Steph Barlow, Director of People and Culture at Iversoft, believes that careers don’t need to be linear to be successful. With a Master’s degree in Roman History and Archaeology, she started out studying the remains of cultures, but quickly realized that she was more passionate about building them. Although it was intimidating to start over in a new field, Steph’s determination to build better workplaces through people-first policies drove her to complete a new program in HR.

When she started at Iversoft, the company was still small with few official HR policies to speak of. Steph immediately got to work laying the foundation for what Iversoft has become today. She has grown the company from 9 to more than 40 employees and works tirelessly to empower the team by encouraging them to openly share ideas, knowledge, and skills. She lives by the principle that a good idea can come from anywhere, carefully designing feedback procedures to ensure employees always have a safe place to speak their minds.

Under Steph’s leadership, Iversoft has been recognized as a people-first organization that promotes diversity and inclusion, winning the 2021 Employer Excellence Award. Her secret recipe for building an award-winning team is simple:

1. Focus on good people, ideas, achievements, and experiences over impressive-looking degrees.

2. Design opportunities for all candidates to show you their strengths, because relying on interviews favours certain personalities.

3. Look for culture adds rather than culture fits.

4. Hire people with no industry experience. It can add valuable new perspectives to your team.

5. It’s not your product or service wowing your customer, it’s your people. Take care of them.

6. Know that diversity can be your company's greatest strength.

From the beginning of her HR journey, Steph understood the importance of making her own opportunities and giving back to the community. Having grown up hearing the struggles of immigrant friends not being taken seriously when competing with locally educated candidates, she knew that this was where she wanted to make a difference. Steph volunteers as a talent coach with Hire Immigrants Ottawa and is regularly a featured speaker for the uOGlobal program. She loves engaging with talent from around the globe, listening to their stories, and offering guidance on how to build their careers in Canada.

Company Name:
Iversoft

Head Office Address:
M114-4338 Innes Rd Orleans ON K4A 3W3

Telephone No.:
6134213498

Email:
[email protected]

Website:
www.Iversoft.ca