Message from CEO & Chair

To begin, we want to take a moment to again acknowledge that as business has changed through the ongoing pandemic, HR professionals have been there supporting health, safety, dignity, and success – one workplace at a time. This past year has not been without its challenges, but we also recognize that many positives came out of the crisis. One of the key takeaways is the importance of belonging to a community. In so many ways, the HR profession stood tall together while apart, demonstrating the courage, innovation and resilience that are intrinsic to our profession.

We know these have been challenging and even exhausting times for members and their organizations, but there is a bright future ahead for our profession. Businesses will continue to evolve and adapt to new ways of working, and CPHRs are best equipped, through their education, experience, and expertise, to help shape the future of work.

This year, CPHR Manitoba continued to remain focused on providing the highest level of support to our members. Due to the ongoing pandemic, CPHR Manitoba’s programming looked a bit different with everything being delivered virtually, but overall, the association had a good year making progress under each pillar of our strategic plan – promote the CPHR brand, support CPHR development and foster public confidence in CPHRs. Click here to read the full 2020-2021 Annual Report.

Promote the CPHR Brand

Over the past few years, CPHR Manitoba has invested in promoting the CPHR brand across Manitoba. In addition to our usual sponsorships with the Chambers of Commerce throughout the province, this year those efforts included a campaign titled “Are you ready?” which focused on asking if business leaders were ready for the future of work and the role of HR professionals. We developed a commercial that aired on CTV along with static ads that played off our campaign messaging for use on LinkedIn and other web and print media. And a Jets sponsorship involved a banner ad that displayed on the glass behind the net at 10-minute intervals during the game.

The Manitoba Chambers of Commerce's Business Outlook Survey results indicated that awareness of the CPHR designation increased from 43% to 62% over the past two years. We’re also pleased to share that we ended the year with a record high number of CPHR Manitoba members. We ended the year with 1,689 members and overall membership has increased 28.64% in the past seven years. We were able to again help our members by offering a payment extension and/or plan for membership dues this year recognizing that some of our members, or the organizations they work for, have been financially impacted in unprecedented ways and to varying degrees.

We remain focused on certification and the value of the CPHR designation – now is the time to ensure HR maintains its place as a strategic organizational partner. Over the last year, we invested additional time and resources into reaching potential CPHRs, especially using LinkedIn Recruiter from which we received 23 new members. We hosted several virtual information sessions with post-secondary institutions across Manitoba and continued to work with institutions to become accredited. There were also a few updates made to the Validation of Experience this year with the incorporation of 'Foundational' HR experience and the introduction of the ‘fast-track’ route under the executive path.

Support CPHR Development

When the pandemic hit back in March 2020, we wanted to help members sort through all the information and updates surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. We continued updating and maintaining the COVID-19 resource page to our website throughout the year with articles, webinars, and information relating to new announcements.

CPHR Manitoba also continued to provide our professional development and other events virtually. In place of the annual conference, we offered a virtual PD Passport Series, which ran from October to April covering trending topics in HR. We had over 345 delegates in attendance across the four events. We celebrated the sold-out HR Excellence Awards 2020 virtually in December. Congratulations again to all nominees and winners! We’re planning to host the next HR Excellence Awards in the spring of 2022 and are excited to build on the momentum we saw in 2020.

Foster Public Confidence in CPHRs

As part of our effort to foster public confidence, CPHR Manitoba implemented a Good Character Attestation for all current and new members of the association. The Good Character Attestation - along with our Code of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct - is key to our ability to protect the public interest, promote and maintain the high ethical standards of the profession, and maintain public confidence and safeguard the reputation of the profession. Additionally, CPHR Manitoba updated the complaints and investigation process by creating a Complaints and Investigation Committee and Discipline Committee, which better aligns us with other regulatory bodies.

As you may be aware, more than half our revenue comes from non-member dues, revenue such as events, sponsorships, and advertising. Due to much hard work over the years, we have built up a reserve that is helping us to weather the storm. With an operating surplus of $168,073, the board has put another $150,000 into our internally restricted reserve bringing it to $425,000. Our target is 100% of our annual operating budget.

Finally, we are pleased to share that our Members as Customers surveys showed that our members overall are satisfied with our association and its offerings, including customer service (94% satisfaction).

As we wrap up the 2020-2021 fiscal year, we want to thank the board of directors for their continued support and governance of this association, the volunteer committees for all that they do to help keep programs and services moving forward, and our partners, sponsors, and advertisers for their enthusiastic and unwavering support of our profession. We also want to thank all of our members for continuing to be great stewards of the profession. CPHR Manitoba would not be where it is today without the hard work of our staff. Thank you for your resourcefulness, creativity and dedication.

CPHR Manitoba looks forward to continuing to advance the human resources profession in 2021-2022.

Sincerely,

Colleen Coates Chair, CPHR Manitoba Board of Directors	Ron Gauthier CEO, CPHR Manitoba