, she's direct: "I am a huge supporter of AI used properly and responsibly. I think it's an enabler of work. I don't think it's something people need to be afraid of… As long as AI hasn't started actually doing the work, I think it's still an enabler for now."
What Obomighie pushes back against is the idea that AI crowds out everything else on the agenda, meaning evergreen priorities such as leadership development, strengthening workplace culture, engaging and building high-performing teams, and equity, diversity and inclusion.
“Those things are like the constants in an equation. They're not going to go away,” she says.
Outside of her hospital role, Obomighie also sits on the faculty roster at Queen's University IRC, facilitating programs in HR Metrics and Analytics and Aligning HR and Business Strategy — a role she describes as keeping her "curious and challenged” in her work.
"The classroom informs my practice and my practice enriches the classroom conversations. It's this beautiful relationship."
