How HR can keep productivity flowing when the money isn’t

Canada’s lagging productivity is no longer just an economist’s concern. Recent analysis from Statistics Canada, highlighted in a new review of business dynamism, ties weak productivity growth to soft competitive pressure and slow diffusion of innovation. For employers, that translates into organizations that underinvest in improvement. 

For HR leaders, the question is not whether they can fix the productivity problem alone, but whether they can design work and systems in ways that either reinforce the drag or help to break it — and do it with fixed or reduced budgets and headcounts. 

The foundation for productivity in a constrained environment is structural, not rhetorical, says Jamie Bruno, Vice-President, People and Transformation at Ontario Tech University. 

“We routinely examine our job architecture and our workforce design, and how this is responsive to our organizational strategy, recognizing that companies and businesses across industry and sector are shifting key strategic priorities very quickly,” he says. “Without the alignment with strategy and business goals, even the most competent professionals will meet with headwinds that limit or impede performance.”  

Creating value for the organization 

HR’s business now is about value creation, a change from when it was seen as a service-related function — meaning it plays a key role in an organization’s productivity measures. And whether it's now or when the economy and the labour force are more robust, value always starts with alignment.

Bruno believes that productivity problems often sit in mismatched roles, unclear accountabilities, and outdated structures — not in supposedly underperforming people. HR’s job is to keep strategy, job architecture, and workforce design in sync so employees aren’t fighting against the system just to get their work done, he says. 

“I've seen a shift in mindset in the evaluative tools that organizations are using,” says Bruno. “Paying closer attention to things that relate to the employee experience and then attempting to make that link to more conventional or traditional productivity measures.” 

Redesigning work into collaborative systems 

BC Hydro, funded by ratepayers and tightly constrained on budgets, faces classic productivity pressures. Senior Vice-President, People and Chief Human Resources Officer Carolynn Ryan says the first move has been to determine what work should exist at all. 

“We are trying to do more with less and really asking leaders to dig into looking at things like, employees [working] on things that they like to do,” say Ryan. “So we really need to challenge leaders to say, what are some things that we just don’t need to do anymore?”  

Ryan encourages leaders to quietly drop low-value reports and routines and see whether anyone notices, then reinvest that time into higher-impact priorities. The same mindset applies to structure: questioning whether every business unit needs its own analysts and specialists, or whether shared pools could create scale and better career paths, she says. “Redesigning work is about what are the tasks that make up that work, and where might that function be more efficiently placed,” says Ryan. 

The illusion of individual productivity 

Hybrid work is another place where Ryan sees a hidden productivity trap. “One of the things I’m noticing is people are productive when they’re at home, and they’re tightly trying to hold on to that flexibility that would allow them to keep working from home,” she says. “But what I’m noticing is that they’re individually productive and we’re not working together to make us all more productive together, so there’s this illusion of individual productivity that we’re starting to really spend time looking into.”  

Her team has responded by keeping flexibility where possible while shifting metrics toward collective outcomes and service performance, and by helping leaders design in-person time that is explicitly about collaboration and problem-solving rather than presenteeism, she says. 

“We're really good at being crystal clear on our priorities in our strategic plan for the next three years, but then we really focus on the deliverables this year that we need to do collectively,” says Ryan. “And then those all show up on one piece of paper, so we have a clear line of sight around our purpose for the year.” 

Ryan believes that none of this works without strong frontline leadership. “I always say direct, correct, coach, and praise,” she says. “People leaders have to be doing those four things with regular cadence, every day and every week, talking to people.”  

For HR, that means moving to the slower work of building managerial confidence, especially around accountability conversations that protect wellbeing by setting clear, realistic expectations. “When people are succeeding, they're succeeding with clarity from their managers, and we know that people don't leave companies, they leave managers,” says Ryan. “So I'm really focusing on that important relationship between employees and managers.” 

Metrics that matter – and the danger of the wrong ones 

Wendy Cukier, professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Toronto Metropolitan University, warns that many organizations talk about productivity without agreeing on what they’re actually trying to improve. 

“My number one piece of advice is, you have to understand what your metrics really are,” says Cukier. “So when you talk about productivity, is that how many applications we’ve processed, is that how many people we’ve hired? Is that how we’ve contributed to corporate culture and employee engagement? Is that tied to the retention? Is it going to be tied, as it is in many large corporations today, to a reduction in headcount?”  

Her challenge to HR leaders is to define whether they’re being measured only on their own output or also on how they enable productivity in the rest of the organization, including through culture, engagement and retention. 

On the tool side, Cukier sees significant potential to help productivity under cost pressure. “Technology for me is key,” she says, pointing to opportunities across recruitment, testing, onboarding, training, performance management and the “boring process optimization” that still consumes numerous HR hours. But she also warns that poorly designed AI and monitoring can undermine psychological safety, exclude good candidates, and drive high performers out — wiping out any nominal gains in speed or headcount reduction. 

From programs to integrated performance systems 

Across these experts, a consistent message emerges: productivity in an organization facing cost and headcount pressures won’t be solved by isolated HR programs. It requires integrated performance systems that connect strategy, structure, metrics and everyday leadership behaviour, according to Bruno. 

“I think that there are inherent flaws in the way that a number of engagement surveys are constructed, and it's inherent in any type of survey, especially one that's more general,” he says. “The expectation is that you're going to do something with the data, but oftentimes the data is flawed if there isn't really a focus and a commitment on the methodology — So what's important to me in this space is that we're looking at life cycles, internal ecosystems, and a more connected system.” 

He also believes that HR and other departments must collaborate rather than work in silos to push organizational productivity. “It’s important for us to measure or understand where that cross-collaboration is happening, that we're not working individually, and we're focused on collecting data and intelligence more around specific programming,” he says. “Coordinated, cross-functional teams optimize information sharing, deepens awareness and knowledge around planning and outcomes, and leverages inputs that deliver better products.” 

Bruno also stresses the importance of working closely with organizational leadership to develop and enhance leadership behavior. “And investing in developing leaders is a crucial variable in this productivity equation, so they're not left alone to figure out for themselves how to adapt to the changing workforce and the changing nature of our economy,” he says. 

A connected system mindset 

Cukier, for her part, believes that if HR isn’t seen as driving organizational performance, “they’ve lost the game.”  

“Across functional areas, having evidence, data, arguments, and stories that show very clearly how the strategies that they’re implementing will produce the results their leaders want, is extremely important,” she says.   

HR leaders have a responsibility to think more in a connected system mindset with life cycles and end-to-end perspectives in mind, according to Bruno. “HR has to think more expansively, and there's a serious risk for organizations through their HR departments where there’s a singular or issue-isolated focus, because we don't live in that world anymore,” he says. “We have to be better business leaders as HR leaders, and you have to understand and integrate into the business more deeply to show your value and to create value.”