OMHRA’s Conferences Never Shy Away from Exploring Today’s Big Ideas

Over the past six decades, OMHRA has established a solid reputation for hosting professional development events that deliver the most up-to-date insights, tools and best practices in Human Resource Management as well as excellent opportunities to network with HR professionals from across Ontario.

We are all familiar with the popular maxim that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. If you are still contemplating whether to attend our upcoming Fall Conference and wondering whether the conference topics are relevant to your needs, consider the topical issues discussed at our 2023 Spring Workshop:

• Dr. David Weiss opened the conference with an incredibly engaging keynote discussion on leading HR in a post-pandemic world. He spoke about how HR professionals may reframe their response to a challenge by adopting a model of FOCUS (Forward-thinking, Outside-in, Co-create, Up-to-date, Synergy).
• Now more than ever, employers are experiencing increasing difficulty acquiring talent. As a result, it is more important than ever to establish your municipality as an employer of choice – and to measure, manage and improve your brand. We discussed the Employer Brand model, which helps municipalities place the employee experience at the centre of their approach to recruitment and retention.
• Pre-Employment Testing is an important part of the hiring decision, but it does not replace intuition and good old-fashioned interviews.
• Social media brings with it a lot of potential liability for employers and can disrupt a psychologically safe environment. There are many reasons for employers to monitor social media activity, not the least of which is the misuse of third-party personal information. We debated whether employers could dismiss employees for social media activity and came to the firm decision: it depends.
• We explored the connection between psychological health and current challenges faced by HR professionals, such as hybrid/remote working; equity, diversity and inclusion, and the increasing incivility in the workplace. We identified connectivity, a sense of belonging and workplace relationships as fundamental to achieving psychological well-being.
• We strategized best-practices for maintaining employee engagement and providing mentorship in a remote working environment and considered the impact of remote work on employment standards, including entitlements, privacy legislation, tax implications, health and safety legislation and WSIB entitlements (or equivalent).

Be sure to attend our upcoming Fall Conference where we will explore the theme of “Future Proofing Municipal Workplaces”. You’ll be sure to gain new skills and knowledge that you will be able to apply immediately in your workplaces. To learn more, and to register, visit: https://omhra.ca/fall-conference/