Team Concordia HR is ready for renewal, Yves Gosselin says
Yves Gosselin was recently appointed Associate Vice-President, Human Resources.
photo by Andrew Dobrowolskyj
After five months at the helm of Human Resources and Employee Relations, Yves Gosselin can clearly see what he needs to do: make the department into an effective team to win back the confidence of the university community.
“They’ve been hurt over the years,” Gosselin said bluntly about his staff. “The previous style of leadership did not enable them to grow to their full potential. There are a lot of good people here, loyal and meticulous in what they do. We have to support and empower them, and enable them to work as a team.”
To improve communication, there are now weekly managers’ meetings, monthly operations reviews, and quarterly town-hall meetings of all staff.
The goal is to make the department function so smoothly that the focus is on service to clients, not on internal processes. “We’re going to move from rules to tools,” Gosselin promised.
The request for one new tool came directly from President Claude Lajeunesse.
“Dr. Lajeunesse asked us to develop a training program that would be offered to all new academic personnel accepting a leadership role in the future. This program will be developed in cooperation with Continuing Education, and should be available for the fiscal year 2007-08.”
Gosselin says HR’s main clients are Concordia’s managers of academic and services staff.
“The managers have prime responsibility with their employees and we’re the custodians of the employees’ relationship with Concordia. We want to ensure that managers can deal with most of issues that arise in their own offices, and we will support them in that important role.”
HR will remain an essential component of the service sector, but beyond day-to-day service to the clients, Gosselin wants the staff in HR to become internal consultants, able to give managers the support and value-added services they need to improve their own effectiveness and that of their employees.
There’s more in his plan:
New employees will be given a more comprehensive orientation to Concordia than ever before.
The need for new information and payroll systems will be assessed, with possible implementation by the end of this fiscal year.
The compensation reform program, which was stalled for about a year, will be restarted with a view to implementation by next June.
The pay equity discussion with collective bargaining units will continue, with the goal of completing it by Dec. 31.
He supports the current negotiations process, and promises renewed leadership in labour relations.
A transformational management program for HR/ER employees was conducted last spring by business professor Steven Appelbaum. When Gosselin took on the job, the report that emerged from the intensive staff sessions and the interviews with key clients became his bible, and he knows it raised high expectations.
Thinking first about how to help the client “will take courage and humility,” he said. “We want an atmosphere of continuous improvement. Team Concordia HR: That’s going to be our brand.” As for his own career plans, he’ll stay until the job is done.