Field HR specialist guided by data and the employee experience.
I’m an HR professional who sits at the intersection of HR business partnership and people analytics, and am especially interested in environments with frontline teams like retail, hospitality, and manufacturing. I enjoy using data, judgment, and conversations with managers and team members to improve policies, programs, and everyday employee experience. In pursuit of the CPHR designation, I am registered to write the National Knowledge Exam in November 2026.
About me
I’m building a career in HR that balances data analysis with hands-on partnership. In my last role I moved between reporting, employee relations investigations, and in-store conversations with team members, and I discovered I’m at my best when I can connect numbers to what’s happening on the floor.
Data-driven HR
I use HR and operations data to spot patterns in turnover, scheduling, and engagement, and to support better decisions about staffing, compensation, and team member experience. I’m currently expanding my analytics toolkit through the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate and a compensation review portfolio project.
Field partnership
I’ve supported multi-site leaders as a field HR partner, advising on performance, policy, and day-to-day people decisions for more than 100 stores. I enjoy building trust with managers, listening to what’s happening on the floor, and turning that into practical actions they can take with their teams.
Employee experience
I care about how policies and programs land in real workplaces. Whether it’s running HR tours focused on team member experience, supporting complex leaves and accommodations, or coaching leaders on recognition and communication, I look for ways to make work more humane and sustainable for frontline teams.
Experience
Most of my career has been spent in large, busy retail stores before moving into field HR support for those same environments. I’ve run high‑volume locations myself, stepped into struggling stores that needed a reset, and then moved into a role where my job was to help other leaders do the same thing with their own teams.
As a Store Manager at Michaels, I worked in a high‑pressure environment while maintaining a positive team member experience and using coaching and development to achieve results through my people. My district recognized my firm stance on execution without leaning on fear or pressure, and that I could coach team members in a way that actually changed behavior. Within a few months I became the district’s training manager, hosting new hourly and salaried leaders for one to four weeks at a time.
Those years in operations are what shaped my approach to HR. I’ve seen what happens when policies and programs are disconnected from the realities of a frontline team, and I’ve also seen how much impact you can have when you get the basics right: scheduling, clear expectations, solid onboarding, and consistent feedback.
In 2024 I moved into a Field Human Resources Specialist role supporting eight District Managers and roughly 130 stores across Canada. Instead of owning one P&L, I was partnering with dozens of leaders on performance, employee relations, and day‑to‑day people decisions. I spent my time on investigations, coaching conversations, leave and accommodation cases, and HR “pulse checks” in stores—looking at everything from break rooms and communication boards to staffing data in Workday.
That role pulled together the pieces I care about most: using data to see patterns across a large field organization, listening to what’s really going on in teams, and helping leaders translate policy into practical steps. Some days that meant cleaning up messy HRIS data so payroll and T4s were right or analyzing engagement data for correlations and opportunities. Other days were spent coaching store managers who were nervous about a performance conversation and walking them through how to do it in a way that was firm, fair, and respectful.
Today, I’m looking for roles where I can keep working at that intersection of HR business partnership and data: helping frontline organizations make better people decisions, while staying close enough to the work that I don’t lose sight of the employee experience behind the numbers.
Education
- Bachelor of Human Resources and Labour Relations – Athabasca University
- Business Administration – Red Deer Polytechnic
Certificates & Courses
Professional Development
Projects
I’m building a portfolio of HR and analytics‑focused work to showcase how I think about people decisions. These projects are based on simulated data and are in progress. For now, I’m happy to talk through how I’ve used data and reporting in past roles to support leaders and frontline teams.
- Compensation review & internal equity analysis (in progress) – A portfolio project reviewing a sample pay structure for compression, internal equity, and market alignment, with recommendations and visualizations.
- Google Data Analytics capstone (upcoming) – A data analysis project focused on HR or staffing patterns, completed as part of the Google Data Analytics certificate.
Contact
If you’d like to talk about HR, people analytics, or roles that support frontline teams, you can reach me here:
- Email: twaldo@gmail.com
- Phone: (604) 300‑0760
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tannerw