Amid AI disruption and economic pressure, five HR leaders say people strategy has never been more urgent
The HR function has arrived at an inflection point that demands a focus on people more than ever, according to top HR leaders. Across industries from gaming and hospitality in Ontario to a nonprofit organization in Alberta and a national law firm from coast to coast, senior HR leaders – all who were recognized as finalists across various categories at the 2026 Canadian HR Awards – say they’re navigating a convergence of pressures: AI restructuring how work is designed, economic volatility straining organizations from the top down, and a workforce that still needs the same human connection it always has. And HR isn’t being displaced by these forces – it’s being called to lead through them.
The accumulation of pressures employees face today has created a moment unlike any before, according to Aman Malhi, Director of People and Culture at Refrigerative Supply in Burnaby, BC.
“There are AI pressures, there are economy pressures, there are results, and then all the mental health issues and the family issues – they haven’t gone away,” says Malhi. “So all this other stuff that’s being added in terms of the economy, AI, immigration, and all these other issues or concerns that we have, they’ve just been added to the ones that we already had.”
Effective people and culture teams can’t be replaced
As Canada’s AI skills gap widens and worker confidence fails to keep pace with the tools already being deployed across Canadian organizations, Malhi pushes back on the notion that technology could replicate what skilled people and culture teams do.
“The effective people and culture teams can really help the business move forward – and not just move forward in terms of revenue and sales, but move forward in a way where everybody feels like they are also moving forward,” she says. “They’re also experiencing growth, they’re also experiencing great moments in their life, whatever that means for them, and so I think human resources, the people and culture – I think now is more important than ever.”
Colleen Falco, Vice-President of Human Resources at Niagara Casinos in Niagara Falls, Ont., grounds the same argument in the realities of hospitality. In her industry, the human experience isn’t incidental. It’s the product itself.
“Reducing transactional work across not just HR but across all of the organization, so that where human touch is required – because in our business human touch is the differentiator – we are maintaining that differentiator,” Falco says. “To continue to deliver a very human experience in a world that’s increasingly becoming more systems or autonomous – a slot machine is a slot machine, but it’s the experience you get when you’re at the property that can only be delivered through people.”
The strategic business partner imperative
The era of HR as a support function is over and organizations today require a people function that understands the business at the deepest level – and is willing to engage with strategy from the start, according to Diana Valler, Chief Human Resources Officer and HR General Manager at H.I.S. Americas in Toronto.
“If before it was business partner, right now I’ll add one more word – you have to be a strategic business partner, leveraging the knowledge that you have,” says Valler. “Nowadays you are dealing with a very, very diverse population – if before you just had full-timers, right now you have part-timers, you have contractors, you have virtual team members, you have virtual teams across the world.”
This shift is especially pressing given that HR is being left out of AI strategy at 37 per cent of Canadian firms, according to a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value – a gap that creates real risk when workforce planning and technology decisions are made in isolation from one another.
“Without understanding strategy, you won’t be able to help,” Valler says. “We have to definitely change from that simple, ‘I'm just like here for HR support’ – I’m here to help you with the strategy because the business truly, truly needs that.”
Building resilience and training the next generation
Melaina Slater, Director of Human Resources at the Calgary Humane Society in Calgary, identifies resilience as the quality HR must now actively construct within organizations – not as a reactive measure, but as a foundational one.
“I think it’s around building organizations that are resilient, adaptable, and where you do have an engaged workforce,” says Slater. “The adaptability piece, I think, is really important – like the pace of how fast change is occurring in our society, in our workforce, and everywhere.”
Slater says that resilience begins with employees who feel connected to purpose, not simply employed to complete tasks. Wellbeing supports and meaningful recognition, in her framing, aren’t extras – they’re infrastructure, she says.
“Just making sure that employees are feeling supported and connected to our mission and our purpose – the wellbeing supports, employee recognition, and making sure that they just feel supported – thereby feeling more engaged, and it just makes anything possible,” she says.
Learning and development at the forefront
At Miller Thomson, a national Canadian law firm, Jessica Watkins, Chief Administrative Officer in Toronto, and Terry Doyle, Senior Director of People and Culture in Toronto, are already working through the practical implications of AI adoption for how future professionals will develop skills and grow within organizations.
“The biggest challenge that most HR professionals are trying to wrap their head around is around training of future generations,” says Watkins. “Some of the things that I would have cut my teeth on early on, may not exist in the same way that they currently do – or, frankly, in any other function of the business.”
As AI is embedded more deeply across business functions, Doyle is already rethinking what organizational and job design will look like in response.
“How do I support our senior leaders with organizational design, job design – it’s all going to change and transform,” she says. “Those are some of the big things that we’re seeing that we’ll be needing to upskill or tweak our own expertise at as the business starts to adopt more and more AI practices.”
Accordingly, organizations need to focus investment in developing and unlocking their talent’s skills potential, says Watkins. “The learning and development piece is going to be a big focus for HR leaders going forward – how to train and ensure that the next generation is able to perform certain functions and to see how AI can enhance some of the work that we do and the work that others do.”
Upskilling and succession planning
This challenge is already visible among Canada’s emerging HR talent, where the gap between AI strategy and human skills has become one of the defining pressures on the next generation of people leaders.
For Falco, the immediate work in her organization runs in parallel: building transferable skills for the workforce already in place while preparing for the expected move of older workers out of the workforce.
“Building skills that are transferable into multiple areas, taking a look at how we can prepare from a succession planning standpoint for the wave of retirements that we are expecting,” she says. “It’s all about growth, development, career pathing, and leveraging our systems.”
The demands converging on Canadian HR are real and escalating. What these HR leaders make plain is that, as organizations embark on their workforce transformation strategies, the answer isn’t less of what makes HR distinctly human – it’s considerably more.
“There's all this verbiage around how AI is going to replace humans and it's going to replace people and culture teams, but I don't think AI can actually do what people good people and culture teams can do,” says Malhi. “So I think human resources, the people and culture, is more important than ever.”
