'We've been successful having HR as an enabler of the change and transformation our business is undergoing in collaboration with our business leaders,' says Elizabeth McSavaney
When Elizabeth McSavaney first joined HR, it was treated as a reactive place to call when problems needed fixing.
Today, as the Head of HR at Zurich Canada and the leader of HR Transformation for North America for Zurich’s global insurance business, McSavaney sits at the strategic table as a key architect of organizational transformation — with a passion for transformation that stems from a background studying human biomechanics and transforming physical health and performance.
Her journey to becoming a global HR leader wasn’t exactly direct, as she graduated from university with a degree in kinesiology. But that foundation and its theme of transformation would profoundly influence McSavaney's approach to organizational dynamics and employee engagement.
“I found my way into HR because I was drawn to that intersection of human performance and connections, and I've worked my way through in various different industries," she says.
Over more than seven years in the insurance sector and throughout her career spanning technology, government, and multinational corporations, McSavaney found a consistent thread: "I've had the opportunity to work in all different disciplines in HR, and it seems a common theme to which I’ve been drawn is anything around change and transformation.”
Transforming HR into enabler of transformation
From her initial connection of human performance with HR through multiple sectors, McSavaney has seen the theme of transformation take hold in the HR function itself.
“When I started in HR many moons ago, it was still very much a back-office personnel function — it was the last resort to fix things, and now we've evolved to be that strategic leader at the table with our business leaders," she says. She believes this transition from reactive to proactive business partner has fundamentally changed how HR leaders approach their responsibilities and makes them better agents of organizational transformation.
"We speak more of the business language now and we have the ability to enable and affect change in a larger capacity than we would have in the past,” says McSavaney. For organizations like Zurich, operating in dynamic industries like insurance and in global markets, this positioning becomes essential.
“What we've been trying to do at Zurich and in the insurance industry, is really an opportunity for us to tell a great story of what the industry brings — it's ripe for transformation,” she says. “And the way that we've been successful at Zurich is having HR at the table as an enabler of the change and transformation that our business is undergoing in collaboration with our business leaders.”
Balancing global consistency with local context
For HR leaders managing workforces across multiple markets and sectors — Zurich has about 9,000 employees in North America, with more than 500 in Canada — McSavaney believes that the principles of effective change management transcend geography. “I think change and transformation is the same, regardless of the industry you work in," she says, but she notes that applying these principles requires deep contextual understanding.
“At the core, as HR leaders, have we been at the table to design the plan of the change transformation that we need to undergo? How are we setting the strategy and how are we going to communicate it and articulate the vision to our employees?” she says, adding that employee engagement and clear, consistent communication forms the foundation of understanding the organization.
McSavaney says that what makes organizational transformation successful is conveying the vision to all stakeholders, which gets buy-in, trust, and loyalty from employees much more than simply rolling it out and letting the impact take effect. This distinction between engaging employees as partners versus treating them as passive recipients represents a fundamental shift in how global HR leaders should operate, she says.
Despite the importance of being able to guide organizational transformation, HR has to be cautious of derailing transformation initiatives by not fulling understanding the business and the industry, says McSavaney.
“The worst thing you can do is go into change management with the mindset that there are specific principles of change management — you first need to understand where people are in their transformation journey," she says. “You need to understand the culture, the political aspects of the organization, and the organizational structure in order to craft a thoughtful plan around how you're going to navigate change," she explains.
The recognition that each organization requires a customized approach contradicts one-size-fits-all methodologies. “Every organization is different, and where I've seen change management work really well is when they’ve taken the time to understand the organization, and where your people are so that you can meet them and take them along for that journey," says McSavaney. “Find opportunities throughout your change management process to include people in the process, so they feel like their voice has been heard, and they will more readily adapt the change when it's launched.”
Harnessing technology while preserving human judgment
The rapid advancement of AI presents both opportunity for significant organizational transformation and an element of risk for HR leaders. McSavaney believes in finding the critical balance between technological capability and human expertise without overdoing it one way or the other. “HR should able to use AI as a tool, not to replace their judgment, and those who do that are the ones who are going to really unlock the value of technology,” she says.
“Technology is there as an enabler, to help as a co-pilot and think through things with you, to ideate things with you,” says McSavaney. “But we still need humans to apply their judgment and expertise, and that's where AI can really help us lessen the burden of the administrative task so that humans can focus on what we do best — building strategic relationships and complex problem-solving.”
"And I think when folks talk about the human-in-the-loop piece around AI, that's what it really means — we have the level of judgment that AI is never going to replace and we need to be able to use that,” adds McSavaney. “That's the sweet space, and ultimately it will enrich people's jobs.”
Building transformation into organizational DNA
McSavaney advocates for embedding transformation capability throughout the global organization into everyday behavior, noting that at Zurich they have change and transformation experts in their operations team, but also consciously coach, train, and guide employees to embed transformation and leadership into their daily behaviors.
“Whether that's through designing their jobs in the right way, giving them access to training and development, or challenging employees for input into transformation, it makes transformation about us as an organization versus about those individuals in the change management team to solve for,” she says. “That's where organizations can build their strength in transformation, and it makes it a lot easier to plan.”
For global HR leaders managing transformation across multiple markets, building transformation capability that’s distributed across the organization becomes a competitive advantage. For McSavaney, as organizational change accelerates, those who embed transformation thinking into everyday practice will adapt more effectively than those relying on specialized functions operating at the periphery of business operations.
