Info-Tech CHRO will share practical lessons learned from an HR system overhaul in the event’s Leaders Forum
The Leaders Forum at HRFest Canada 2026 is designed exclusively for senior HR leaders at director level and above, with every session operating at board level covering real operating decisions, governance, and the economic pressures shaping people strategy — including "Selling the Stack to the CEO: An HRIS Transformation Story." Shawn Gibson, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont., will be participating in the session and sharing his experience choosing and implementing a human resources information system (HRIS) at his organization.
“Other events can sometimes be more generalized HR versus being able to hear from other leaders, and so I think sometimes it's hard to get leaders to certain conferences,” says Gibson. “But the learning from other leaders, interacting, and making connections [at HRFest Canada] — I'm pretty excited and looking forward to meeting other HR leaders and have great conversations and insights as you're grabbing a coffee, that kind of thing.”
When Gibson set out to transform his company's HRIS, he was managing an organization that wanted to move at startup speed while operating across six countries with nearly 1,600 employees. It was a tension that shaped every decision in the project — and is the kind of real-world complexity that typically stays behind closed doors. But at HRFest Canada 2026, Gibson is bringing it into the open when he takes the Leaders Forum stage.
Taking HR leaders through ‘the trials and tribulations’ of HRIS rollout
In the session, Gibson intends to walk senior human resources (HR) leaders through the full arc of the transformation: from business case and vendor selection to rollout, adoption, and what he would do differently today. “Whenever you're undergoing, selling, and also implementing an HRIS, it’s so massive to the entire world of HR,” says Gibson.
Gibson believes his session at HRFest Canada 2026 is valuable for those who have a rudimentary HRIS up to a more sophisticated one, or an organization looking to replace an existing HRIS system. “It's valuable to hear the trials and tribulations of someone who’s gone through it before and to learn,” he says.
An HRIS overhaul needs to command serious executive attention, according to Gibson. "It's like an octopus," he says. "It's got tentacles throughout the entire team." Of his 30-person HR department, every member interacts with the system in some way — from how data is exported to how workflows are structured for managers across the entire company, says Gibson, adding that the stakes of getting an HRIS right, or wrong, extend far beyond the HR function itself.
For Info-Tech, that complexity was compounded by an unusual organizational dynamic, according to Gibson. The company sits at the intersection of two internal advisory services: Info-Tech covers IT research and advisory, while McLean and Company, its sister division, specializes in HR strategy. "Having both IT and HR advisory in-house adds additional complexity," says Gibson. "They're there to help for sure, but there's definitely a push towards process — how to go about things ‘the proper way.’"
Layered on top was the company's founding culture. "Our founder and much of our executive still looks to us to act like a startup — we want to be able to move quick, fail fast, and to move ahead fairly quickly," says Gibson. That ethos collides directly with the demands of implementing a foundational system. As questions about whether HR and technology functions should be merged continue to reshape how Canadian organizations govern people data and technological transformation, competing internal advisory voices can add both value and friction to any transformation, says Gibson.
Where under-investment costs the most
Gibson says the top lesson the transformation ultimately taught him about resource allocation was the cost of not having enough support for the venture. "We under-invested in support," he says. The specific gap: no dedicated, full-time HRIS resource from the outset. Instead of that single role, multiple HR team members each became experts in their own area of the system — a structure that functioned, but slowly, says Gibson.
"We're already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an HRIS, then you add on the cost of a salary,” he says of the company’s reluctance to dedicate a role to the HRIS transformation. However, that hesitation cost the organization time and efficiency it could not recover, although it corrected course about two years ago by hiring a dedicated HRIS manager — a role Gibson now considers non-negotiable for any organization operating at comparable scale and complexity.
The second lesson was about setting out the clear plan in advance. Gibson is emphatic that locking down HR strategy before implementing a new system is essential. "I really think it's one of those things where you have to slow down to speed up later," he says. He says his own team recently completed a three-year strategy refresh with McLean and Company — whose HR Trends Report 2025 research on technology and HR strategic alignment underscores why that sequencing matters — before moving forward with further HRIS development, emphasizing that the HR strategy must come first — even when the pressure is to move fast.
The payoff for that discipline was significant, according to Gibson. By investing time during implementation to configure custom data fields correctly and ensure they were actively maintained, Gibson's team eventually gained the ability to provide people insights directly to the executive leadership team and the chief executive officer — year-over-year comparisons, workforce trends, and data that shifted HR from reporting function to strategic voice, he says.
Even with a sound implementation, adoption is where HRIS transformations can quietly fail. Gibson is candid about a misstep in Info-Tech's early stages. "We kind of just thought that the management layer of our organization would welcome the shift to the HRIS, and that wasn't the case," he says.
The fix required going back and securing genuine executive buy-in — explaining the rationale, demonstrating how workflows would operate, and showing managers concretely what the system would ask of them. Gibson believes that pivot unlocked the real value of the system's workflow capabilities. "Once you actually collect data and then have a workflow behind it, that was where we saw huge time savings for us," he says.
Past the sizzle: lessons for vendor selection
On the question of choosing the right vendor, Gibson's central piece of advice is about speed — not rushing the process, but accelerating past the pitch. "Get through the sales pitch and the sizzle as quickly as possible," he says. The real evaluation happens “when you're doing the selection, get into the weeds, let your team use the system in an actual hands-on, test sandbox-type of environment,” he says.
Gibson says Info-Tech applied its own structured vendor selection methodology — the same framework the company uses when advising external clients — to its internal process. Gibson credits that rigour with making the core evaluation strong. The gap, he notes, appeared in specific modules, particularly time tracking, where the team did not invest enough hands-on testing before committing.
A conversation worth having in person at HRFest Canada
For Gibson personally, what draws him to HRFest Canada 2026 goes beyond his own session. "I really look forward to those candid, one-on-one conversations with peers," he says. "When you bring such great talent and experience together, those conversations that occur and those interactions are really key."
He says he’s also closely watching the conference's coverage of artificial intelligence (AI). "A lot of HR leaders and HR professionals should be deep into using and knowing what's available with AI," he says. "Things are changing so quickly — events like this really help to stay informed and knowledgeable about what's going on in the world of AI."
The session "Selling the Stack to the CEO: An HRIS Transformation Story" takes place Nov. 11 at the Leaders Forum stage at HRFest Canada 2026 in Toronto. Gibson will be joined on the panel by Julie Turner, CHRO at McCarthy Tétrault in Toronto. Full agenda details and registration are available here.
The full HRFest Canada 2026 program brings together more than 120 speakers across dedicated stages, including the Hangar, the Vault, and the Leaders Forum.
