In the early 1990s, VIA, like many other companies in the public sector went through downsizing. Today, the company is back in a hiring mode and its relations with the unions seem to be better than ever. Workplace Today talked with VIA's Director Human Resources and Labour Relations Bannon Woods about his current priorities, his concerns and about the mentality in the corporation.

At the corporation's headquarters is in Montreal, Quebec, Mr. Woods was joined by Malcolm Andrews, VIA's Senior Adviser External Relations. Here's our conversation:

WT: What is the priority of your HR department at this particular point in time?

BW: Our main goal is to make sure that our internal customers, meaning the departments, have the proper tools to continue to develop their people in line and have the proper people in place to meet all the strategic goals of the company.

We have a strategic plan that we use and we are very committed in HR to make sure that our internal customers have everything available through the Human Resources Group to support them in keeping our commitment to developing people: career development, cross-training, etc.

WT: Are there any HR challenges unique to the passenger transportation industry?

BW: I think we are in a very unique situation, being the national passenger rail company from coast to coast. In the rail industry itself, a lot of the major companies like CP and CN have sold off a lot of what they call "short lines" to short-line operators.

Now, there are a number of small new companies that are desperately looking for qualified railroad people to run the companies, so we are really focusing on retaining our people.

We have lost some of our managers to these companies, which goes along with what I said to your first question--our priority now is to develop career paths and keep our people here. It has become very competitive out there.

Before, you had mostly people flowing between CP, CN and maybe VIA Rail, now you have this whole host of small operators that have come into the industry and are desperately looking for people. And we have lost people, and so has CN and so has CP. Real challenge, you know.

WT: I guess those managers were tempted by the possibility for faster advance in their careers.

BW: In some places it had to do with location, also for the most part these companies are non-unionized, so it's quite a different world. You can imagine, as a manager, you can appreciate working under the constraints of collective agreements and then you walk into a company where there's no collective agreements in place, it's like a dream, you know.

I've been involved with the union movement for a long, long time, I had to deal with the unions and to move over to a new company with no restrictions in that respect--there's always restrictions because there are rules and safety regulations that govern the operation of trains,--but from a collective agreement standpoint, personnel standpoint, it is much cleaner.

WT: Do you see any conflict between "public service mentality" and market-oriented business plans? Or maybe I should start with 'At VIA Rail, do you have this phenomenon called public service mentality, the company being a crown corporation'?

BW: I don't see that at all. We are market-oriented. We've gone through so much transition at VIA Rail over the last 10 years, that people are aware that we are changing, that we have to change.

We have an obligation to the taxpayers of Canada, after all it's money out of the public purse, and it is totally driven towards customer service, we want to serve the customer, we want to be self-sufficient, and we have not hit that from the unions or the employees. They know where we are going and they know there's pain from time to time. To be truthful, it is fairly well accepted. We are not having any major labour problems, for example. The unions understand, even though they may not like it. Their goal, of course, is job security but they understand that we are in a precarious situation. We would not be here if we did not manage ourselves properly.

MA: Just to amplify what Bannon said, the reason why there is no conflict there, in terms of having a public service mentality, what that means to us and to most Canadians in 1999 is respecting the taxpayer in Canada.

All of us are taxpayers and we are very mindful about every penny that goes out from our gross pay, and we as one part of that equation have also to be very mindful about how we spend that.

So by responding to the market and by being ahead of market trends wherever possible, really it isn't sort of paradoxical that things go well. But I'll admit to you that maybe 10-20 years ago, or even more recently, public enterprises and the public service in general maybe didn't view things that way.

WT: VIA went through downsizing from 1992 to 1996. How's the morale these days? Are you hiring at all?

BW: Yes, we are hiring mostly front-line, mostly on our service side, our on-board. We have hired some management people but it is sporadic. WT: How do you attract the best talent?

BW: Again, we are in a unique position. We are not in the same position as the big companies that can offer certain things. I think we certainly offer the challenge of working for VIA Rail, but our main focus is retaining people. That's the hardest thing we have to do right now.

WT: Speaking of retaining people, have you changed any of the HR practices to better achieve that? New incentives, etc.?

BW: We have a really comprehensive benefit package now. It's probably as good or better than most companies in Canada. We have a pension plan that sometimes is rated probably the best in Canada. We do offer those types of benefits, we are very competitive at that end of it.

We just changed our pension plan, we bettered it and it is very competitive. From time to time, we have had early retirement incentives and things like that but that was mostly when we were doing our downsizing. Now we don't have those in place. We are trying to keep our people.

WT: You said you're doing mostly front-line hiring. What criteria do you use to find the right candidates?

BW: It's all customer service oriented. We do a Thomas profile (a computer program, which evaluates the answers to about 40 questions and gives a snapshot of the candidate), we do psychological testing, we make sure we hire people that are customer-service driven.

MA: The typical profile of the employee we are hiring these days is actually quite interesting. I meet them every time I take the train and sometimes in their training courses, there are training centres right here in the building.

For the most part, they are college and/or university educated young people, who are viewing working for a company with a strong reputation in the service industry, such as VIA, as not just, for example, a way to earn some bucks and pay back the student loan or whatever, but who really are viewing it as an important stepping stone or an integral part of an overall life career.

WT: Mr. Woods, what's the toughest decision you have had to make in your career?

BW: That one I can answer right away. I was not always on this job. I was director of operations. And I had always been in operating group and the customer service transportation group, I had been there for many years.

The vice-president that I worked for at that time moved on and came to human resources and labour relations. And he asked me if I would be interested in coming as a director of labour relations. Now I am both, I assumed human resources also.

To make that decision, to move from an operating, day-to-day type of career into a staff function, I'm telling you I laboured, it was the toughest decision I ever made. We had gone through a strike, and I had been the liaison officer for the department at the time.

The relationship with the union had deteriorated very much, obviously if you have a strike, that's usually the reason.

Our chairman, Mr. (Marc) LeFrançois and Paul Côté, who was then Vice President Human Resources, asked me if I would be interested in doing that. They wanted to completely revamp the labour relations group, which is what we did, so we had one heck of a challenge.

I think the proof in the end is that this time around at the last negotiations we settled in six months. We had some major, major issues: employment security, reduced crewing on our trains and we were able to settle without a strike. We signed agreements with both CAW and The Brotherhood of the Locomotive Engineers.

The negotiations were tough but we were able to walk away with agreements with both those unions without having to go through strike position.

WT: How about complaints and rewards for VIA employees? I guess most complaints would go through the unions but do you have, for example, a rewards and recognition program?

BW: Yes, we do have a rewards and recognition program. For example, we give pins for every five years you work for the corporation. That is usually presented by the vice-president of the department or the director level. We give letters of commendation to employees for doing good work, we have an internal magazine where we highlight people.

MA: One of the things that we do, one of our goals if you will, in internal communication is in fact as one means among many, of course, of recognizing employees going above and beyond the common duty: we pick one of those people every month and give them the better part of a page in Via magazine, which is our on-board magazine, distributed in over 60,000 thousand copies a month to mostly our passengers and general public at the stations and chambers of commerce throughout central Canada. It is a very important thing for us.

WT: Are there monetary rewards available to employees?

BW: If you suggest something which saves the company a significant amount of money, there can be a bonus for that.

WT: And what if an employee has a complaint? I guess most would turn to their union with the complaint, but perhaps you have some policy in that respect I don't know about.

BW: Basically, at VIA, the managers, the directors, even the vice-presidents have an open door policy: if the employees have some difficulty, we will listen to them. If somebody calls me or writes me a letter, then I contact that person and find out. And vice-presidents do that too. We have an open-door policy in that respect and we tell the people that.

Some of the complaints come through the union, no doubt, as some people choose to use that vehicle. But we have a lot of interaction, our executives are out in the train quite a bit, our directors are encouraged to get out in the field and talk to people, and we know our employees. We are spread across the country but we have  2700 employees, so you get to know a lot of them.

MA: Both management at VIA, as well as the union representatives who deal with that quite some time ago recognized that it is in both sides' best interest to resolve grievances before they become grievances.

BW: In the last few years we have very much encouraged the local managers to get involved with their counterparts in the union. Not that they always weren't, but to have joint conferences with them.

We do a lot of that at my level, but we really encourage that at the lower level so everything doesn't get pushed up the pipe that could have been dealt with on the shop floor, for example. And it's working very well, the unions have responded very well, we have a very good relationship with the Canadian Autoworkers and The Brotherhood of the Locomotive Engineers. The last few years have seen a great transition.

WT: What do you enjoy most about your job?

BW: This one is easy. What I enjoy most are the people I work with. I enjoy coming to work because of the people. I like the challenge of the job, certainly, and I think our biggest asset is our people. They are all very professional, very helpful.

VIA Rail
Approximately 2400 of VIA's employees are unionized in two unions. One is The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, representing approximately 300 locomotive engineers.