Transcription of Interview with Lynne Gervais re: MForum
Q1: Comments on the 2015 MForum Annual Conference
Dan O’Connell: I’m here with Lynne Gervais (Associate Vice-Principal – Human Resources) and we’re
speaking about the Management Forum’s conference activities from last year (2015). How did last year’s
Management Forum conference theme of Recognition and Appreciation in the workplace resonate
within Human Resources at the time of the conference? And given the perspective that half a year
offers, have you seen any clear value that has come from the conference?
Lynne Gervais: Management Forum has really progressed, developed and come into its own in the last
five years. It has been progressively more and more, I find, of value to the community, to the M’s, and so
last year, to me, was the best one yet! I was really really pleased, and I think I may have missed a couple
MForum annual conferences in the last nine years, but I really like going and I do participate. Last year
the sessions’ title, “Recognition” was, I find, very appropriate given the times that we are living where
we have no money and there is a big difference between rewards and recognition. Rewards are
monetary – one time, and recognition is ongoing and usually non-monetary.
It was a really appropriate time to have that forum last year, to be able to assist the M population, both
those receiving the recognition and those having to give recognition. So I was really quite enamored
with the session that was held last year and I participated in one of the coaching ourselves sessions. It
was also very much in line with what we’re doing in HR so it was great to see, if you want to become a
learning organization, it was really great to see the collaboration, and that things in the community, in
all different aspects of the community, in different areas of the community, are all kind of lined up,
aligned or going in the same direction in terms of support for us to become a learning organization,
again, in really, really tight budget constraints on the admin and support side.
Q2: Integrating Recognition into the McGill Workplace
Dan: What kinds of conditions need to be in place for a program like encouraging recognition to gain
traction and to begin to get integrated into our culture, and/or activated in regular employee practices?
Lynne: The best way to integrate recognition is how we are doing it now. Everybody is talking about it
right? So, we looked at what we call our performance management dialogue here at McGill. Over the
years it has progressed, changed and adapted because people said, “Please make it simpler”. It’s all
about the dialogue. It’s not about the forms, or how many forms that have to be filled, and how to fill
out the forms and so on. We really looked at our performance dialogue and the approach to
performance dialogue. We are really focusing it on how I’m being developed and what are the
opportunities they’re creating for me as an employee to develop within my institution. And, with that
development that you’re helping me along with, (as its both mine and the responsibility of the
institution to develop), how am I being recognized? So I see a total link between the two, at the time of
performance dialogue and as the year goes on. How do we develop and engage our talent? Well we do
it by having the dialogue, deciding what training is needed, and then recognizing that learning aspect. So
that was one of the ways I find that recognition is tied. As you had your forum, we were looking at
performance dialogue, we re-vamped our leadership development program and inserted into the
modules of the leadership development program specific modules on recognition. We include it in our
set of behavioral and competencies model, there is one specifically on recognition for the supervisors
that are trying to recruit, develop, have that performance dialogue with those behaviors that the
institution says ‘this is what we really need to be collaborative and cohesive and have some kind of a
talent future’. There are a lot of connecting points, Michael Di Grappa (Vice-Principal Finance and
Administration), in his area, is working with the M3’s and the M4’s mostly and they’re doing two teams,
each team has a theme and one of them is on recognition. So again, there is a link in the community.
MForum is not just doing its stand-alone, has this great forum last year and then all the sudden
everybody goes back to the office and they don’t do anything – they can see it in their day to day – if
they’re taking a workshop, if they’re in the leadership development program, if they’re in a theme team
(which is the supervisors). Yes it is only restricted to Michael’s area at the moment and not the faculties
but hopefully we’ll be able to loop in the faculties. The Faculty of Medicine is doing AEC’s a special hub
in terms of services for different departments they’re merging together – there we are doing a different
training, a cross training and knowledge transfer. Again that’s a way of recognizing people, so I find
there is a lot of connections happening.
Q3: Breaking Down Silos and Slabs: MForums theme for 2016
Dan: How might our current theme of breaking down silos and slabs fit with current or future HR
planning or practices?
Lynne: It’s interesting that you have that as a theme because, as I was preparing to meet today, I was
reflecting on that, because in institutions or companies, wherever, there are vertical silos and horizontal
slabs. No one model is bad or no one model is good and I think you need both. In each functional silo,
business units, (in our case we call them faculties) that are separate, because again they don’t all have
the same mission - the Faculty of Medicine is pumping out doctors and the Faculty of Management is
giving us financial investors – there are silos no matter where you go. Then there is slabs in the sense
that you have groups of VP’s that work together, so, Michael Di Grappa (Vice-Principal Finance and
Administration) and all his direct reports that are AVP’s – we form a team that works together. Neither
one of them (silos or slabs) is wrong, it’s what we do with them and how we do the matrix, relationships
between those slabs of VP’s and slabs of AVP’s downward or upward or the silos that we have, how do
we cross over – how do they charge for finance, and how does finance go in and support University
Services is an example. So, I thought it was a really appropriate time to have that as a theme because,
again, we always have to factor in resources, it’s not going to get any easier. The more ways we can
connect with each other, the more ways we can find to connect with each other, opportunities to
connect with each other, I think the better we will be. I think it’s a really worthwhile theme, and if
you’re familiar with coaching ourselves and the module of learning – coaching ourselves has modules on
silos – how do you work within silos, how do you breakdown silos, and so on and so forth. I’ve been
looking forward to seeing where MForum is going to bring this theme, I think it’s really appropriate, a
good time to have this theme.
Q 4: Improving communication through silos and across slabs
Dan: Management staff are often the pivot points in the implementation of any changes. They
communicate processes and progress down through the organization and back up. Are there efforts
through HR to train managers to better facilitate this process of communication through the slabs as
well as across the silos?
Lynne: In our leadership development program we have the modules that help the employees. We also
have stand-alone workshops that managers and supervisor-level employees can go get specific learning
points or specific areas that they want to explore when they go back into their office. We’re fine-tuning
our workshop deliveries constantly because we have limited resources. So what we have done very
specifically this year is that we have introduced what we call ‘Service Excellence Version 2’. About 8
years ago, we introduced a Service Excellence for front-line employees, so those that have direct contact
with students. For example, in enrollment services, service point, in student services, and so on, and we
developed a whole program for them on how do you deal with clients, what is the most efficient and
best way to do so, and we took that Service Excellence training and took portions of it and worked
throughout the campus when anybody wanted us or asked us to come and say “you know we’re having
a bit of difficulty in knowing who our client is, where we stand in terms of how do we connect”, so we’ve
been doing that. But we’ve found about 18 months ago that there was a real need to bring in – again –
the recognition, the change agent, the lean processing, all of our behaviours that we were looking at, so
there was a real demand to kind of integrate all the offerings, so we’ve launched a pilot for Service
Excellence Version 2, and I think that will help, because what we’ve done in terms of the classroom, the
pilot, is only 17 people, and hopefully by the Spring the pilot will be done and then we’ll tweak and
adjust what we need. We have taken a real cross-section of employees that are from University services,
from departments of the faculty, at the deaneries of the faculties, blue collar workers that have
supervisory roles, to see how we can have those conversations, how do we move the dial that that
Service Excellence is not only now for the front-line, but anybody that is dealing with a client
relationship in terms of their managers, and I think what we are trying to do is do a lot of structured
conversations. So Coaching Ourselves is great, they’re really great modules, allows others to take on in
the community a session on Coaching Ourselves, but we have what they call Coaching Circles, and those
are a lot of fun, and they are more of a structured conversation. So whereas Coaching Ourselves is a
theme, with Coaching Circles, an individual who has an issue, problem, or challenge, comes to a group of
employees that want to get together to discuss it, and they have the opportunity of peer-coaching each
other on that one issue. Not telling them what to do, not telling them how s/he should do it, but really
having a peer-coaching session, and I think that would be extremely helpful going forward.
Q 5: How can we as staff promote or encourage change through HR?
Dan: What avenues could regular staff members use to encourage Human Resources in their adoption
of any practices or processes that might arise from activities of groups like Management Forum or any of
the other employee associations within McGill? How could they even help with the adoption of some of
the processes brought forward by HR?
Lynne: We use so much of the feedback that we receive. We use a lot of the feedback that we get in our
workshops. So while we are delivering a workshop or a program, we have feedback points all along
those sessions, and all of that feedback is usually incorporated. So the person that took the Leadership
Development Program 5 years ago is not taking the same program that he took before. We say that this
program is yours, tell us what you want changed, what we should change, where do we need to
modernize and adapt in terms of the reality that is coming? 5 years ago, we were not talking about
budget cuts and budget restraints, and transfer of knowledge, because we had lots of employees and
lots of potential in terms of hiring. Now we’re looking at resource allocation, and how to effectively use
the resources that we have. So we evolve, and so that’s one of the big avenues where we get our
feedback from. We have a community of HR advisors that meet once a month, so the employees can,
through their local HR advisors, express themselves and make suggestions and so on, and the HR
advisors are very open and right there in our face once a month, telling us this is what we need, this is
what we’re looking at, and this is what we’d like to do.
Q 6: Encouraging management staff involvement in the growth of McGill’s workforce.
Dan: What might you say to encourage management staff involvement in guiding the growth of McGill’s
workforce?
Lynne: Because of the way we’re structured, we don’t have the ability to go out and learn outside. But
we’re in a learning institution; we’re a university, so there’s a lot of learning that can be done inside
between each other. And I think that we need to tap into every opportunity we can where we can do
learning, and there’s a wealth of learning from individuals here. I’m always impressed when I go to LDP
sessions, how people sometimes don’t even know who other people are because we’re a huge campus,
right. So, faculty of medicine way up there doesn’t have much interaction with 688 Sherbrooke, but
when they get into this LDP program, they say “Oh, I tried this.” “No, I tried this.” “No, no this is how I
handled this case.” And so that’s where I would suggest to people who are in a supervisory role – once
they have gone through any workshop – such as these lunch and learns, brown bag sessions, and you
have to eat! Somewhere in the day you have to eat. And employees are doing that on their own. They’re
saying “Oh, you know, I have this issue and they got four or five people and say “OK, let’s brown bag it;
I’ll meet you at the Royal Victoria College cafeteria.” and they have an hour or 45 minutes talking about
something, and then go back to their own ways.
We have to create our own learning environment. If we wait for our bosses to do it, well, they’re just as
busy as we are so that usually makes it less probable that it will happen. But managers [and] supervisors
– I just look at my colleagues, we meet on a regular basis. If not we just call each other and say “We
have this issue. I’m doing this, what about in your group? Is that how you’re staff is feeling?” “How are
you responding to this cut?” “What do you think about this new learning?” “Do you do it this way in
university service, when I’m speaking to Robert [Couvrette] or Chris Tinmouth in Finance.”
I think employees have to create those opportunities.
Q 7: Encouraging participation in Mforum activity among senior management and executives.
Dan: I know you’ve been very supportive of the work that we’ve been doing, and you’ve been diligent in
attending many of our events: How might we be better able to encourage other senior managers and
executives at McGill to participate in our activities?
Lynne: Well, it’s a whole day; the MForums’ are the whole day.
Dan: The annual conference … and a couple of other events.
Lynne: Yes, the annual conference is a whole day. I think that we could aim to have participation of
senior administration maybe half a day or a couple of hours of that day, [it] adds to the value of it.
I do, because I think what you’re doing is so close to HR and so close to what we want to do, right. It’s
developing employees. It’s giving employees an environment where they could exchange and learn from
each other. So, it fits right into what our philosophy is – so, that’s why I take the time and spend the day.
But …I think it’s the subject matter, Dan. I really think to attract people to our conference or an evening
5 à 7 that you do also during the year, it’s really thematic. So, to have a theme that will attract the
people or the hot topic of what’s going on at the time, you know, in terms of the environment that
we’re in.
Q 8: Leaders recognizing the value of the conference
Dan: As leaders, you must recognize that you have tremendous influence on people when you are
present - that gives them signs that these are very important issues. So, how can we convince some of
the other leaders to also recognize the value of this [conference]?
Lynne: Well, you could use peer pressure or you could use me to tell them to get there. [Laughter]
Dan: Will you tell them?
Lynne: Oh, I will! Absolutely! But if you could do that because peer pressure is always great! Michael
likes to come. So, I know that if he doesn’t come it is because of his agenda. The Principal at times also
comes so I know that it’s a question of scheduling. The sooner you know your schedule, the sooner you
get it on their books, too. That’s why I asked if [the conference is] on March 23. I’m sure my Assistant
already has that on the books and I’m sure she’s got it reserved. And we do that at the beginning of the
year.
You usually have your year’s schedule all set out so that’s another way of doing it.
Peer pressure.
Dan: Peer pressure, yeah. I think we’re trying to encourage a lot of M4s and M3s as well to show up. It
says a lot to the membership when they see their bosses are there and when … I guess it adds value. It
gives the sense that it’s valued further up the line as well.
Lynne: You could also have them co-develop your sessions, like so if you want them to lead a session,
well you get the M3s and the M4s involved to lead the session; so that makes them come out too, you
know.
Dan: Yeah, we started doing that last year.
Lynne: I know! That’s great; that was really good.
And I know you have an Executive, an MForum. Just enlarge your collaborators around it, you know. A
lot of people say “I can’t dedicate my whole time to MForum; I can’t be on the Executive, I don’t have the
time from my job.” But if they can’t have the whole time because of their job, well can they give you a
couple of hours or run a session for you during the day at your annual meeting or participate in one of
the 5 à 7, or one of the half-day sessions that you do, and so on. That just enlarges the people that
come, you know.
Q9: Thank you and an opportunity for last comments.
Dan: Well, I know you’re a very busy person and I appreciate the time you’re taking to speak to us. Is
there anything further you would like to add?
Lynne: Well, I want to thank you. Because as I’ve said, I’ve seen the MForum evolve over the last nine
(9) years. I think you’re in a really good space. You’re hitting the mark in terms of your [conference]
theme last year and your theme this year, and I want to compliment you. I enjoy going.
Dan: Any ideas or thoughts on where we might be going or any suggestions?
Lynne: I think you should look at the behavioural competencies. There’s a lot of great material in that
that I think would be of great value to the employees. Because, you know, there’s an old, old saying
when I first started in HR 40 years ago: “We hire for technical skills; we hire for the knowledge people
have of the area of expertise that they have, and people usually leave us because of fit.
And fit is behaviour. So, a job is rewarding to people usually because they fit well in the job. Apart from
the fact that you’d have to be competent; I’m not taking that away – But we have seven (7) behavioural
competencies and you’re touching on some of the points with your [conference] theme last year and
your theme that you’re going to do this year. In fact, one of our behavioural competencies is
resourcefulness. Well, when you’re talk about Silos and Slabs, you’re going to touch on resourcefulness.
And so those may be some of the areas that you want to look at for future workshops that you want to
do or future things that you want to do, a suggestion.
Dan: So, areas around retention and resourcefulness.
Lynne: Yeah, attraction and retention. And we’re really … we’re still a good ‘gig’ in town. We still attract.
We’re having more difficulty retaining. The environment, the economy is not very good so that’s helping
us a bit. But we’re still a really good gig. So, if we bring them in, we want to keep them. Because in doing
this, I mean we could always invest more, Dan, like, I mean, if we have lots of money, we could have 27
workshops instead of 22, right. But one of the comments that we get from the new employees is about
all the opportunities they have, in terms of training and the ability to talk to their employers, and so on.
So, if we can keep the people here, because we have a huge, huge population of our employees that are
going to be leaving us soon. I mean we’re not any better off than anybody else here in Montreal or in
Canada. We have a pretty high percentage of our population that is over the age of 55 in terms of the
admins and support staff. So, when you’re doing workforce planning or succession planning, talent
management, the 10-year period is not a very long period of time out so we need to really think how
we’re going to retain, so we attract them, that’s still going alright; but how do we retain them?
We’ve just done an engagement survey in Michael’s [Di Grappa] area. Hopefully, eventually we will be
able to do it community-wide, but in Michael’s area we just did an engagement survey; and the
engagement survey evaluates:
“What would you say about your institution that you work for?”
“What would you say to somebody about McGill?”
“Do you like working there?” “Is it a great place.” and
“Do you stay?” is the second criteria that this engagement survey evaluates. So, this is “Well, I won’t be
looking elsewhere because I really want to stay where I am because I’m getting what I need in terms of
fulfillment.”
And in the third component that they evaluate is drive:
“Am I learning?”
“Am I being?”
“Am I engaged?” and
“Am I going over and above what I need to do to do my job for my institution because I really believe in
my institution?”
So, I think there are themes around that that you could do that would help the employees because the
demographics are a little worrisome, you know. And people have to go - they want to, you know. If
you’ve worked here forty (40) years - well, if you want to go.
And we live a long time. So, we want to have another part of our lives that is different. Those are things
that keep me up at night. These are the things that I worry about and how do we keep that knowledge
here; and keep the people here. And, that they feel en francais on dit epanoui, that they are striving and
that they feel good about what they’re doing.
Thank you!
Dan: Thank you very much! Appreciate it.
Lynne: You’re very welcome. It was really lovely.