Taking the CEO’s pulse on HR (Editorial)

Ever want a chance to talk to the president of the organization about HR issues? We did. So we launched Canadian HR Reporter’s new feature CEOs Talk.

Every quarter, we’ll ask the heads of selected Canadian corporations the questions human resource professionals would like answered. This issue includes the views of nine CEOs from a cross-section of sectors.

From the start we sought the views of a diverse group of leaders from across the country, representing different industries and circumstances.

Our group of nine includes companies of all sizes, from the well-known heads of some of the country’s largest firms, to the leaders of successful medium-sized organizations, to the CEOs of leading-edge technology upstarts. From a major telecommunications company in Western Canada to an exciting Internet-based tech firm in Prince Edward Island. There’s unionized environments, professional workforces, blue- and white-collar workers, firms with operations spread across many provinces, Canadian divisions of multi-national giants and Canadian-based global competitors. There’s a growing young Ontario tech firm with an international workforce looking to hire its first HR professional. The public sector is represented by a Toronto health-care agency and a Saskatchewan educational institute.

We asked the CEOs about the HR issues that exist in their organizations, the relationship between themselves and their HR departments and where they’d like to see the department contribute to organizational success.

We found widespread support for a strategic role for HR in organizations, and in fact, many of the organizations included in this round of CEOs Talk have a senior HR leader sitting at the executive table.

More and more, HR issues are being seen as boardroom priorities. Against this backdrop, CEOs Talk should not only appeal to HR professionals interested in the president’s take on the department, but also members of the senior team and CEOs themselves. Canadian HR Reporter’s coverage of the HR world includes issues important to anyone interested in the bottom-line results of effective human resources management.

As Art Knight, president of the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, said about his role: “You have to know enough about HR to have confidence they are doing the job well, and then let them manage the department.”

CEOs Talk hopes to add to the communication between HR and the heads of organizations. We’d like to hear from HR professionals about these issues and invite readers to contribute to the dialogue by sharing concerns and questions they’d like CEOs to address. Drop us a line at [email protected] or by mail.

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