Metrolinx CHRO discusses recipe for cultural success at transportation agency
Act on employee feedback, breakdown silos, and be prepared to adopt Lean ways of working to better support your company’s mission.
These are just a few of the perspectives Ramneet Aujla championed at Metrolinx when the CHRO began reenergizing the company’s HR model.
Aujla joined the Ontario transportation agency in May 2022, and her efforts have helped position Metrolinx not just as an industry leader but a company deeply attuned to the needs of its employees.
It’s not a recipe for overnight success. Upon joining, Aujla found that both the company and the industry were in a state of transformation and knew that HR had to evolve to keep pace with the company’s vision. She soon put in place a multi-year, multi-phased strategy to establish HR as the strategic partner the organization needed, and to bolster its reputation in the marketplace.
“Metrolinx has been on a journey of transformation and I saw an opportunity to jumpstart HR’s own transformation journey to be more forward-thinking, inclusive and strategic to meet the new needs of the organization,” Aujla said.
“My efforts [since] coming in have been centered on creating a culture that puts our people and our clients at the center of all we do. An integral part of this is empowering our people to take calculated risks and make improvements to our processes to best serve our workforce which in turn supports Metrolinx to be a key employer of choice.”
This amount of change isn’t always easy for employees. That’s why Aujla respects the importance of her role in leading the Metrolinx HR team through this transformation. Central to her approach has been recognizing that employees are human beings and that taking care of employees supports better business outcomes.
As a result, understanding the employee experience, and what was making employees leave, became a key part of her strategy. To get to the root cause, Aujla and her leadership team spearheaded further adoption of lean methodology and a mindset of continuous improvement across the HR team.
With this in place, the team was able to identify several opportunities to improve employee well-being – bringing the disability management function in house and expanding psychological support – something that’s directly contributed to better absence rates, improved productivity, and lower costs.
Aujla explained: “We used to use an external service provider to deliver our disability management function and our employees were clear that their experience in this model was not positive. This can be an extremely sensitive time in one’s life, so, it was important that we not just hear the feedback from our employees but also act on it.”
Also supporting retention, the HR division launched new recognition initiatives including the company’s inaugural formal awards program and established Metrolinx’s first-ever Leadership Strategy. By employing a focus on continuous improvement, Aujla and her team were able to reduce enterprise resignations by nearly 25% and address leadership practices, which was one of the organization’s top exit drivers.
Aujla says she is proud that leadership practices no longer feature in the company’s list of top exit drivers.
A part of this puzzle is gender equality and Metrolinx’s inclusion efforts are underscored by its menopause policy—a pioneering step within Ontario’s public sector.
“Approximately 17% of our workforce may currently be impacted by menopause,” Aujla explains. “I'm in the throes of perimenopause myself and, for me, we need to be talking about this and supporting the women in our workforce [if we are to] continue that theme of investing in our people.”
And the company’s investment in gender balance has paid off – the organization has seen record breaking levels of gender representation in the last year.
Strengthening Metrolinx’s talent pipeline also takes center stage on Aujla’s agenda.
“With approximately 45 to 50% of all positions filled internally, it’s critical that our talent is ready,” she asserts.
A robust Leadership Development strategy ensures new and existing leaders are equipped to navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing organization. And with an eye on future labour challenges, a new strategic sourcing function and revamped early career development programs are part of a broader strategy to position the company as a known top employer for prospective candidates in the external market.
Part of being a leader is knowing what success looks like, and the measurement of success at Metrolinx is grounded in rigorous performance tracking.
“We have monthly meetings at an enterprise level to review our key performance indicators,” Aujla explains.
Embedding meaningful key performance indicators into HR’s programs and projects alongside the continuous improvement mindset has helped the team embrace new ways of working. With Aujla at the helm, the Metrolinx HR team is demonstrating what the future of HR looks like.
