Blending ‘heart and head’ at Masco Canada

For some HR leaders, the path to the top may be a straight line through human resources. For Rita Perepelitsky, CHRO at Masco Canada in St. Thomas, Ont., the journey was anything but conventional — and her experience along the way informs her approach to HR strategy today. 

“I started in other positions within manufacturing — quality and safety early on and then moving into production management and logistics — and then I finally found my way to HR when I filled the production manager role,” she says. “I did some of the HR things like hiring and promoting, managing grievances under the collective agreement — that's where I started dabbling in HR.” 

Perepelitsky’s formal HR career began at Research In Motion (RIM), where she transitioned from a strategic program manager role in global health and safety into a dedicated HR function. It was at that point that she believes she started recognizing that she had a passion for HR and took steps to develop her skills through HR courses, eventually leading to another company where she rose through the ranks to become VP of HR.  

The unique perspective gained from her manufacturing background is something she sees as a distinct advantage. “Because my background was so broad in the sense of learning the business and manufacturing, it actually led to being able to be very empathetic in terms of what the business and what manufacturing needs, because of my role as a production manager,” she says.

“I knew the importance of getting product out, the metrics, and the KPI's, so when I walked into HR, it was a nice balance of meeting business needs and the people end of HR — I felt it gave me a bit of an advantage having some experience outside of HR before I got into it.” 

Teaching future HR leaders 

Perepelitsky’s passion for HR extends beyond her own career. She’s spent time teaching at the Western University’s Continuing Studies program and management stream.  

“Working with students has really given me a passion to help shape the future of HR professionals, to be able to give back to my community by teaching, and to really help students get a sense of how to bridge the gap between what you learn in the textbook, versus how you apply it in the real world,” she says. 

Perepelitsky no longer teaches at the university, but she’s taken up a new extracurricular pursuit — executive coaching. “I've always been very proud of my leadership style, but taking the executive coaching program was such a humbling experience because I always thought myself to be a coach, but I realized very quickly was that in fact I wasn't a coach — I was mentoring, advising, and consulting — and I learned that the role of an executive coach is about tapping into the person's internal wisdom and helping them develop their critical thinking skills,” she says.

“Recognizing that when somebody comes to their own conclusions, they're more apt to follow through, and there's a lot more progression in their career and their leadership journey, rather than me just giving them the answers, because my lived experience is very different than theirs. 

Since joining Masco Canada in October 2024, Perepelitsky has prioritized relationship-building as the foundation for effective HR leadership, given that she was not only new to the role but also to the company.  

“I know as an HR professional, any time a new employee joins the organization, they ask what they should focus on, and I’ll often say that, for your first few months, focus on building relationships,” she says. “In HR we need to stay grounded in how important it is to build relationships early on, building credibility, trust, and understanding who those people are — people want to partner with people that they trust.” 

“If I would have just come in and just focused on the metrics or the engagement scores or employer branding, and I didn't focus on the people end of things, I think I would have done myself and the organization a disservice,” adds Perepelitsky, who says her strategy after joining Masco Canada included walking around the company and listening to people to get a sense of the company’s culture and understand both what the company does well and its pain points. 

Culture stems from leadership behaviour, not policy 

Perepelitsky also believes that culture is shaped by leadership behaviours, not just policies. “When we think about shifting culture, it isn't shifted or changed by us creating a remote work policy or an attendance policy,” she says. “It's really holding true to our leadership behaviours and making sure that at our level that we emulate the behaviours on a consistent basis —so I've been very intentional about that and making sure that our core values are lived and not laminated, because I think it's very easy to publicize what your core values are, but what happens behind the scenes is really important.” 

Perepelitsky’s role at Masco Canada isn’t limited to traditional HR functions. She’s also an executive sponsor for one of the company’s long-term business strategies — a role that provides her with a broader business perspective and an opportunity to support the business in a different way, she says. 

“This opportunity allows my role to be more involved in the business and to provide impact outside of HR, which I think at that HR executive level is important,” says Perepelitsky. “It's important for us to know that we can't be siloed just within HR, it's really about the impact outside and the horizontal impact that we have on the business.” 

As part of a Canadian business unit within a larger international company, Perepelitsky values the support and knowledge-sharing that comes with being part of Masco Corporation. “We have a solid, local HR team here that is very experienced in terms of any Canadian implications that we need to be aware of,” she says. “And I'm connected on a regular basis with other VPs of HR at the other business units — and there's a lot of information exchange, knowledge exchange, and support for each other.” 

Next generation of HR professionals 

From her university instruction and seeing new additions within her own organization, Perepelitsky sees a new generation of HR leaders bringing a human-centred, purpose-driven approach to the profession. “The new generation of HR, I find them really intriguing, as they're not afraid to ask the tough questions like why or how come,” she says. “And I find that they're very much grounded in purpose and inclusion — and the big one, I would say, is psychological safety and the idea about creating a space where people can speak up without fear of repercussion.” 

For HR professionals who are early on in their career journey, Perepelitsky believes that they need to blend agility and empathy in an age where technological innovation is happening quickly. “I think as we progress in digital transformation and how AI is impacting organizations, they really have to think about their ability to be agile while at the same time be empathetic as we move forward with changes, while embracing analytics,” she says. 

That’s the key for the future of HR — balancing the needs of the business with the human stories behind every number, according to Perepelitsky. 

“I believe that successful HR professionals of the future have to be able to blend heart and head to be able to analyze the data and understand the story of what the data is telling us, while at the same time never losing sight of the human stories behind the numbers that we're seeing,” she says. “Again, it's that balancing the needs of the business and not forgetting that there are humans behind everything that we're trying to change and move forward within HR.” 

“HR is evolving from being that seen as the transactional part of the business to more of that area of the business that's more strategic, so it’s important to keep that in mind and look at it from the lens of organization capability building  — it isn't just within the talent side of the business, but it's in all areas of the business.”