I test every staffing, pay or technology decision by following the work it displaces to the person, the town and the language in which it will actually be done.
I am executive vice-president and chief human resources officer of Grangemont Farm & Home Inc., a retailer listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that sells feed, fencing, pet, garden and hardware supplies through 168 stores in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with two distribution centres and a feed mill. About 9,600 people work for us year-round and roughly 11,200 at the spring peak, and about 2,300 of them are covered by six collective agreements. I am responsible for labour relations, reward, talent, HR operations and our French-language obligations, with C$352 million of annual compensation and benefits expense. I report to our chief executive, Martine Ouellard, and work from our head office in Guelph and our regional office in Drummondville.
I started in June 1996 as a night-shift supervisor in a grocery wholesaler's warehouse in Laval, with thirty-eight order-pickers and a union steward who knew the collective agreement better than I did. I spent the next seventeen years in unionised distribution and food manufacturing, as a labour-relations adviser and then running HR for a chilled-food plant in Saint-Hyacinthe and later for four plants in Quebec and Ontario. I moved into retail in 2014 at a housewares chain owned by a private-equity fund, and joined Grangemont in 2019, a year after it bought a 31-store Quebec chain and inherited its union certifications.
The questions I work on are practical ones. What happens to the work when a store installs self-checkout and a customer still needs a twenty-kilogram bag of layer feed carried to the truck? How should a company bargain when inflation has outrun the wage scale and a strike in April would leave its Quebec stores without seed? Who will run a store in a town of six thousand people when its manager retires? And why should a capable store manager in Victoriaville need English to be promoted? My answers have cost money, and in one case a saving I had promised and did not deliver.
Self-checkout without a layoff
In 46 larger stores we installed self-checkout and moved 117 cashiers into yard-loading and counter-advice roles rather than cutting their hours. Complaints about loading waits fell 44%. The net labour saving was C$1.8 million a year, not the C$4.3 million in the business case.
A five-year agreement without a stoppage
In 2023 we showed the union's bargaining committee our distribution-centre cost model before our first offer. The Drummondville agreements were ratified by 81% and 77% of members, and turnover in the distribution centre fell from 34% to 18% by 2025.
Store managers from the next town
A network of 34 hub stores, each carrying a second assistant manager in development, raised internal appointments to store manager from 31% in 2021 to 77% in 2025 and cut the average time to fill a vacancy from 143 days to 49.
French first in Quebec
We re-authored 130 training modules in French and removed English requirements from 12 of 14 Quebec management posts. Internal promotions to store manager in Quebec rose from 3 of 11 appointments in 2021 to 12 of 14 in 2024.
Current focus
I am rebuilding our store pay structure for 2027. Ontario adjusts its general minimum wage each October and Quebec sets its rate each May, and successive increases have narrowed the gap between a new seasonal hire and a department lead with eight years' service from C$2.75 an hour in 2021 to C$0.90 today. I am also preparing for the 2027 renewal of the two Drummondville agreements and checking whether the self-checkout lanes we redesigned this summer have brought shrink back to its earlier level.
Conversations I welcome
I am not seeking another executive role. With Martine Ouellard's agreement and our board's approval, I would consider one non-executive seat, ideally on a human resources and compensation committee, at an organisation that neither sells to farm, pet or hardware customers in eastern Canada nor supplies Grangemont. I accept a small number of advisory and speaking conversations each year, in French or English.
