Human Resources for a Modern Workplace

From the 'start-up' of a European subsidiary 15 years ago to its current presence in the North American transportation manufacturing-and-assembly sector, AAA Canada (AAA) has grown through a turbulent business environment, the changing demographics of the North American workforce, an historical global pandemic and other critical factors like climate change and geo-political shifts.

The last decade of constant change has had massive impact, resulting in a critical business challenge; an ongoing shortage of qualified and knowledgeable skilled labor to fill many times of specialized knowledge-based jobs, such as transportation manufacturers requiring technical assemblers, operators and inspectors.

The company's business model is based on finding, attracting, hiring, training, and retaining specific types of technical capabilities and administrative support, and helping certified employees integrate in flexible ways into a diverse, multi-cultural and mobile workforce such as those of AAA's clientele.

Whether it's technical expertise or administrative support, finding and retaining qualified professionals has become increasingly difficult in a competitive market. Specifically, the core challenge that confronts AAA is the lack of well-trained and experienced technical knowledge workers who can work effectively with and within the assembly and inspection processes at various existing and potential clients.

AAA's Main Challenge : Finding and Keeping Talent, Skills and Experience

As set out above, these difficult conditions have emerged for a variety of reasons - the result is that skilled and qualified candidates are hard to find today and into the foreseeable future, and particularly so in Quebec and Ontario.

Locally, it has become increasingly difficult to find, hire, and retain employees with the right combination of knowledge, skills, and experience required by AAA's target sectors. To adapt, both Operations and HR have had to become skilled at recruitment on the international level, notably sourcing candidates from Mexico, Europe and North Africa.

Meeting the recruitment challenge is critically important for AAA. While its basic business model depends on recruitment, hiring and certifying skilled and qualified candidates, as the recruitment and people management challenges grew over the past 10 years it became evident that the company's human resources management infrastructure needed a more functional and more strategic foundation.

New HR  Management Philosophy

In order to grow in this challenging and rapidly-changing business landscape, the company's senior management made the strategic decision to develop a more professional human resources management philosophy and develop the practical framework of policies and practices to support business growth - now and into the future.

Adapting to respond to the challenges and expectations of a demanding labor pool and clients with complex requirements, it has focused on building the capacity of managing its primary resource - the people and teams it provides to its targeted clients - in more equitable and constructive ways. This focus is intended to improve the company's overall performance and positioning with existing and potential recruits and clients.

In order to modernize and improve its business performance, AAA is developing an HR strategy 'from the ground up' that prioritizes employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.

Effective and Consistent HR Policies and Practices

As our activities have been developing, we are finding that we must concentrate on improving the quality of management in order to attract and retain the best talent possible. We are seeking to do this by making the management of our core resource - peoples' skills, expertise and capabilities - more consistent, more people-centered and oriented towards helping current and potential AAA employees have a more fulfilling work experience.

The opportunity to develop an effective human resources management framework of policies and practices is leading to various possibilities for initiatives that will develop the framework with the input of the managers and employees. Examples in operation or under development include:

Recruiting and Hiring Foreign Employees - Integration

As we recruit many of its employees from foreign countries, we have had to become expert in dealing with immigration, moving, resettlement and integration for those new employees who are also changing their lives when they accept to work with the company.

• Offering language classes and cultural integration workshops
• Providing assistance with visa processes and relocation
• Creating a mentorship program to help foreign employees acclimate

Presence at Work Policy

The global pandemic's constraints and rapid advances in information technology capacities in an interconnected world have introduced massive shifts in the ways people work. In that context and in response to changing work preferences, we offer a work-from-home policy based on the nature-of-the-work requirements. Elements include:

• Allowing eligible employees to work remotely up to 2 days per week
• Providing stipends for home office equipment
• Offering training on effective remote work practices
• Conforming with established workplace safety standards

Service Recognition Program

To celebrate loyalty and contributions, we offer a comprehensive service recognition program:

• Milestone service rewards at 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years of service and personalized recognition from leadership
• Following an employee survey on this Recognition Program, AAA plans to review the offering to respond more effectively to employee preferences

HR - Policy, Practices and Programs

An important aspect of building a new and more modern HR management environment involves reviewing, updating, and creating effective initiatives that align with the changing workplace dynamics, especially as we continue to re-build in the aftermath of the pandemic and business development opportunities in the burgeoning electric vehicle assembly and maintenance sector.

Emergent Human Resources Initiatives

The intention is to build the framework in a step-by-step fashion, focusing on what works and how initiatives can deliver a more fulfilling employee work experience and better performance. This means, in effect, continually refining AAA's HR strategy.

Several examples of areas of policy and practices development that are under review or development by HR at AAA Canada include:

Right to Disconnect Policy

We recognize the importance of work-life balance and is developing a policy to protect employees' personal time outside of work hours.

Diversity and Inclusion Policy

To foster a more inclusive workplace, we are developing a comprehensive diversity and inclusion policy that will guide their hiring, promotion, and workplace culture initiatives.

Management Training and Development

The impacts of HR and people performance issues that are emerging as we grow and work with a greater variety of clients mean that our people management and cultural environment requires more maturity and greater consistency of management practices.

The complexities of recruitment, hiring, and retention - greatly impacted by the turbulent business dynamics during the global COVID pandemic, the continuing shortages of skilled and qualified candidates and the arrival of remote working - have created new conditions of managing a knowledge-base workforce.

In that context, the process of building a more modern HR environment for managers means HR often acts as a business partner and coach for helping operations' managers to resolve people issues and problems using modern methods and practices.

The collaboration between HR and operations management is a key contribution to building a more responsive, flexible, and resilient organizational culture.

Effective HR is an ongoing strategic challenge

By focusing on the areas described above, we are actively developing a work environment that attracts top talent, boosts employee satisfaction, and drives productivity. Looking to the future, we are committed to providing an excellent and fulfilling experience for our employees-working on client sites.

To meet this critical business mission, it will require ever-evolving HR strategies, policies and practices to meet the changing needs of its workforce, its current and potential clients and the increasingly complex business landscape.