UFA’s inaugural Chief People and Culture Officer, on cooperative HR leadership and the culture program designed to last a century
When United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) created its first Chief People and Culture Officer role in December 2025, it signalled more than a structural shift. For a co-operative founded in 1909 and built on rural member ownership, it meant people strategy had earned a permanent seat at the executive table.
Kim Clauss, who took on the newly created role at UFA – a Calgary-based member-owned co-operative with more than 120,000 member-owners and approximately 1,300 employees – brings HR leadership experience across energy, technology, and real estate. Stepping into a co-operative has reinforced, rather than changed, how she thinks about the HR profession, according to Clauss.
The co-operative difference
The co-operative model removes a tension that often defines HR in publicly traded companies, says Clauss.
“With shareholders and being in a publicly traded space, you’re kind of trying to balance that, what’s good for the shareholder and what’s good for the employees,” she says. “Here it’s easier. There’s less of that balancing act because the members and the community members want what’s good for the employees, because they’re their people, so it’s a tighter connection that I really enjoy.”
Members, delegates, and community partners all weigh in on how UFA’s employees perform and how the organization feels from the outside – feedback that, Clauss says, makes her people strategy both richer and more accountable.
Scaling talent across a rural footprint
Recruiting an developing talent across a predominantly rural footprint carries particular complexity in agriculture, where Statistics Canada data shows nearly half of the sector's workforce is seasonal.
UFA is in an active period of expansion. The co-operative acquired key assets from AgraCity Crop and Nutrition Ltd. in April 2026, as reported by The Western Producer, and opened its first Saskatchewan farm and ranch supply store a month later. Recruiting and developing talent across a predominantly rural footprint is a defining challenge – and Clauss says UFA brings a generational advantage.
“We’ve got families with multi-generations working here,” she says. “We’ve got one family that’s four generations in. It gives us a bit of a step up in the recruitment – we grow them young and keep them.”
In newer markets such as Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the focus shifts to building brand recognition as an employer, according to Clauss. “It’s about building our brand reputation and building knowledge of the brand because we are new in those areas,” she says. “So we’re going at it from all angles.”
Central to UFA’s approach is the Future Field Leaders program – a two-year rotational initiative developed with post-secondary institutions – through which graduates gain exposure to store operations, supply chain, procurement, and finance before moving into field leadership. It’s the kind of internal career development approach that forward-looking Canadian employers are building from within. UFA is also developing a homegrown certificate program for employees without formal post-secondary credentials, says Clauss.
“UFA has been around for a really long time and we have really long-tenured employees,” says Clauss. “One of our issues is making sure that we’ve got the right people in the pipeline to fill the roles in the future.”
Culture is not separate from strategy
On what HR leaders most consistently underestimate, Clauss believes it’s how important culture is to an organization’s business.
“Culture is not at all separate from commercial performance – it drives it,” she says. “It’s how you show up every day – in the office or in your job. It becomes the ethos of everything that we do: how you treat people, how you treat your customers, how you think.”
For people and culture executives entering complex organizations, the people function needs to be built around commercial credibility, according to Clauss. “Learn how the business makes money,” she says. “Learn what it’s like to be in the field or on the floor. Listen to your employees and your customers. Understand where their bottlenecks are and then solve real business problems.”
This philosophy mirrors the business-first approach other Canadian HR leaders have put at the core of their people function. “I hope the industry of HR is getting past that you’re just the fluffy people person,” Clauss says. “No, we’re business people, and we need to be business people, but we need to do that with people in mind because they’re what drives your success.”
A new leadership forum
The centrepiece of Clauss’s first year at UFA is Leadership Launch: The Next Chapter – a seven-month initiative underway with a cohort of 70 people “going through a leadership journey together,” says Clauss.
“We’re concentrating on the mindset that we need as we move forward with our growth and with the cooperative to make sure that we’re sustainable for 100 years out,” she says, adding that the framework is organized around five qualities: humble, adaptable, authentic, rigorous, and caring.
Participants start with structured self-reflection before gathering for a three-day offsite session. The program is then designed to eventually cascade through the broader organization and become part of UFA’s onboarding and orientation – in the same spirit as the deliberate culture-building work other Canadian member-owned organizations have pursued through rapid growth and change.
“It really is driving the mindset, how we treat each other and our customers and our members,” Clauss says. “So it’s going to filter out throughout everything that we do here.”
UFA enters its next chapter with its first dedicated HR executive at the leadership table. For Clauss, the leadership program is proof that a recognized workplace culture must be built deliberately, not inherited.
“That is a testament to the belief of the entire executive team that our people are what makes us successful ,” says Clauss. “A strong strategy will struggle without a culture built on trust, clarity, and accountability.”
