'When I talk to people about career development, we talk about your job five years from now – that might not even be a job that exists today'
When Karen Collins talks about “slack,” she doesn’t mean wasted time, she means space to breathe, reflect, and innovate. In today’s high-speed work culture, carving out intentional downtime has become a radical act.
At BMO Financial Group, where Collins serves as Chief Talent Officer, that philosophy has been built into the calendar.
“What we want to do is create some space for innovation, and what we call ‘slack’, so that people can think about innovating, think about doing things differently, think about building a skill, think about their own well being,” Collins says.
“It gives people permission to decline a meeting or create some space.”
This thinking led BMO to roll out “Supercharge Friday”—a monthly afternoon block on Friday afternoons, pre-scheduled and endorsed by leadership: “The invitation goes into people's calendar from their C-suite leader, so it's an invitation that shows up in your teams, in your calendar.”
It’s not mandatory, Collins explains, but it is permission-giving: decline meetings, skip the email churn, and use the time to grow in a way that matters to you.
“Why is that important? Because for every employee, no matter where you are in your career cycle, there'll be different things that are important to you, and so how do we give people license and permission to curate something that is going to make them, personally, a better professional,” she says.
“Those are things that have been wildly successful, and it gives people a bit of license back, to kind of take their own development into their hands.”
Collins’ path to HR leadership wasn’t conventional; early in her career, she thrived in consulting, working on large-scale human capital and change management projects. But over time, she realized she wanted to see whether the strategies she recommended were actually making a difference.
“My role was the human capital, communications, change management part of those big engagements – and I loved the work,” she says.
“But [I] quickly realized that in order for me, at that point in my career, to learn how things got implemented and if they worked or if they didn't, coming on to the client side in HR really was something that I needed to do.”
That move led her to BMO, where she found an organizational culture deeply committed to learning and development – values that resonated deeply.
“Ultimately, why I chose HR business partner work at BMO was... the organization's commitment to learning, to building skills and careers, and I loved the organization's alignment with customers and communities.”
Two decades later, those same elements keep her inspired: “It's quite lovely that, 20 years on, those are still the things that keep me excited and engaged about being at BMO.”
When Collins began her HR career, technology was a helpful tool – but now, it’s the backbone of how employees experience work: “Definitely the focus on technology as part of the employee value proposition.”
As Collins explains, tech today isn’t just about systems and platforms – it’s about culture; whether it's the way someone finds a job, joins the company, or collaborates with colleagues, these digital touchpoints now shape how employees feel about their workplace.
“When I first started in HR, technology was something that was an enabler, for sure, but now it's front and center to what it feels like to work for a company,” she shares, emphasizing the importance of thoughtfully integrating tech into every phase of the employee journey.
“It's so part of the EVP. So when you're an HR person, you think about the whole life cycle of the colleague, and technology is a big piece of that. You need to be technically savvy.”
In a rapidly shifting world, people want more than just pay and benefits, they want their work to mean something. Collins sees this clearly across age groups and intentionally builds this into her team’s engagement.
“We have six generations in the workforce now … and a lot of people, not just the younger generations, are looking for purpose and meaning in their work,” she says.
“We have a lot of people who are very seasoned and senior and experienced, and we have a lot of people who could be their grandchildren,” she says, pointing to the bank’s mix of tech professionals and front-line retail staff. This wide generational spread, she explains, has challenged BMO to rethink how it supports its employee base.
The solution? Meet people where they are, she says: “It's about creating programming and organizational development opportunities that work for everybody.”
Employees want to grow, but the path forward is no longer linear – according to Collins, a main concern for employees now is staying relevant. It’s a concern which BMO is helping to address with purposeful, skills-based approaches to career development.
“The pace of skills is changing. Meaning skills are becoming outdated faster than ever, and people feel this sense of, ‘how do I keep myself fresh?’” she explains.
“Having a skills-based organization and skills-based development plan is super important, whether people want to evolve in their current role... or they may be thinking about a pivot, doing something new or different or interesting in their career.”
Part of BMO’s strategy involves capturing and analyzing data about what skills employees want and what they’re good at.
“One of the things we're doing is asking our employees to tell us the skills they have and tell us the skills they want to build,” Collins says; through the company’s internal development platform, employees create “talent profiles” to identify their current skills and future aspirations.
“That’s allowing us to build personalized career maps for people. Right now, over 60% of our colleagues are accessing these tools,” she says, explaining that career growth shouldn’t be a separate track – it should be baked into everyday work.
“Especially when you're doing development at scale – which when you're a big company, you are thinking about – how do you use technology in a personalized way to deliver learning to everybody?” Collins says.
“They can learn things that are important to their career, but also important to them as leaders. That's something that we're doing that helps build purpose in the flow of work, as people deliver the work that they do.”
