CHRO shares how hard work and a people focus took company from layoffs to soaring engagement
“The travel industry is a beautiful industry to be in — but it's also a challenging industry to be in, because everything happening macro-economically and politically influences travel,” says Diana Valler. “What do you do in these tumultuous times, and how do you keep the people motivated? It's through open, transparent communication.”
When Valler arrived in Canada from Romania more than 20 years ago, she had two European degrees, executive experience, and no Canadian resumé. Now, as Chief Human Resources Officer at TravelBrands, she’s using that experience to shape a people strategy built on courage, transparency, and innovation, in an industry that has faced its share of challenges.
Valler’s HR journey in Canada began when a prospective employer in her first week tried to steer her into a commission-only sales job because she had no local experience. Instead of accepting, she challenged the premise that having no Canadian experience didn’t mean she didn’t have a certain set of skills.
“You have to have the courage to know your skill set, present it accordingly, and be authentic, honest and, of course genuine about it,” says Valler. “And truly mean what you say, because, of course, you have to deliver.”
That conviction got Valler a position in HR and has carried her through roles in consulting, franchising, software, and now the travel industry. It also underpins how she sees the modern CHRO role: “Have that genuine presentation of yourself, know your skill set, be humble about it, but also ensure that you know that the company is aware of you — and has proof of your work ethic that you can go above and beyond,” she says.
Leading culture through industry shock
Valler’s tenure as CHRO at TravelBrands has been defined by her focus on building support for the people in the organization through times of upheaval. She joined the company in 2019, just as it was beginning a major transformation under new Japanese ownership with a different culture.
“When I went to the CEO's office within my very first week, I presented a strategy — now that we're under new ownership with all these mergers and acquisitions of companies together, I think our vision should be, one company, one vision, one employee experience,” she says. “We started making a mark in calling a town hall within the very first week and making sure that we started working towards it — because getting to be a great place to work is a big journey.”
Within a year, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. According to Valler, TravelBrands ultimately lost more than 60 per cent of its staff as the company fought to survive the shutdown and the pandemic. She says she understood the hard economics, but she was determined that people wouldn’t feel abandoned as the industry reeled.
Communication during the pandemic included a social media page for people on unpaid leave to keep in touch with them weekly, videos with the executive team, and confidential employee surveys. “Building those authentic, meaningful moments with your people through transparent communication, the people will know that you’re there for them,” says Valler. “The travel industry is hard and we have to lay off people [sometimes], but be authentic about it.”
Valler says she has continued this approach as the business faces more difficulty in a volatile global environment that necessitated more recent layoffs.
“We have to continue as the business needs dictate, but we’re honest about it and we tell people ‘This person is no longer with us given the business restructuring, let's all continue to work together — we have even more work to do, but this is the reality of the business,” she says. “And we do our very best to offer them tools, support, the EAP, and a lot of training and coaching internally.”
Rebuilding rewards to maximize employee experience
Valler also believes that empathetic communication must be matched by tangible changes that support employees. “Back in 2019, we had one paid sick day, and within my very first week, we moved to three,” she says. “Now, we have five paid sick days, we have a birthday day that we give to people, we give them two personal days, and we give them volunteer days that are paid by us.”
Those incremental but highly visible changes were layered on top of expanded medical, mental health, and wellness supports, along with added education subsidies and richer service awards that include travel vouchers for long-tenured employees and their families, according to Valler.
“It used to be a slice of a pie, if you will, in the total rewards,” she says. “And now, we have a colourful, beautiful pie, offering people multiple tools — from training, wellness, diversity training, and everything that they need.”
Opening mentorship and learning to everyone
One of Valler’s proudest recent achievements with TravelBrands is a mentorship and succession program that began as a traditional high-potential exercise and evolved into an enterprise-wide development engine. “We did that as a very conscious exercise to identify the high potentials and put them in the program, but as a byproduct of that, mentorship is something to do for high potentials.”
Valler says the company opened the mentorship program to the entire organization so “whoever wants to learn more from a different department, or they want to learn more about a different skill, [can] feel free.” She says employees could volunteer to be mentees, mentors, or both, making the case for why the opportunity mattered to them.
Demand surged, especially around building financial and marketing acumen, and engagement scores jumped, according to Valler. “Our engagement score went through the roof,” she says. “We’ve seen about a 23-per-cent increase in the engagement score, because employees felt, ‘Oh, wow, I can have other opportunities apart from my job.’”
Putting structure around AI and innovation
Looking ahead, Valler sees digital transformation and artificial intelligence as the next major inflection point for HR and the travel sector more broadly. Her stance is pragmatic: technology will automate some tasks, but it should also elevate human work.
“Of course, AI is here, so we’ll tackle the big question and say technology has always been here,” she says. “As leaders, that’s what we have to do — we really have to look ahead.”
At TravelBrands, that has meant pairing experimentation with clear guardrails. Valler says that before running any internal learning sessions on generative AI, she worked with the company’s Japanese-based parent to align on global compliance expectations, then partnered with IT to build local policies and training.
Her message to leaders is to encourage curiosity and pilot AI in ways that remove drudge work, while being explicit that the tools are there to augment, not erase, their roles. “Lots of the main things can be replaced — let’s call it the way it is,” she says. “But you have to communicate to people not to be afraid, it doesn’t mean somebody’s stealing your job.”
Strengthening people during disruption
For Valler, that combination of disciplined strategy and human-centred execution is what the CHRO role now demands, particularly in a sector that can be hit by economic and global shocks. It means speaking openly about layoffs and disruption, redesigning benefits to match real pressures, and creating learning pathways that reach beyond a small group of high potentials.
For Valler, it also means never losing sight of the people at the heart of the business. “You have to really listen to the people and really make sure you’re there for them,” she says. “Because by growing your people, you grow the organization.”
