Message from CEO & Chair and 2025-2026 Annual Report

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Message from CEO & Chair and 2025-2026 Annual Report

1 hour ago
Posted by: Stephen Burns

Click here to view the full 2025-2026 Annual Report

The past year marked an important milestone in CPHR Manitoba’s evolution. As the HR profession continues to play an increasingly strategic role in shaping Manitoba’s workplaces, our organization has been evolving alongside it. Throughout the year we strengthened our governance, launched a new strategic plan, expanded awareness of the CPHR designation, and continued building the partnerships that position CPHR Manitoba as a trusted voice on workforce issues.

New Strategic Plan

The new plan builds on the milestone of achieving self-regulation for the HR profession in Manitoba through the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources Act (the Act), which came into effect on June 1, 2025. Our governance has matured with the Act and updated bylaws and policies reflected this new responsibility.

It was developed through an in-depth consultative process which included collecting input from a wide variety of stakeholders. This engagement ensured the plan reflects the needs of members, employers, HR professionals, students, business leaders, and the broader public.

The plan establishes four strategic priorities – Engage, Develop, Protect and Advocate – that will guide our work through 2029 while positioning CPHR Manitoba to increase the profession’s impact, protect the public interest, and strengthen strategic people leadership across Manitoba.

While this new plan guides the organization’s future, it’s also important to mention our achievements from the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

Promoting the CPHR brand

We continued to make significant investments in promoting the CPHR brand to foster and demonstrate its credibility and importance to employers, business leaders, potential CPHRs, students, and the general public. This included using our 30-second “I am a CPHR member” spotlight videos on TSN during regular season Jets games, as well as on Sportsnet+ for the NHL playoffs. Those ads also aired on the Sportsnet app during the 2026 Winter Olympics in rural areas. We renewed our agreement with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and sponsored the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre Lawyers Play.

We connected heavily with the business community, sponsoring and/or attending over 24 events with the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, and other chambers throughout the province.

We promoted the brand to high school students by attending more career fairs and student events than any year previous. We also signed a two-year agreement with the Manitoba High School Athletics Association to sponsor the CPHR Leadership Award and their play of the month videos. We also had courtside signage at the Provincial basketball finals. Their April video broke records on their Instagram account for views, likes, and shares.

We were also very excited to work with Doctors Manitoba on a Sick Notes toolkit ahead of the Sick Notes legislation, which passed in the Manitoba Legislature on June 2, 2026. We offered volunteers from the HR community to help them with consultations and assisted in making the announcement about the toolkit alongside Doctors Manitoba and Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

Together, these efforts helped increase public awareness. The 2025 Manitoba Business Outlook Survey showed awareness rose to 74%, with even higher awareness among Winnipeg businesses and Chamber of Commerce members.

Supporting CPHR development

We once again operated a highly successful Professional Development (PD) program with over 30 free webinars offered and 110 learning and networking opportunities. We found that 69% of CPHRs and FCPHRs attended an event with us. Additionally, 53% of our entire membership base attended an event.

In 2025-2026, we saw a record number of VOE applications with a total of 121 received, including 14 executive applications. A total of 109 applications were approved and 11 of the 14 executives were approved for an overall 90% pass rate.

Thanks to an expanded Member Services team, our membership base also saw some significant increases:

Membership grew significantly and has officially passed 2,200 members.
The number of CPHR Candidates increased with 139 this past year, and new CPHRs went up by 13.9%, well exceeding our 4% target.

In our ongoing efforts to support our membership, we continued to offer member programming across a wide variety of topics and targeted members at various stages of their professional development, including the Walk & Talk Program, the Professional Mentorship Program, and the Campus Ambassador Program.

Fostering public confidence in CPHRs

It has been just over a year since the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources Act officially came into effect on June 1, 2025. This significantly enhanced the credibility and legitimacy of the HR profession and the CPHR designation, giving professionals more control over their career path, and increased opportunities to impact the profession and their organizations. It also increased CPHR Manitoba’s ability to protect the public interest by implementing a mandate to ensure all members uphold the standards of professional practice and code of ethics.

The CPHR Manitoba staff and board worked hard to ensure that CPHR Manitoba has the proper strategies in place and governance to fulfill these obligations, including updating the complaints and disciplinary committee structure, and adding a registration committee. We also updated the complaints process to better align with the act and administrative law.

We look forward to continuing our work in adhering to these standards of practice and ensuring safe and healthy work environments for our members, their organizations, and protecting the public.

Budget and revenue

The Association’s goal is to have half of our revenue from member dues and half of our revenue from non-member dues to be more consistent with what is seen in the association industry and mitigate risk. Historically member dues have comprised 40%-45% of our revenue. We are working towards creating a better balance between non-member and member dues revenue by focusing on growing the membership and ensuring member dues keep up with inflation.

With an operating surplus of $53,047, the board has put another $30,000 into our internally restricted reserve, bringing it to $795,000. Our target remains 100% of our annual operating budget.

Membership survey findings

Finally, we are pleased to share the results of our Membership Survey:

95% of members are satisfied or extremely satisfied with the stewardship of CPHR Manitoba by the Board of Directors
93% of members who required customer service were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their experience
90% of members are satisfied or extremely satisfied with CPHR Manitoba (overall)
80% of members promote and encourage non-CPHRs to become designated

Looking ahead

In the next year, we will begin to operate under our new strategic plan to push the organization and our valued members forward

We will maintain our efforts in working with a wide variety of strategic partners to connect with business leaders to continue to increase awareness of CPHR. We will utilize a combination of event sponsorships, advertising, cross-promotions, and memberships, depending on the partner. We will keep connecting with professionals outside of the HR profession to raise awareness.

We will continue to work with our post-secondary partners to build awareness of the CPHR designation and reach out to current HR professionals who are not yet members. We will continue to hold our signature events in-person and will hold other events and workshops in-person and online.

At a national level, our involvement with CPHR Canada remains very active. We will continue to participate in various working groups including a marketing group. We also look forward to working with Rola Helou, the new CEO of CPHR Canada.

Fostering public confidence in CPHRs will involve being seen as a credible partner to government and demonstrating credibility for the CPHR brand to the public. Ensuring we are seen to be regulating the profession will remain important to this strategic goal. Likewise, ensuring we continue to uphold our obligations under the Act by continuing to facilitate a public registry of CPHRs and CPHR Candidates.

While the HR profession has made major strides over the last ten years, there's still work to be done in how its strategic impact is recognized at the highest levels of business. We remain committed to supporting our members as they position themselves as key drivers of success and strategic development within their organizations.

Thank you

As we wrap up the 2025-2026 fiscal year, we want to thank the Board of Directors for their continued support and governance of the Association; the volunteer committees for helping to keep programs and services moving forward; and our partners, sponsors, and advertisers for their enthusiastic and unwavering support of the HR community in Manitoba.

We want to thank our members for continuing to be great stewards of the profession.

Finally, CPHR Manitoba would not be where it is today without the hard work of our staff. Thank you for your resourcefulness, creativity and dedication.

We look forward to continuing to advance the human resources profession in 2026-2027.

Sincerely,