Aligning roles, expectations for success at RDH Building Science

Very early in his career, Eli Trindade had a “fascination with people and what makes them tick, and what are their motivations,” he says.

However, he wasn’t sure what job offered that experience, until a mentor invited him into an HR role at the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) and gave him a “front-row seat, not just into what motivates people, but to actually be able to design the experience,” according to Trindade.  

He jumped at the opportunity to have a tangible way of affecting change in an organization and, 16 years later, he’s still doing it in the role of Director of Talent and Culture at RDH Building Science in Vancouver.  

Over his career performing HR roles from HR generalist for LSBC, to a regional HR manager for a UK company, and then HR leader roles at Kiaro and Hammerco Lawyers LLP, Trindade made a key observation: “I started realizing the patterns were the same — most organizations don't struggle because they don't care about people, it's because they don't truly know their people."

Designing job architecture with flexibility, not rigidity 

According to Trindade, when he joined RDH in August 2022, they were revamping their leadership and HR teams with new roles being introduced, which he believes was a good opportunity for the company to reset from being a cost centre to a legitimate business partner.  

“I showed up authentically myself and said, ‘I'm here to enable you, not to tell you we can't do this — it's how can we?'” he says. “It was a little bit refreshing for RDH to see HR in such a partnership level, so my first task was really just getting to know the leaders, getting to know the organization, understanding where the tension and the friction is, and then understand what their motivations are as well.” 

Trindade says one of the first big tests of that partnership was a company-wide job architecture project, which he believes is “foundational HR-type of work,” for the more than 300 employees in locations across Canada and the US. 

“RDH wanted to create a way to consistently, across all offices, be able to say what good looks like at every single role in the organization,” he says. “The goal there was just to bring alignment not just on roles and expectations, but also success criteria.” 

What Trindade brought to the project was his idea of flexibility, he says. “I’m not huge on policy and rigidity, because I just don't think that that allows for the human element to come in, and it gets people stuck in boxes and paralyzes them to a certain extent.” 

Clarity with structure over strict policy 

Instead of policies or a rulebook, Trindade says he pushed to “create a framework that allows people to do their best work wherever they're at, while still making sure there was clarity on what was expected — not trying to document every single thing because we want that nuance of the person being able to make it their own.”  

He says that approach made the project transformational for the company and staff. 

“For employees to understand where they're at, where they can go, and how do they get there, and also for leaders to have a common language that they could use and similar bars to measure success,” he says. “The project taught me that, despite my aversion to structure, structure can be good, but structure needs to be human — it can't be poorly designed and it can't be over-engineered, it needs to be something that actually fits within the organization.” 

He adds that every organization is different, but clarity with a structure is something that can go a long way to transforming culture and performance.  

Making every initiative count in a consulting business 

In the world of engineering consulting, Trindade is clear that time is central to its business and that reality shapes how much time they can take away from people for people initiatives, people, and leaders. “Every initiative needs to count, earn its place and demonstrate value, and have an ROI,” he says. 

However, Trindade doesn’t see time crunch as a constraint — it’s an opportunity to be sharp and not just lean on best practices or what’s hot in the market, while ensuring he understands the value business leaders put on an initiative. 

“I think that's actually what pushes us to make sure that we're very intentional and strategic with our initiatives and that we can speak to the value that they bring,” he says. “And if a people initiative isn’t being selected or it's getting some resistance, then that signals to me that it's time to go back to the top and have a conversation around what really matters.”  

As a result, Trindade believes HR needs to “really be intentional and focus on how you add value to the organization you're in right now, because every organization is going to have different maturity levels where they are in their people journey.” 

Understanding the business key to strategic partnership 

The evolution of HR at RDH during his tenure has been about moving from a transactional place to where people come when things are complex, with HR determining how to make it easier or smoother for everybody else and navigate that tension, says Trindade. He also sees a broader shift in how leadership and power are understood, but HR needs to build credibility to stay as a business partner, he adds. 

“Understand the business — don't just focus on the HR practice,” he says. “If you're able to talk dollars and understand the business as a whole, then you're really seen as a business leader rather than just a people leader.”