FEATURES
COVER STORY: HOT LIST 2017 ALANA FREE
ASHLEY DALZIEL
Vice-president, people and culture
Vice-president, people and culture
GOODLIFE FITNESS CLUBS
FRESHII
In her two decades with GoodLife Fitness, Alana Free has worked her way from receptionist to club manager and eventually L&D manager. She has been responsible for opening new club locations across Canada; now, as VP of people, she oversees a team of 14,000 associates. Over the past year, Free and her team have implemented a new technology system that allows GoodLife to communicate more effectively with its 1.25 million club members while significantly reducing the use of paper. Free also handled the people management side of a significant corporate upheaval, which included providing job transition services such as career counselling, resume-building seminars, education allowance programs and even time off for job interviews while employees still worked with the company.
Amidst concerns about the millennial workforce’s reported penchant for job-hopping, Freshii boasts a headquarters team that is 98% millennial with extremely low turnover. A millennial herself, Ashley Dalziel attributes this success to the incredible appeal the company’s mission holds for her generation: to promote healthy living by providing affordable and convenient healthy food. “People want to do work that matters,” she says. “They want more than just a job and want to be part of a company that is about more than just making a profit.” Dalziel has a strong background in recruitment, employment branding, talent management and leadership development, having spent a decade at Lululemon Athletica, where she helped it grow into a multi-billion-dollar organization. Her work at Freshii is already paying dividends, too – the company won the Best Workplace Culture Award at the 2016 Canadian HR Awards.
ANNA PETOSA
CAVELL FRASER
Vice-president, people and culture
LIBRO CREDIT UNION
Senior HR consultant
PELMOREX MEDIA
As VP of people and culture for a media company approaching its 30-year mark, Anna Petosa’s top priority for the past year has been spearheading a cultural transformation project to ensure Pelmorex keeps pace with constant disruptions in the industry. In response to one identified HR service gap – the need for employees to share the vision of the company and see the relevance of their roles – Petosa and her team launched a program called ROAD Trip to a Performance Culture to increase engagement and foster the desired performance culture. The program is composed of four aspects: Recognition (of others and its importance), Objectives (setting SMART ones), Assessment (regular dialogue with managers) and Development (continuous L&D). For 2017, Petosa will be focusing on harnessing HR data analytics to completely shift Pelmorex Media’s HR department from an administrative role to a strategic one.
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Cavell Fraser has led Libro Credit Union’s HR team to support its new business strategy of ‘Growing Prosperity in Southwestern Ontario.’ This strategy incorporated two mergers, one in 2014 and another in 2015. Under Fraser’s leadership, the team has achieved a number of milestones, including completing two banking conversions, managing 154 internal job placements among 640 staff and hiring 123 new employees, including those from the merger. In 2016, Fraser completed two key initiatives: the rollout of an Aon Hewitt engagement survey, which led to the company being named Best Employer (Platinum Level) for both 2016 and 2017, and the setup of a Human Resources Management System [HRMS] committee. Fraser helped conduct a needs analysis for a new HRMS in the organization and created a comparison report of the final vendors. Her next step is to lead the HR team to implement the system and conduct the necessary training in early 2017.
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28/02/2017 7:22:35 AM