AVP and CHRO Elaine Do Rosario discusses new HRMS, being a strategic partner and boosting employee experience
With a career spanning pharmaceuticals, healthcare and executive search, Elaine Do Rosario brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to the academic sector as AVP and CHRO at the University of Guelph.
Her priorities are clear: empowering employees, supporting leaders, and embedding human resources as a strategic partner within the institution, at a critical juncture.
“It’s a tough time for universities,” she says. “The university sector is experiencing things we likely haven’t experienced before – around our budgets, caps, those sorts of things. And so we have to be thinking about that and what that impact is going to be to the way our universities function, to our people and how we manage — particularly workload, engagement, and morale. We can’t lose sight of those things.”
From science to strategy: A journey to HR
Do Rosario’s path into HR was anything but conventional. Starting as a Biology major, her early aspirations pointed toward a career in medicine. However, a summer job with a boutique executive search firm set her on an unexpected trajectory.
“I fell into it,” she says of her entry into HR. “I started to learn… the recruitment side of HR and the executive search side. And [my boss] did a lot of other things for his clients, like succession planning and org design.”
The experience opened Do Rosario’s eyes to the strategic impact HR could have on organizations. Over time, her career evolved from recruitment to broader HR roles, including a pivotal six-year stint at Hudson RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), where she developed a knack for working across diverse industries and cultures.
“I really fell in love with the human aspect of designing solutions, helping businesses move their actual operational model forward through recruiting, retaining, developing their staff,” she says.
“You had to sort of be a chameleon. You go in, you build their team, you become part of their leadership team, understand their culture, get their buy-in, gain their trust… and then move on.”
This ability to adapt and build relationships would prove invaluable as Do Rosario’s career took her to Halton Healthcare, where she worked for nearly 11 years and helped lead the transition to a much larger hospital facility.
“I joined there to lead the workforce planning, talent management, recruitment strategy,” she says of the three-year workforce plan. “That, for me, was like a dream.”
Tackling transformation with new HRMS
Next up was the University of Guelph. Taking on the HR leadership role held a lot of appeal, with Do Rosario admitting the university sector “fascinated” her, especially as a venture into the broader pubic sector.
One of her first major projects has been implementing a new Human Resources Management System (HRMS), a significant departure from the institution’s previous homegrown system, she says. The launch represents a seismic shift in how HR processes function at the university, streamlining operations and offering employees more autonomy through self-service capabilities.
“This is brand new for the organization,” says Do Rosario. “I joined in May, so I wasn’t here for a big chunk of everything; ‘I flipped the switch on,’ is what I like to say.”
The transition hasn’t been without its challenges. Rolling out the new system in July meant it was put to the test almost immediately, coinciding with the university’s busiest hiring season in September.
“I called it the perfect storm,” she says. “All the things happened at the same time … we were at the height of trying to work out some of those bugs in the system, exacerbated by the fact that the volume of information going in was very high.”
Despite the bumps along the way, the HRMS marks a turning point for the university’s HR operations, enabling more efficient workflows and better service delivery. The initial phase focuses on employee centralization, but future phases will expand functionality to include performance management and learning systems.
“It really allows some self-service,” she notes. “It allows the HR team to build really great processes around how we can better serve the organization from a human resources perspective, and help with the transactional parts.”
Shifting from transactions to strategy
Alongside technological transformation, Do Rosario is driving a cultural shift within the HR function itself, where the team is made up of about 80 people — for a staff of about 5,300 and a faculty of roughly 1,000. Her goal is to position HR as a strategic thought partner to university leadership, moving beyond transactional tasks to play a critical role in decision-making.
“It’s the shift in thinking between ‘I have to go to human resources to complete this transactional task’ versus ‘I’m about to make a big decision for my business, I want to engage my human resources partner to be a part of this because I want to see what impacts I’m not thinking about,’” she says.
Do Rosario’s previous role, where HR played a central role in planning the transition to a new facility, informs this approach.
“We moved the dial at Halton Healthcare to get to that table, to be that partner, to be more than ‘I need to just go recruit this role, please put in the posting’ to ‘I want to recruit this role. We don’t really have the skill set. What does the landscape look like out there?’”
Diverse needs of university environment
Leading HR at a university presents unique challenges, from budget constraints to the diverse needs of various departments.
“It’s not always one size fits all, so when we create these programs, we need to think about how we hit the different areas as well,” she says.
Programs that work well in one area may not be suitable for another, requiring a tailored approach to HR strategy.
Amid these pressures, Do Rosario remains focused on ensuring that the university remains a competitive employer.
Central to her vision is a strong focus on improving the employee experience. This means more than just ensuring smooth processes — it’s about creating meaningful, human connections throughout an employee’s journey.
“From a leadership perspective, those are the things that I want to hone in on. Those are the things that we need to really think about driving, especially in a market where we want to keep that strong talent, we want to develop that strong talent. Want to hire that strong talent, and how do we make them successful when they're here?”
Supporting leadership development
Developing leadership capabilities is a key area of focus. Do Rosario identifies a common gap in organizations where technical expertise is often mistaken for leadership ability.
“We don’t need just expert people. We don’t need SMEs in leadership positions. We need leaders,” she says.
To address this, the HR team is working to provide leaders with the skills and competencies they need to succeed.
“[It’s about] how do we get to them when they’re starting to move into their leadership roles and give them the foundations that they need to be strong leaders?” says Do Rosario.
At the same time, she ihs encouraging a more thoughtful approach to leadership selection.
“How do we help our organization understand how to choose leaders and that being really great in a chosen field doesn’t necessarily make you the strongest leader?”
From implementing transformative technology to fostering a culture that values people, Do Rosario is laying the groundwork for long-term success at the use of Guelph.
“A lot of organizations, including ourselves, can rest on our laurels to think that we'll just get the talent, and that isn't going to always be the case,” she says.
“How we treat the people in our house is how we’re going to be projected outside of our house, so I think we always need to stay focused on that.”
