By Jason McRobbie

“It’s all about becoming a new business partner,” said BC HRMA’s CEO Simon Evans. “If I go back 20 or 30 years, HR was very transactional.  Today we see fantastic CHRPs leading the HR function, and not only the HR function, but having experience in finance, marketing, communications, IT – in all the various sectors of the province. That’s exciting. That’s acceptance and that’s professionalism.”

It is the scope of that professionalism that defines the difference.  Put simply, HR is far more about people.

“HR is just so different from even 25 years ago. Certainly in forward moving organizations, HR has become more integral to the overall strategic direction of the business.” said Les Waldie, past-president (2006-07) and Fellow CHRP (FCHRP). “The reality is that there is a growing awareness that the difference between good and poor organizations is the people and how they are managed.  HR has made great strides in how companies deal with their people and we’re still working hard to find a niche that makes everyone comfortable at the senior level.  There is no question though, we are more involved and there is a growing expectation.”

BC HRMA Origins: HR’s Laboured Past
In BC, one association under many names evolved alongside that expectation.

The British Columbia Human Resources Management Association (BC HRMA) has come a long way in the course of 70 years of varied existence.  Born into being as the War Industries Coordination Committee of 1942, only in its most recent incarnation as BC HRMA has human resources become the primary focus.

“When I first joined in the late 1960s it was really about industrial relations. About 50 per cent of us were IR types and it was not until the late 70’s that a strong dose of the personnel side became involved,” said past-president Gordon Storey (1981-82). “The real growth didn’t occur until certification got going. We were just a much smaller association. We’re talking about the days when the paid staff was one part-time person who operated out of her home office. So we had no head office other than our administrator’s and the president’s would pass their boxes of information along to one another.  The pressures then were immense to generate revenue and provide services; that has not changed.”

Collectively, BC HRMA has evolved, as has the breadth of both its membership and value offering.  Under the varied auspices of the Personnel Administrators Association of BC, the Vancouver Chapter of the Pacific Northwest Management Association, the Vancouver Personnel Management Association and the Industrial Relations Management Association, a legacy focus of labour diminished in light of the changing times.

People Focus: A Hallmark of Human Rights
“Looking back over the years to the 1980’s, many organizations focused on production and safety; people management was generally an afterthought.  People management at that time consisted of human resources managing compensation, pension and benefits,” said Dave DeLong who sits on the present-day BC HRMA board of directors. “Today people management in most organizations is viewed as an integral part of the business and is a strategic component of an organizations business plan.  People management today incorporates the way business is conducted.  People management today includes:  vision, mission, values, sustainability, change management, leadership development, organizational development, succession planning and individual development plans.”

It was very much a mandate of change driven from within – as well as in the highest court of Canada.

“The work that we do now has evolved from industrial relations to human rights, privacy and health issues are wrapped together with other discrimination issues,” said past-president Gavin Hume, QC. “There is still a chunk of old fashioned labour relations, but Supreme Court of Canada really shifted the focus to diversity with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and that contributed to a growing awareness of that whole area.”

“In those days, the whole emphasis was on labour relations. The HR side was not the emphasis at all when I first became involved,” said Hume. “When the CHRP was broached it was a big issue, whether it was appropriate. It was very much pooh-poohed in the day and highly controversial with the senior guys say ‘We don’t need that.’ Now it is an appropriate given and has very significantly improved human resources.”

Building a National Designation
Contentious at the time, the development of a nationwide standard to supplant the provincial industry recognitions, has been invaluable to the profession. The Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) designation has flourished since its inception in 1996, setting a new standard of professionalism and providing an accredited assurance that HR comes to the proverbial table equipped with the necessary skills and mindset.

Now, with over half of BC HRMA’s 5,300 members holding the CHRP designation and a growing awareness of the impact of good HR practices, it is difficult to imagine the opposition the designation originally faced.

Past-president (1986-87) and FCHRP Joan Harrison, integral to the development of the CHRP, was instrumental in evolving far more than a national designation. Her leadership embodied a paradigm shift that is today considered a human right, chiefly one of egalitarianism – a unity of professional vision unencumbered by gender issues.  As per the contention around the development of the CHRP, Harrison said, “You really learned what the guys who wrote the Constitution went through.”

“You have no idea what it was like to be a woman in that group and that has totally reversed now. There might have been one or two women at the labour table and now you see the excellence in everybody.” said Harrison. “Gender balance has shifted from those dominant industrial relations guys to strong, tough-minded, highly educated young women who, in fact, outnumber the HR guys in many organizations.”

Regional Discontent: Renewed Focus
Upon that wave of change, human resources rose to the forefront – as did a newfound provincial focus for the Association.

“When I joined in the local chapter in the late ‘80s it was because I didn’t like what we were getting for our membership.  The networking, mingles, education, mentoring: the bigger picture of what we are now getting from the Association did not exist back then – especially if you lived outside the Lower MainLand. f you’re going to complain, you need to get involved,” said Susan MacIntyre, FCHRP and past BC HRMA board member (2002-09).  “Lorne Armstrong was president then. We got organized. I ended up on the Board, the chapters disappeared and things changed. In Kamloops, we had 34 members. Now we have over 120. What has changed is the whole value for membership. Now BC HRMA services HR professionals of every type on a truly regional, provincial basis.”

“What we did was make the shift from an operational to a strategic board and from Vancouver-centric to provincial.  I didn’t invent it out of thin air. When I became or was about to become president, I got together for dinner with some of the past-presidents and that was the conversation we had, ‘ Where did you want us to go? What was the thread you were pulling on? What do you see ahead for the association?’” said past-president Lorne Armstrong (2002-04). “I didn’t have some huge vision, but once inside and seeing what was going on, I could see that something more was possible.”

From that conversation, and those that preceded and followed, came the BC HRMA as today it is known.

Job One: Meeting Member Needs
“When I got involved, we were very much on the cusp of a transition. From a personal point of view I had been a member, but not so active, so it seemed a good time and a great opportunity to get involved,” said Les Waldie, CHRP. “It was obvious that we needed to refocus the organization in terms of the fundamental raison d’etre of serving the membership. It was historically a very hands on operational board that was relying on busy business people to commit a hunk of their time to do the work of the organization.”

“We decided we could really see something here, something that we could really go for and make work. We slowly started coming together to figure out what this would look like,” said Armstrong. “What drove it was knowing it was possible to do a far better job of serving our members – and that if we wanted to have a voice we needed more members to gain credibility, speak business and be listened to by senior executives.”

A more diverse and strategically focused board emerged – and with a few good hires, BC HRMA went to work. “With the debt we had at the time we thought we could break even in a decade. That would be reasonable.  Then we found our new CEO and he had us back there inside of three years. That flipped the whole thing on its head and allowed us to ask, ‘Okay, what can we really do?’”

“That was really the thrust of what we did over those years and bringing Simon in was the start of that. The organization needed to reflect what was happening to the HR function and needed to support and lead.  There was a pretty focused effort to do that and the research function is a good example. There has been a ton of refinement since that has defined that strategic approach,” said Waldie. “BC HRMA today is something members can be proud to be associated with. It has become a very useful organization and a model that is respected across the country.”

The rest is more recent history.