Thirty years from the warehouse floor to the compensation committee

Mandate

Make Grangemont one employer across four provinces and two languages after its 2018 acquisition of 31 Quebec stores, renew the Drummondville agreements and build store-manager succession for a small-town network.

Outcomes

• Renewed the distribution-centre and feed-mill agreements in 2023 for five years without a stoppage; distribution-centre turnover fell from 34% to 18%.
• Raised internal appointments to store manager from 31% in 2021 to 77% in 2025 through 34 hub stores; average time to fill fell from 143 to 49 days.
• Re-authored 130 training modules in French; Quebec training completion rose from 58% to 93%.
• Installed self-checkout in 46 stores without layoffs, moving 117 cashiers into yard and advice roles.
• Raised the share of returning seasonal colleagues from 24% in 2020 to 52% in 2025.

Decisions in context

Martine Ouellard recruited me to integrate the people side of a company that had just doubled its Quebec presence. Grangemont had bought Magasins Ruisseaulac in 2018, and with it 31 stores, 17 union certifications and a workforce used to working in French with a family owner who knew everyone. Head office ran in English and treated Quebec as a region. My first year went on listening, harmonising benefits and agreeing with the unions how existing agreements would apply under new ownership. Since then I have led the 2023 Drummondville bargaining, the hub-store programme for store managers, the French-first review of our Quebec operations and the workforce side of self-checkout. I attend the board's human resources and compensation committee and present our bargaining mandates and store-manager bench to the full board. I do not sit on Grangemont's board myself.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing the 2027 store pay structure and the 2027 Drummondville renewal.

Mandate

Reduce store turnover, build a seasonal workforce for the fourth-quarter peak and run labour relations at the distribution centre.

Outcomes

• Reduced annual store turnover from 88% to 61% through predictable minimum hours and a published path to keyholder roles.
• Raised the seasonal rehire rate from 22% to 47% with a register of returning colleagues.
• Closed 19 underperforming stores in 2016, placing 164 of 410 affected colleagues in nearby stores.
• Bargained a first collective agreement at the Brampton distribution centre in 2018 after certification, without a dispute.

Decisions in context

Brisfield was my first retail employer, and its labour market surprised me. In a plant I bargained once every few years; in Brisfield's stores, schedules were negotiated with every part-time colleague every week, and most of them could leave for a similar job across the mall. I worked with Colm Whitacre, then chief executive, on store turnover, which was costing us more in hiring and training than it would have cost to promise colleagues a minimum number of hours each week. We published a path from sales associate to keyholder and assistant manager and kept a register of seasonal colleagues to invite back each autumn. In 2016 I led the people side of 19 store closures. When distribution-centre employees applied for certification in 2017, I made sure managers answered questions factually and within the law, and we reached a first agreement in 2018.

Reason for the move

The fund sold Brisfield to a US retailer in 2019, which moved HR leadership to the United States; recruited by Grangemont.

Mandate

Renew the plants' collective agreements without stoppages, standardise HR practice across four plants and lead the people side of any consolidation.

Outcomes

• Completed seven renewals across the five collective agreements between 2009 and 2013 without a work stoppage.
• Led the 2012 consolidation of the Brantford plant into London with fourteen months' notice; 71 of 240 employees transferred.
• Cut the backlog of grievances across the four plants by 52% with joint resolution meetings.
• Introduced bilingual safety training across all plants; recordable injuries fell 29% over four years.

Decisions in context

I moved from running HR at one plant to labour relations across four, two in each province, with five agreements and two quite different legal settings. Ontario's labour relations rules and Quebec's labour code produced different habits in bargaining and grievance handling, and I learnt not to export the practice of one plant to another without asking why it worked there. The defining decision of this period was the consolidation of Brantford into London in 2012, which ended 240 jobs in one town and created about 90 in another. We gave fourteen months' notice, longer than legally required, kept a job-search centre open for a year and offered every employee a transfer. Seventy-one moved. I also introduced bilingual safety training, because a French-speaking maintenance crew from Granby kept being trained in English when they worked in London.

Reason for the move

Moved into retail to lead HR for a large store workforce, after the consolidation work was complete.

Mandate

Rebuild labour relations after a seven-week strike in the autumn of 2002 and clear a backlog of more than two hundred grievances.

Outcomes

• Reduced outstanding grievances from 214 to 31 by 2006 through weekly meetings with the union executive.
• Negotiated the 2005 and 2008 renewals, both ratified without a strike vote.
• Cut absenteeism from 7.8% to 5.1% by redesigning the shift rotation with a joint committee.
• Completed an executive MBA part-time.

Decisions in context

I arrived six months after a strike that had left supervisors and union officers communicating mostly by letter. Luc Ferraudière, the plant manager, wanted the plant to function again and was honest that he did not know where to start. We started with the grievance backlog, meeting the union executive every Tuesday morning for a year and working through the files in the order they had been filed. That order mattered: it told employees that their old complaints counted as much as the easy ones. By 2006 the backlog was 31 files. A joint committee redesigned the shift rotation, which had been the source of many grievances, and absenteeism fell. I studied for my MBA in the evenings and at weekends from 2006, partly to understand the plant's finances well enough to argue about them.

Reason for the move

Promoted to director of labour relations and HR for the four Canadian plants.

Mandate

Handle grievances and arbitration files for both warehouses and support the employer's bargaining committee.

Outcomes

• Handled about 180 grievance files, settling most before arbitration.
• Served as the junior member of the employer's bargaining committee for the 2001 renewals.
• Built a seniority and scheduling register shared with the union, ending disputes over posted lists.

Decisions in context

After three years on the warehouse floor I asked Gilles Ostrander, the Laval warehouse manager, to recommend me for the labour-relations team, and he did. I handled grievances for both warehouses, prepared arbitration files and learnt from a senior adviser how to read a clause in light of how it had been applied for twenty years. Most of the disputes I handled concerned schedules, overtime and seniority. I found that many could be settled by looking at what the posted lists had said at the time, so I built a seniority and scheduling register that both the company and the union could consult. In 2001 I sat as the junior member of the employer's bargaining committee. Watching experienced negotiators on both sides taught me that a bargaining table rewards preparation far more than cleverness.

Reason for the move

Recruited to run HR at a single food plant, with broader responsibility than a specialist role allowed.

Mandate

Run the night shift's order picking and loading for deliveries to independent grocers across Quebec.

Outcomes

• Reduced picking errors on the night shift by about 40% by pairing new pickers with experienced ones for their first month.
• Cut night-shift overtime by a quarter by agreeing the posting order with the union steward.
• Trained two pickers who later became shift supervisors.

Decisions in context

I took the job straight out of university because it was available and paid better than an HR assistant role. It turned out to be the most useful thing I did. The night shift picked and loaded orders for independent grocers who needed their deliveries at dawn, and its work depended on people who had done it for years. My second week taught me that I did not know the collective agreement, when Gisèle Normandeau, the union steward, showed me that I had given overtime to the wrong people. I learnt the agreement properly after that, and we began agreeing the posting order before each week, which cut overtime and grievances together. I also learnt that a supervisor on nights is most of the company for the people on that shift. After three years I wanted to work on the rules themselves, not only apply them.

Reason for the move

Moved into the company's labour-relations team.