Keri Fraser
Having a strong brand for us where we can articulate who we are and what our goals are, make sure that we're attracting those people that want that, and retaining the people that want that, so that there's not a misalignment and we're fine, right? Like I know that both of you know, is that it's okay if some people choose, we want some people to choose not to work with us too. That to me is a strong employment brand and the people that want to work for us are going to come in and be interested in growth and helping drive change and being part of this story over the next five years.
Speaker
Welcome to Blu Thread Conversations. Today's episode, From Culture to Impact: How People Strategy Drives Business Results, features Keri Fraser, Chief People Officer at Westland Insurance Group. Keri is a collaborative people leader with more than 20 years of experience building inclusive, high performance cultures that power business growth. She does that work at Westland Insurance Group, Canada’s largest and best reviewed insurance provider. A company known for exceptional client service and a strong, trust-based reputation. In this conversation, we’ll unpack how leadership and people strategy turn culture into measurable results and the priorities that carry key shaping for the people's agenda for 2026.
Leandra Harris
Welcome, Keri. We're so excited to have you.
Stacy Parker
It's so good to see you again.
Keri Fraser
Thank you.
Leandra Harris
Oh my gosh. So Keri, met, gosh, you were a client of ours a couple of years ago. And, Stace and I, we're just so thrilled to have you because we immediately had a connection with you because we just have so much respect for you, Keri. The work that you've done as a HR leader, I mean, you're results driven, but you're also real and embrace change. But also you do it full of heart and making sure that people have a voice and that they belong. Like all of those good things that HR leaders should have, you have it. So we're just thrilled to have you on our podcast so we can talk. Really the topic today is about the connection between culture and leadership and reputation and the bottom line. But I also love having, we also love having HR people on our podcast, Keri, because we love the profession. We just think, every year I say this, now more than ever, we need people in this career, right? So I just think people, it's such a great career for people. So also to kind of inspire people and get them to think about all the amazing things and the impact they can make in HR. So welcome.
Keri Fraser
Thank you. I bet, I think it's probably been close to five years ago.
Stacy Parker
I think so as well. I think so as well. Like, was it in the pandemic, early in the pandemic?
Leandra Harris
It was before. It was before the pandemic, wasn't it? Was it?
Keri Fraser
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it might have been during that time. Yeah.
Leandra Harris
So culture, reputation, leadership, bottom line. Tell us, Keri, at Westland what does that look like? That connection between all the great work you're doing and business results.
Keri Fraser
You know, in our world, we see a really strong link between the two. And, you know, we've actually just developed our new five-year strategy, which we're calling our “2030 Level Up Plan”. And part of that, we have five strategic drivers, and right in front is our cultural evolution driver. That's how important it is to us, is we know that it's critical to us meeting our business results. That driver's really focused on having an even higher performing organization, more accountable, and the key thing is, is yet, holding onto that care factor that is really at the heart of who we are. We see those as going, as really coming together to be even more high performing. So I think just having that. And this was developed with our senior leaders and our executive team, and so having that, I think our leaders really understand the link of those two to drive business results.
Leandra Harris
And that's love number one. We'll probably say love about 50 times, because I get really excited about our work. How do you define culture though? So appreciate, Keri, and good on you that the executive team sees the connection, right, between culture and the bottom line. Amazing. But do they understand it? Like, what is culture? How do you define it at your organization so that everyone understands what it is that actually impacts the bottom line?
Keri Fraser
You know, first, I think I'm really lucky that I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining what culture is to the executive team. I think it is something special about us and the original founders of Westlands were the Wubbs family, it was always such a critical priority for them. It's one of the reasons I joined Westland. It wasn't something that I needed to really teach them, which is quite refreshing as an HR leader.
But you know, we talk about it, it's really our personality, right? And it's how it shows up everywhere, shows up in how we behave as an executive team, how we collaborate with each other right across the organization. So we agree on that. We think a lot about it in terms of the decisions we make, right? So are the decisions we’re making aligned to our culture? Does it take away from it? Does it add to it? Or does it evolve it too? And there are things that we wanted to evolve. Like we're very intentional with it, what we're gonna hang on to and what we're not gonna hang on to and change. And so that shows up in a lot of the decisions that we make.
Leandra Harris
What about accountability? How do you hold them accountable, Keri? I love that you laugh too, you know, I don't have to educate, right? So they get that. And that description of personality of organization is beautiful. But how do you hold them accountable to driving an amazing culture and sustaining a great culture?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, you know, this is probably one that we've had to evolve because we come from such a, we're known for being very kind and you probably saw that when we went through our employment branding exercise, we're really kind. And what we have found is we've had to redefine what kindness is at Westland. And what kindness means is having upfront conversations, holding people accountable, driving results. We put things into leader scorecards now. People metrics are attached to scorecards, which is attached to compensation. And that has definitely evolved where kindness can be misconstrued as being nice. Being nice is maybe kind of avoiding conflict and avoiding hard things. That's a shift that we've, again, been really intentional about.
Leandra Harris
It's so interesting, Keri, one of the leaders that I worked with in the past and I learned so much from him, came from the Netherlands. And also I worked with another leader from the US and that was one thing they, from a cultural standpoint, is Canadians are very, very nice. And that's one of the first things we had to address in our culture. And it was such a simple shift, but doing exactly that, being nice and being kind will kill our culture. But if you define kind as giving people feedback, challenging, if you don't agree with everyone in the room, you're not being kind. If you're just nodding, that's not being kind. That's actually hurting the organization, right? So we did these things like how to manage conflict and the pros of conflict. And it was just amazing how we saw a shift. So I love that you did the same.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, and do it in a way that's respectful and caring and you have people's best interest and defining that. One of the other things that we've had to really shift to is because we were a family owned business and much smaller, now we're national. Like since I've joined, we've tripled in size. And so we had this very entrepreneurial culture. You probably, again, you probably saw that in a lot of others. Now shifting to, which drives into accountability is consistency. We actually wanna put some practice, national consistent practices in place that everyone is doing. We're all being held to similar standards. And again, that's been a shift, especially for people that have maybe been with us for a long time, is letting go of, we call it enterprising now. So instead of entrepreneurial, it's enterprising, meaning we still are ambitious and we want to try new things and have lots of flexibility, but we've got to have national standards in place so that we're held to the same standards and it makes it easier to manage and hold people accountable to.
Stacy Parker
And I bet it does a great job of building on leadership cohesion and there's probably a shift in trust just because people know where they stand. They're getting more consistency in terms of messaging.
Keri Fraser
Yes. People want clarity. They want to know what we're all doing, why we're doing it, and they do want to be held accountable for it at the end of the day.
Leandra Harris
Don't you find that so interesting, Stacy? Because, you know, every year you look at trends, Keri, on data that you're seeing from all the conversations that we have with employees, like focus groups and sentiment online. And it's so interesting that execution and clarity are the biggest. And let's be honest, they're not fun to solve, but they're simple, right? Like ensuring, designing simple frameworks and ensuring that they are done in a simple and consistent way. I mean, it's not the most exciting, but it is, oh my gosh, the impact is huge.
Stacy Parker
And it leaves space for the exciting stuff.
Leandra Harris
Exactly.
Stacy Parker
It leaves a lot of space that's otherwise used up in multiple conversations.
Keri Fraser
The sentiment is very interesting and everyone's dealing with it, right? I don't think it's changed since COVID. I mean, there's a different feeling out there and they want transparency, you know, constantly. And so that's something we've worked on. Even in our engagement results, the two that we're showing up as opportunities is action taking: they wanna know like, if you're gonna ask us, are you gonna follow up? And also senior leadership. Those are two that we've worked really, really hard on. This year we actually had our highest increase in both of those, because we've had to just put a lot of focus into that.
Leandra Harris
Before Stace talks, because I know we'll want to talk about employer branding, we have a little bit of a soft spot for that. But Keri, can you share a couple of examples of things that you've done that have really moved the needle when it comes to execution and clarity and accountability? Because I think, like you said, everyone's struggling with that. And action planning. What are some simple things that you've done?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, there's a few things that we've done. Let me just think about it. So one thing that we've done out of our engagement survey, is we do an action plan, a national like corporate action plan. And it's something we actually publish and we put it out for all employees to see. And we update it quarterly so they can see it and hold us accountable to it, right? So accountability comes back to us too.
So that's been a big thing. Also just our communication strategy. We have an amazing communications team under Cari Watson, who you would have met earlier.
Leandra Harris
She's amazing.
Keri Fraser
Yep. And we've built a lot of different communication methodologies throughout the year to make sure that we're coming back to and telling people the progress on things and what we're doing. They hear from the executive team multiple times in multiple different ways, like employee town halls, videos, newsletters, and that's what people, I think that that helps. It is just those same messages that people are hearing. And again, we're being held accountable to those actions that we say that we're gonna do.
Leandra Harris
So how are you preparing your leaders to support and engage and partner with you on this new long-term kind of culture strategy that you've built with the executive team?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, there's a few things that we're doing to equip our leaders to really own culture and embed it into their day-to-day responsibilities. One of the things that we've built out is a leadership lounge which is on our internet. Yeah, it's got a ton of resources in there, like a lot of different coaching resources, change management, also a lot of things around inclusion. We’re really trying to support them in those areas. The other thing that we do is we actually spend a lot of time spotlighting leaders. There are leaders – we call them kind of like bright spots – there are leaders that have our highest engagement scores and are having really good business financial results. And so there's something we try to think about, what is it that they're doing differently. We spend time interviewing them and honing in on things and actions that other leaders can incorporate into their day to day. We have a whole spotlight page on those leaders too.
Stacy Parker
That's brilliant.
Leandra Harris
Is that just internal?
Keri Fraser
Yeah.
Leandra Harris
You should try and do that externally too. Like different messaging. But I love that. That's so cool. Oh my gosh.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, it's been good. You know, when we're preparing for the new rollout of our five-year plan, which you'll love. We've branded it, we're calling it “Level Up”. It's got a whole gamification theme. So for our leaders, we've developed some toolkits to help them with how they talk to their employees about this “Level Up” plan. And being very specific with examples of ‘Okay, if I'm an insurance advisor, like what does the strategic plan mean in my day to day? Like how does it actually impact me? What can I do to impact it?’ Because I think that that's where from the time you get from the executive team or senior leaders down to an insurance advisor, that messaging can get lost. So we're really trying to spend time on how a manager makes it real for their employees. So a ton of tools that again, our communications and change management team are developing for leaders.
Stacy Parker
From all the analysis and recommendations we've been offering for organizations in the last, I think, two months, very consistently where we see a big gap is going from senior leadership down to managers and just what a bottleneck that is to culture performance.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, I agree.
Stacy Parker
And for those managers, what we often hear is lack of communication, inconsistency in what priorities are that they need to focus on, confusion, and a lack of trust that they're having. So what you're talking about is brilliant because it is, I think for most organizations, what managers are really hungry for. I love how you're doing that.
Keri Fraser (19:59.94)
Yeah, I think so too. I think sometimes we just generally expect like, okay, we'll develop this and then managers just do with it and we expect them to know how to do that. And it's really hard. It's very hard. So giving them those tools and playbooks and even different exercises to do with their team and they can use those or they can modify them to work for their teams also.
Stacy Parker
And they need them real time too, right? Like often organizations lean too heavily into let's do some management development, leadership development courses that until you're in that moment are not as easily retained, easily applied.
Leandra Harris
And the time too, it just takes a little. Like imagine if you just left it to level up. Most employees would be like, okay, like you want me to level up? Like, wow, I'm just so inspired about going into next year, but you're taking it one step further. This is what it means to you. This is what we expect from you. And this is what in turn we're providing to you. Like just what an incredible opportunity to build that excitement. How much more time does that take your team and the impact.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, we've even developed these mouse pads.
Leandra Harris
That's so cute!
Keri Fraser
‘Cause they just spark conversation. Like employees are like, what's this? Like, what's this? You know, and so it gets people talking about it. It's right in front of them every day. Like they can't avoid it.
Leandra Harris
I like the press start. Okay, that's a good segue, Stace, into branding.
Stacy Parker
It is. It is. But I do want to ask, Keri, I know you were quite humble about it, but there's a role that you've played from an executive stakeholdering in making culture one of the top priorities, the leading priority of this 2030 strategy. Can you offer any advice, any lessons learned for people on what it took or where you found success in helping people see the impact that culture would have on performance. That's hard. I mean, you made it very humble, but it is hard for a C-suite team to say, ‘Yes, this is where we need to start our strategy.’
Keri Fraser
Yeah, it is hard. That's a great question. You know I've done a lot of research on it and what I found really helpful for some people, and I actually presented it to our whole senior leadership team as we kicked off our planning session, is some research that I found around the correlation between performance and culture. I took studies, so data around from a human capital research firm. And what they do is they measure companies over a five year period that track their revenue, their growth in all different areas. And then they see if they're doing something different around culture. So I presented that stuff. I think it was really important as an HR leader, instead of just talking about culture, I think it's really important to make it resonate with people around data and results. I think that that was very helpful.
Stacy Parker
Yes. I mean, that's it. And for most in the HR profession; it has been a challenge. One, to get the right data and to tie it to business results as opposed to engagement and sentiment alone. So, yeah, kudos to you. To find out what that report was that you pulled.
When you think about performance, how do you feel the employer brand for Westland has played a role?
Keri Fraser
I think it's played a really important role. You know, having a strong brand for us where we can articulate who we are and what our goals are, make sure that we're attracting those people that want that and retaining the people that want that, so that there's not a misalignment and we're fine, right? I know that both of you know that it's okay if some people choose, we want some people to choose not to work with us too. That to me is a strong employment brand. The people that want to work for us are going to come in and be interested in growth and helping drive change and being part of this story over the next five years. So that's where we see such a strong correlation with it.
Stacy Parker
And have you rolled it out as powerfully inside as we see externally?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, I'm really proud of what we've done internally. And in some ways, I think that that's almost where we've seen the most obvious momentum. What we did is we really leverage our own employee stories, right? Like we do use some stock photos, but most of the photos that you'll see externally are our own employees. And we ran contests, we've done it a few times where we get them to submit stories that are aligned to one of the pillars of our employment, of our EVP. And then we choose them, they come in, they do a full photo shoot day. Their faces are all over that and then we share those stories internally and externally. And there's a real pride around that. What we have found, what's really neat, is we do some newsletters and more employees are sharing their stories, especially around inclusion and belonging. Maybe things that they wouldn't have felt comfortable sharing before, they could be like, coming out stories or mental health or just like items like that where now it's like, ‘Oh I see these stories being shared and I know I work in a workplace that I can do that.’
Stacy Parker
Where I belong. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Keri Fraser
It's been really powerful.
Leandra Harris
And it's ongoing too, Keri?
Keri Fraser
Yeah.
Leandra Harris
That's magic too, right? ‘Cause so many organizations will be like, ‘Okay, I'll do a storytelling contest and then we'll revisit it in five years.’ So that's beautiful. That's beautiful.
Stacy Parker
And further to the conversation about managers and leaders, are they participating in the storytelling as well?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, they do, definitely. We've built the playbook and we do a lot of work with managers on how they talk about Westland, also internally and externally. And we have them part of those contests too. We actually like them to even nominate some of their employees too so that they're part of it. So I definitely see one thing that's been much better for us is even the sharing of stuff externally by managers, like job postings and opportunities like that, was something that really lacked with Westland before and now we see much more involvement of that, like managers own that much more.
Stacy Parker
That's great. And how do you track the return on investment? Are you able to track the ROI on the employer brand?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, we do. There's a few things we look at. Although there's some things I think we can do a better job on. You know, we always look at our external sentiment stuff like Glassdoor and Indeed. We look every month at our ratings, the comments, and we make responses to them. We look at turnover, also the time to fill and number of applicants. So we are looking at things like that. I think where we could do a better job is quality of hire. That is maybe something that we'd like to tie a bit more to branding too as an opportunity.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, I think that's the one that we hear the most right now is quality of hire metrics.
Keri Fraser
Is it? Okay, that's good to know.
Stacy Parker
Which is typically what we're hearing a lot is measuring with pulse surveys to managers at the three months mark. It's a long enough time to get a sense of what the quality of the talent is. But there's been multiple organizations, that's the one they want to focus on for 2026.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, you know, we do do an onboarding survey, but it just goes to employees. We actually have a very high response rate and we try to see are people's experiences matching to what they thought.
Stacy Parker
That's great. That tells you that the EVP messaging is working. One of our clients calls it the “Candidate Love Score”. So it's from managers at the three month mark, you know, testing how much do you love the candidate that you've brought on, which is indicative of candidate quality.
Keri Fraser
I like that.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, it's good to hear though that there's some consistency to what everyone is looking for, which means that for 2026, it's less about the volume of applicants that the employer brand is really working towards. It's shaping employee experience and pride, and it's elevating the caliber of the talent that are coming to the organization.
Leandra Harris
But the advocacy is we're seeing more of that too, right Stacy? Which it's nice to see like executive management advocacy and employee, companies are now measuring that because candidates, if they go to a career website and you're talking about culture and the head of HR is talking about culture, but all the president or the CMO or whatever are talking about products, products, products, and nothing about culture, there's a correlation now we're seeing on our research with CEOs and the entire executive team talking equally about culture as they are about their products and services.
What's one bold, because we'd love to see, I mean, HR is such a great profession, but what's one bold people initiative that you would like organizations to take on in the next year?
Keri Fraser
I really would like to see more organizations embrace talent marketplaces. So it's a platform within HR that does a much better job. It's all done through AI where it helps match people internally to roles, to projects, to mentorship opportunities based on what they've put in the in the system, like their skills and interests and development and growth areas. I think for me that really unlocks the potential of people in the workforce and it's really hard to get there and I'd love to see progress on that for organizations.
Stacy Parker
That was powerful. Do you have something like that right now?
Leandra Harris
Yeah, do you? Do you do that now or not, Keri?
Keri Fraser
No.
Leandra Harris
That's brilliant. Because it's so much easier than, ‘Okay, let's go hire another body.’
Stacy Parker
Or the protectionism of specific departments and managers. Yeah.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, I think it's getting out of this old-fashioned mindset of like experience versus skills. And that's a massive shift. It's on my plan, it's on our plan over the next five years to get there.
Leandra Harris
That's exciting.
Stacy Parker
Really cool.
Okay, what's one leadership lesson that continues to shape how you particularly approach culture?
Keri Fraser
Caring and accountability are not mutually exclusive.
Leandra Harris
And Keri, when you retire and we go out for lunch and we're brunching, and I ask you, Keri, when you look back at your career as an amazing HR leader, what kind of impact did you make? What do you hope to say?
Keri Fraser
I want work environments where everyone feels included and like they belong. That's really, I feel like just the biggest, my biggest personal desire is that everyone can have that in a workplace where we spend most of our time.
Stacy Parker
That's great. You're doing that. You have been recognized as the most inclusive workplace a few times over. So kudos to you. You're doing that.
Keri Fraser
Yeah, thank you. Working on it, trying.
Stacy Parker
What are you most optimistic about for 2026?
Keri Fraser
Yeah, I am so excited that the role of culture and leadership are such strategic imperatives and not just an HR thing, for HR to own. And that I work for an organization that believes that, right? So it's really embedded into our five-year plan. I think, you know, culture is really seen as a strategic advantage now and that's exciting. You know, being in this profession for 25 years, it hasn't always been like that. And I see such a massive shift, I think especially with AI, there's such a strong role for HR and IT to play together, but also the shift that that's gonna make for employees and helping set up that workplace of the future. And although there will be AI, actually the human piece becomes even more important. And that's exciting, there's such a massive role for HR to play.
Stacy Parker
That's so exciting. Yeah, and when we think about how important the employer brand is and that EVP in the internal culture story, in any of the communications that start to elevate through AI, we really see it as the glue for that human experience, the reciprocity that people need in the employee and talent experience. So, I totally agree.
Leandra Harris
Well, I know I'm thrilled, Keri. I mean, you've inspired me and reminded me about just how lucky we are to work in this world of culture and leadership and reputation and the impact we can make. But I also have a teen daughter who is thinking of this profession. So I'll definitely make her listen to this podcast and all the great work that you're doing. So thanks again, Keri. It's been a pleasure.
Stacy Parker
Yeah, thank you. You're always an inspiration. It's so good to see you again.