Patty Miller — CPHR
I grew up in Edmonton but have called Calgary home for longer. I went for business at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) where I discovered HR was an exciting progression.
In the beginning of my career, I was selling HR services. And brought in so much work that I that I was asked to entertain recruiting. Recruiting came very naturally to me and I pride myself on truly being very technically solid and understanding the skills for the role. I have personally hired over 2,300 people with a retention of 94% (12 months or longer).
Through serendipity and reputation, I was offered the HR manager role at an engineering firm. I was their first HR for a company over 35 years old, with six branches and 250 employees. This is where I truly was given an opportunity create the role and to “own” my job. It indeed was what I needed to hear and have been actively promoting “owning your role” every chance I can as this is a great culture to promote.
After 10 years, the company was going to move my role to another city and I felt that I had the skills, experience, and credibility to go out on my own and put out my shingle. I sent out 15 emails of introduction to my HR on-demand business model and in one week I earned five new clients! Never have I had that high of conversion and felt this was the universe telling me to follow my dream!
As an HR Advisor, not in the same four walls at my client company, I am neutral and impartial. This gives me a unique perspective than those engaged in day-to-day operations of HR often have a difficult time seeing the challenges and opportunities. Through my experienced HR eyes, I can look at your operations to learn how you make money and identify where you could be wasting time or resources, I will look at the three P’s of HR management – Process, Policy, and People and come up with recommendations that can improve one or more of these foundational elements.
Examples of what this looks like in actual operations include the time I saved one client $100k per month by identifying and changing policy that caused significant salary cost overages without impacting operations. On people management, I helped my client save his best customer following the termination of one of the company’s partners by ensuring a smooth transition and clear communication. On process, I stopped a conflict between engineering and manufacturing by implementing a process that improved communication.