With over 20 years of business transformation experience and a track record of designing and directing operations and programs of the highest caliber in the HR field, Lynn Roger is a transformative and strategic HR executive. She is a goal-oriented executive with a broad perspective. Lynn is a dependable influencer that elevates HR choices with science and produces exceptional outcomes. She guides businesses through effective transitions to boost organizational agility through innovative thinking, foresight, and the use of cutting-edge technology.

Lynn has mastered the art of motivating, igniting passion and excitement, and maintaining people’s commitment to a transformation path. She is a firm believer in the benefits of real leadership, attentive listening, and setting up an environment that fosters cross-functional cooperation and high employee engagement.

In her role as CHRO of BMO’s biggest retail and commercial banking business, Lynn prioritized the needs of the client over all other considerations. She constantly pushed senior leaders to think in fresh, riskier ways about talent, including starting risky cross-group initiatives to foster enterprise leadership, transform the current business, and support leaders in facing challenges with confidence. She was the chief architect of dynamic, forward-looking talent management practices.

Early Beginnings and Vision for Good

Born in Montreal, Quebec, and the youngest of four children, Lynn was raised in a traditional French Canadian family with strong values and emotion packed discussions. Her father was a big city policeman and sergeant detective in his final decade on the police force. She shares, “He was confident, smart, and believed in justice. He ruled our home with an iron fist and a warm heart. My mother was an amazing homemaker with a kind and gentle soul. Growing up, I was always inspired by their loving relationship, they held each other’s hands until my mother passed away.” Lynn believes that her upbringing has had a major influence on how she lives her life and the choices she makes. She also adds, “As a young girl, I remember my teachers telling my parents that Lynn is very engaged and doing really well, if only she could talk less! My father would laugh and say if that’s the only feedback you have for us, then I am good!” Lynn never imagined the impact her voice would have in the years that would follow.

According to  Lynn, her father was a major influence in her life. She shares, “He became an orphan at four and was sent to a distant boarding school alone on a train. He made me believe that if I set my mind to it, I could do anything, including winning a speed skating race I was convinced I couldn’t win! His belief in me taught me an important lesson early on, take risks, work hard and great things will happen. He was right! Flash forward a few years and days before he passed away, I had shared that I was going to be appointed as an executive, he didn’t have to tell me he was proud, I could see it in his eyes.”

Although it’s difficult to comprehend in the modern world, Lynn believes that the reason she wasn’t pushed to go to college after high school was because her parents didn’t complete elementary school. She began her career in the financial services industry at the lowest level when she was just 17 years old and believed that the business world was the appropriate place for her. She recalls, “I had some talent and curiosity, which played in my favor. I was promoted early and often, becoming one of the youngest supervisors in a global financial institution at 18 years old. I took on assignments nobody wanted, and they kept coming! I had the opportunity to work in operations and on the service side of the business and fell into human resources quite by accident. I was asked to take on a HR business partner role, supporting the Operations group, which consisted of approximately 1,700 employees. That’s when I recognized the necessity of establishing a strong linkage between strategy, operations, and people.” She continues by saying that she believed people could accelerate their growth, generate high employee engagement, and produce top-tier results if executives gave the people side of the organization the same attention they gave the financial side.

Lynn married, had twin daughters, and continued her higher education while advancing in her work. It was a happy moment for Lynn’s family in 2004 when her girls graduated from high school and she also received her MBA. Lynn is incredibly proud of the young ladies they have developed into—strong, caring, and loving moms, spouses, and leaders.

Years of Learning

Lynn worked in the financial services sector for more than thirty years and had more than twenty distinct opportunities to collaborate with some of the brightest and most brilliant people in the industry. She gathered knowledge from her accomplishments and even more from her setbacks. Over the years, she honed her capacity to encourage and inspire others while igniting their passion and excitement for change. Co-creation, openness, and experimentation were guiding principles with every team Lynn worked with, as she made it her mission to place people at the center of every change process.

Lynn also discovered the difficulties women in leadership had in expressing themselves. As Chief Talent Officer at a global financial institution, she met with emerging leaders and found conversations between men and women to be very different. She states that men weren’t shying away from bragging about their accomplishments, and they were bold in communicating their ambitions. Women, on the other hand, wanted to be supportive and make a difference but shied away from sharing their aspirations. She recalls, “I remember one specific conversation with a very talented female leader who was up for a very important promotion. I had met with her to discuss the opportunity and prepare her to meet with the chair of the audit committee, and I thought everything had gone according to plan, until the very next morning. She stood in the doorway of my office, explaining why she couldn’t possibly take on this role. I was dumbfounded. This talented leader with a track record of success was doubting her capabilities! Needless to say, I did my best to highlight her successes and convince her to go to the interview.” Six months later, she was in the new role and making a huge difference; Helping women find their voice became an important element of her approach to nurturing talent.

Just before the epidemic began in January 2020, Lynn made the decision to retire from the financial services sector and take some time to consider her next steps. Although experiencing the pandemic wasn’t pleasant for anyone, she never anticipated taking a two-year break from work. She believes that having the time off was beneficial for her. Lynn was able to fully concentrate on what was important to her—her family, her health, and performing meaningful work.

Lynn claims she didn’t actively search for healthcare, but when the chance arose, she was interested in meeting with the president and chief operating officer to learn more about Bayshore HealthCare. She was moved by their leaders’ exemplary humility and mission-driven principles. Lynn sees Bayshore HealthCare as a Canadian success story that inspires all employees to create special moments, both big and small, for those we care for, work with, and in communities across the country.

About Bayshore HealthCare

Bayshore HealthCare is one of the country’s leading providers of home and community health care services and is a Canadian-owned company. With locations across the country, including 82 home care offices, 11 pharmacies, and 100 community care clinics, Bayshore has more than 17,000 staff members and provides care to over 350,000 clients annually. Its services are purchased by government care programs, insurance companies, workers’ compensation boards, health care organizations, the corporate sector, and the public. The Bayshore brand extends across three business divisions: Bayshore Home Health (medical and non-medical home care and staffing services), Bayshore Home Care Solutions (home care services for government care programs), Bayshore Specialty Rx (specialty pharmacy, infusion, and pharmaceutical patient support services), in addition to two innovation teams: Integrated Care Solutions and Bayshore Digital. The company’s goal is to enhance the quality of life, well-being, dignity, and independence of Canadians of all ages. Lynn states, “Innovation in healthcare is at the heart of our strategy, and we believe that our investment in our proprietary digital platform will enable connections in the ecosystem of care in the community.”

Bayshore HealthCare has been a recipient of Canada’s Best Managed Companies award since 2006. In 2017, Bayshore HealthCare launched the Bayshore Foundation for Empowered Living to assist those living with illness, injury, or aging to reclaim or maintain their independence.

The Pandemic

The pandemic has taught the world so many lessons, and the most important one is how important the employee experience is, and how, as leaders, we need to meet the employees where they are, offering them a value proposition that is grounded in their intrinsic needs. Lynn says, “If you asked me if I wanted time to go back to the way it used to be, I would emphatically say no.” According to her, the world’s thinking and operating paradigms have advanced by at least ten years, and it is now necessary to make investments to make sure that its leaders are supported in this new normal. Additionally, Lynn believes that family relationships are stronger than ever. Leaders should spend time with their children at dinner rather than staying late at work. Lynn wants this to go on forever.

Building an Employee First Culture

At Bayshore HealthCare, the business succeeds through prioritizing its employees. This necessitates a focus on the employment experience of both present and potential employees. Our ability to create HR solutions that support both individual and team performance is a result of the company’s human-centered strategy, which is based on principles and agile working methods. The business is hastening the transition in Canada from hospital-based to patient-centered home health care with its new Bayshore Digital Experience platform. Lynn says that Bayshore HealthCare has introduced a package of digital home health care services to enhance results for patients with chronic conditions throughout Canada and to make life easier for its workers. These include remote patient monitoring technology, virtual visits, an app to improve the employee experience of its mobile workforce, an online tool that enables users to stay informed and connected about everything they need to know about their or their loved one’s home health care, and more!

Additionally, Bayshore HealthCare recently introduced its first Employee Journey team, which is cross-functional by design. The team members are working on creating memorable employee onboarding experiences across the organization. Lynn asserts, “We are focused on the moments that matter most to employees, which means we are incorporating their voice into the design. I think this is an important pivot for HR functions.” We need to be as nimble and agile as the businesses we support. Lynn believes it is essential to experiment, challenge one’s own traditional ways of thinking and working, and imagine an operating model that mirrors the business. This will create amazing new opportunities for those interested in making an impact. She shares, “We are seeing new roles emerge, such as product and experience owners, which is attracting individuals we didn’t even consider in the past.”

A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Journey

While many organizations struggle to increase the diversity of their workforce, Lynn was delighted to find herself in a company where diversity had been a core value since its inception. We wanted to make sure that, as an inclusive firm, Bayshore was a place where everyone had a sense of belonging and could feel free to be themselves every day, regardless of their history, culture, or sexual orientation. To gather data on demographics, employee impressions of inclusion and equity, and any impediments impeding employees’ experience with EDI at Bayshore, it released its inaugural Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion survey in May 2022. Lynn shares, “We are taking the insights derived from this survey as our guidepost for our multi-year EDI journey.”

The Secret Sauce of Leadership

Lynn thinks the secret to being a successful leader is being self-aware, not taking oneself too seriously, and admitting when one doesn’t have all the answers. She says, “Sharing a bad decision that I had made with the entire HR team.” She goes on to say that they were taken aback by her candor at first, and then appreciated that she was brave enough to admit that she, too, struggles from time to time. Additionally, authenticity has always been part of Lynn’s personal brand and today, she feels that she is unapologetically herself, and a continuous work in progress! She asserts, “Leadership is a privilege that I take very seriously. Providing good context, being inclusive, supporting team members and allowing them to do their best is what makes me get out of bed every morning.”

Lynn’s advice to emerging female leaders is to find their voice, take risks, and lead with empathy. Some of the leaders she admires most think less about themselves and more about how they can help others reach their full potential, and that’s what Lynn tries to do every day.

Website: www.bayshore.ca