Jess Johannson is rounding out her first year at Canada Goose, the global luxury apparel company that aims to grow revenue from an anticipated $1.1 billion in 2023 to $3 billion in the next five years. Since joining the company, she has been focused on aligning the company’s people strategies and policies across Canada Goose’s three separate regions, North America, EMEA, and Asia/Pacific.
It’s no simple task: While the company’s values are global and set by Canada Goose’s central office, there are nuances and regional differences to take into consideration, especially as Johannson prioritizes HR policies that are flexible enough to address the individual needs each employee brings to the job.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about your journey in HR and how you got to Canada Goose.
I was at a technology company for close to six years by the name of Tucows, and I was approached by a headhunter for Canada Goose. I actually turned them down twice. I felt like I was in my dream job at Tucows…then as I got into more discussions with Canada Goose, there is something so special about the brand, about the organization, about their growth journey, and the fact that they are on this transformational journey that I thought was pretty cool.
For somebody who was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on the prairies, right above the Dakotas, this barren land, I thought that’s a pretty sweet opportunity for me to be a part of it, and so that’s when I took the leap and joined Canada Goose.
How does your CHRO role align with the company’s “transformation journey”?
The first phase of our transformation was called the…organization operating model, and [I] was asked from an HR lens to head up that part of the transformation, and so we wanted to make sure that we were structuring our organization correctly, so that we could scale more effectively.
How we approach our business: We are as one company now. Before, we really did have individual companies operating for different regions, and so that has been the main focus of the transformation.
Have there been challenges to realign into this overarching “one company” structure?
People not wanting to let go…They think that Central can’t possibly make these decisions for [their] region, because we’re not there. We don’t understand…There’s been challenges in terms of inviting collaboration…to understand the operating model of the regions more acutely.
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I’ve had a lot of partnership from our communications team. It’s really important to communicate the why. You can’t just force this on folks, but explain to our people why it’s important that we do this, how we need to scale effectively, how we need to be structured in order to meet those goals.
What are some of the major areas of work you’ve led since you’ve joined Canada Goose?
My vision and the team’s vision from an HR perspective is to really enhance the workplace experience for our global employees, and everything that we do is about enhancing that experience. And so we’ve looked at a number of different things to be able to effectively meet employees where they’re at…none of this one-size-fits-all, [that] doesn’t work. Everybody’s circumstance is different...We want individuals; we hire people, we don’t hire employees. That’s super key to me. It’s the work around the workplace experience that has been pretty special for me in coming to Canada Goose…I hope I’ve made some inroads in convincing folks that they are valued and that we’re a culture of humans; we approach everything that we do with humanity.
Tell us about the origin of the philosophy, “We hire people, we don’t hire employees.”
Near and dear to my heart. We don’t hire employees. We have people. People come with a unique set of circumstances. We never know what’s happening in their personal life, and this nonsense about, “You’ve got to leave your personal life at the door when you come into work.” I mean, get a grip. How does that work? That just doesn’t happen. We want you to bring your authentic self to work. That authentic self includes some of that personal life. I want people to understand that we do hire people and not employees. “Employees” to me connotes an almost inhuman aspect, and that’s not the feeling nor the culture that I wanted to build and drive.
Have you had to convince executives and leaders at Canada Goose of that?
I think it resonated pretty well. I mentioned it when I was first hired at Canada Goose, and people recite it to me today…I think people are there. Whether they are completely bought in? I’m not sure, but I do think that the culture hears it and is receptive to it.