CI Financial CHRO Manisha Burman on being agile in a changing world
It was an early-career rotational program at General Electric that exposed Manisha Burman to HR, and the experience stuck, not only convincing her that she wanted to work in the HR space, but that working laterally and learning the whole business is a valuable skill that would serve her throughout her career.
“That was a pattern that I continued for the rest of my career,” Burman told HRD. “Everywhere I worked I would always work primarily in HR, but I would take lateral moves in the business, because it just made you much more practical, commercially oriented, helped you see what HR was like from the outside so that you can be really thoughtful and empathetic to business leaders around their experience.”
After her start as an HR business partner and transformation manager with GE, Burman has spent nearly two decades navigating the HR executive space for major financial institutions. via BMO Financial Group and RBC Royal Bank, it was an intentional path of career choices and taking on diverse challenges.
The HR role and change management
The change and volatility of the wider business world has meant changes to HR functions, Burman said; as challenges have mounted in every field including finance, professionals have had to be adaptable. As a result, the role of the HR leader has evolved from one mostly involving hiring and employee relations to something much broader in scope.
With the advancement of technology making processes and systems easier, the basics of people management is at risk of being lost, which Burman said is a pitfall that HR can fall into.
“I think that people often underestimate the importance of being really thoughtful on change management,” Burman said. “Bring people along the way and get their feedback, get their fingerprints on it, get their insights, ask the people who are sometimes your toughest crowd. You will have a better outcome and you'll also have much more support and partnership along the way. And as much as people say it, I still see people forget to do it. I tend to take a very high touch approach on the things that we lead and drive, because I think you get better results and better relationships.”
Having worked in HR for almost 25 years, Burman has had the chance to spearhead complex, transformational initiatives, particularly at BMO where she joined as VP, Talent Management in 2011, working with C-level executives on their talent strategies and developing major performance, diversity and restructuring initiatives among many others.
Resilience is key to HR success
It was the willingness to grow into challenging positions that helped her build the resilience that contributed to her success, Burman said, admitting that deliberately taking on tough assignments and roles has taught her to how to think on her feet and be agile in rapidly changing environments.
“When you're managing an HR function, you have such a range; you have risk management, you have operations, you have technology, you have data and insights. You have very quantitative pieces. You have the trusted advisor, relationship-building role, you have a marketing aspect, with recruiting. You're really building a very, very diverse team.”
Burman’s experiences have served her well in her current role at CI Financial; she’s been CHRO, EVP for just under two years, and they have been packed with challenge. She’s led HR growth initiatives in the States as the company expands, while at the same time maintaining and improving HR functions in Canada.
“One of the things that attracted me to this role is it's this interesting combination,” Burman said.
“In the U.S. it's been three years of really fast growth through a series of acquisitions … we literally built an HR function from scratch. But even as we're building, we are running a company, so it creates such an interesting, fun, but challenging dynamic of building as we go, and then in Canada it's a more well-established brand that's existed for many years, so here it was more of a renewal agenda. So, the two together have made for a very dynamic combination.”
The future of HR is automation
The first two years of Burman’s time at CI Financial has been focused on growth and renewal of existing strategies; in 2024, the agenda will shift to talent initiatives; “Ensuring that we have really strong inclusion, that we understand the pulse of the workforce, that we are identifying our top talent and really developing them and exposing them.”
She plans to work on leveraging social media storytelling to attract the best talent, and finding ways to make existing work easier for the talent that they do have. Burman sees opportunities to increase employee wellbeing by exploring options for automation through technology.
“One of the things I'm looking forward to is pushing harder around where we can be innovative by leveraging technology, social media, AI,” she said. “That's a new area of learning for me, but that's what's exciting. At every point in your career, you want to keep learning and growing, so that you’re both growing as a professional but also benefiting your business.”
