A recognized expert on leadership and human resource management in Canada, Dr. Nita Chhinzer is the principal agent for Accountable HR. Dr. Chhinzer takes a very pluralistic approach to her area of expertise, both inside and outside of the workplace. She has multiple work identities that converge to advance the human resource management profession and improve workplaces: professor, author, consultant, and corporate trainer/speaker.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Dr. Nita Chhinzer:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
We spend so much of our waking time at work. The notion of trading our time for money is being replaced with the idea that work is an expression of our values, our motivations, and our contributions to society. More specifically, in Canada, the concept of work suggests that individuals make decisions about their careers and professional development, with the potential to change, adapt, or modify their career trajectory as they see fit.
Outside of the workplace, Dr. Chhinzer continues to leverage her expertise through voluntary contributions. She is on the Governance Professionals of Canada’s COVID-19 Advisory Panel and the Advisory Board for the Canadian HR Reporter magazine. She has served on numerous boards of directors for non-profit organizations (currently on the Board of the Toronto Centre for Learning and Development). She is also a highly sought after media contributor, discussing a variety of HR issues with 21 professional development webinars, 14 professional magazine contributions, 35 news/TV contributions, and over 45 radio contributions during the last 2 years alone.
Describe your background and what did you do before you started/joined the company?
Rather than being a career academic, Nita re-entered academe after working in the tech sector post-MBA. The most pivotal experience came in 1998-2002, when she worked for Canada’s leading technology firm (Nortel Networks). In 2000, the company was in its prime. It had 93,000 employees and $30 billion in revenue. By 2002, the company was in turmoil, with missed revenue targets, accounting scandals, and stock instability. Mass layoffs occurred frequently and without warning. Nita felt that the instability could have been partially neutralized with a more proactive and responsible approach to restructuring.
That inspired her to pursue a PhD in management, launch a management consulting firm, and start sharing her expertise through authorship, research, and public speaking. With the unique combination of a practice-focused MBA and a research-focused PhD; she continues to bridge the academic and practical worlds today.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
The professor role (Department of Management, University of Guelph) helps current students, other academic colleagues, and the overall management discipline. The world of work continually evolves. As such, my area of expertise requires me to keep learning. It requires the ability to forecast internal and external pressures that reshape how employers and employees achieve organizational goals.
Authorship helps future managers, entrepreneurs, and employees. Regarding authorship, Dr. Chhinzer positions responsibility for talent management as a function of every manager, not just the HR manager. She incorporates multiple HR executive interviews, current company examples and leading academic research results in her writing. Collectively, this helps to reinforced the notion of a shared responsibility for improving the world of work.
The consulting firm (AccountableHR) helps current leaders, managers, and employees. This began organically, when a colleague at a Human Resource Professional Association board meeting began describing the challenges their organization was experiencing, after an acquisition. Retention of key employees was critical to the success of the acquisition, but the company didn’t know where to start. Dr. Chhinzer helped the organization collect valid and reliable metrics about employee performance, competencies, and interests. She implemented incentive programs, career development support, and a mentorship program based on well-researched best practices. This created a win-win situation for both the employer and employees. Nita continues working towards developing mutually beneficial solutions, presenting unbiased but data driven information, and forecasting the next big issues in the workplace.
Corporate training helps executives and their organizations. Dr. Chhinzer has over 20 years of experience training executives, as well as teaching at the MBA and Executive Programs levels with success. Her approach to corporate training uses experiential learning, simulations, cases, AI, physical activities, and team challenges to transfer knowledge effectively.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
I feel the most successful on the days that I learn something new and engage in knowledge exchange. It fuels and inspires me. However, learning doesn’t come from simply reading a book. It comes from experiences, conversations, observation, and critical thinking. I purposely join diverse groups and encourage dissent from group thinking in my personal and professional environment to provide an opportunity to learn about different perspectives, concerns, and issues. Having multiple work identities helps me transfer and explore issues from one role to another in a unique way.
I value information exchange that is unbiased and aware of both internal and external changes and trends. I am highly numerically oriented. Thus, I value and use metrics, evidence, or data analysis to help understand complex issues.
Which are the major services of the company and how do they the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
As a management professor, I research organizational change management, employer decision making, and negative organizational events like layoffs and restructuring, with the aim of balancing employer and employee needs and responsibilities. I teach in both human resource management and business consulting disciplines at all levels (B.Comm, MBA, MSc, PhD).
My consulting practice (AccountableHR) extends this expertise to help companies implement change and adopt policies that maximize their potential for success. I use evidence-based research and data analysis to guide decision-making. Recent consulting activities include assisting a North American franchisor with recruitment and retention needs, helping an international software firm understand and articulate its value proposition to HR stakeholders, integrating an HRIS at a non-profit organization, and strategizing around how a healthcare center could adapt to Covid-19 realities.
The Human Resource Management textbook I co-author helps future managers learn about the complexities of the evolving workplace and build the skills needed to be adaptable and effective. It is grounded in the perspective that responsibility for managing, motivating, and developing workers is shared between all organizational managers, and not isolated to the HR department.
Lastly, I am regularly invited to speak at multiple industry and corporate training events regarding current HR issues like the impact of COVID-19 on workplaces, job loss or restructuring, communicating bad news, remote/hybrid workplaces, evolving management competencies, EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion), as well as workplace wellness issues.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
The world today needs leaders who engage in continuous learning and think about the impact of their expertise outside of a singular company or domain. The new world of work requires us to innovate, collaborate, and share knowledge so our expertise can positively impact multiple stakeholders. Sharing knowledge is the key to unlocking our true potential, and we need to be prepared to be co-creators and co-producers of our own destiny.
In your spare time, coach a sports team, mentor someone, or attend seminars. Offload tasks that don’t add value to give you time for creativity, learning, and growth. Get out of your comfort zone and try something new!
