Andréanne's Journal - May ✍🏼

Today I'm talking to you about human resources. I loooove the members of my team. I’m so grateful to have them but despite all of their help I’ve realized that HR is much more complicated than I thought! (If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re reading this newsletter, I’m sure you’ve made the same realization at some point.)

To give you an idea of the HR structure at Womance, we have a good number of employees who have been here for several years. Out of about 40 employees, 16 full-time employees have been here for over three years. I'm incredibly lucky, but that luck still brings its fair share of challenges. Why? Womance has undergone a lot of changes in recent years. We’ve increased the variety of clothing styles and introduced new product categories. We’ve diversified sales channels with the opening of new boutiques and adapted to the introduction of new social media platforms like Tik Tok. We’ve created new processes to make the warehouse more efficient and made constant upgrades to our website. All this without even counting Womance’s little sister company Sans-Façon, which takes up a little bit of everyone’s time as well. (To give you an idea of scale, Sans-Façon has three exclusive employees: our chemist, sales representative and social media creator/manager. All other resources are delegated to Womance.)

This means that over the last three to four years, many employees have seen their positions evolve. Anne-Sophie went from social media manager to marketing and branding coordinator with three people under her supervision. Cynthia was a parcel attendant who became a warehouse manager. Marie-Pier, hired as a design and purchasing coordinator, is now our artistic director. Maude, who started as a parcel clerk while doing a few hours at the store, is now the general manager of the Quebec store. And so on! These people have evolved within the company because they were offered new tasks or because they expressed a desire to change positions or take on new responsibilities. And that’s what I like most about Womance, that the women who work here have the chance to advance. That’s the beauty of a young company! You apply for a specific job posting, but you never know how it might play out in the future.

This growth, however, can bring its own set of challenges, especially as positions change and you become part of the head office team, with managers leading their own groups under your direction. The bigger a company gets, the more important it is that each department manager is able to make decisions and manage issues without always needing to involve head office. It seems simple, but it’s far from it! At one point during the growth of the company, I asked myself several questions about how I could get these people who had been with us for a long time to be able to evolve in their positions and acquire the skills to meet the expectations of their new leadership roles. I consulted many resources and spoke to several entrepreneurs. There were two solutions: the first was that we train current employees in management and human resources alongside professionals, with the understanding that it might not always work out. Not everyone becomes a good manager – sometimes our willpower gets in the way. Sometimes our personal lives interfere with the demands of our new roles more than we anticipated. Personally, I am learning a lot day after day about how to be a manager; it’s a role that is always evolving. This first approach requires that we invest time and money while acknowledging the risk that results may be absent. The second possible solution is to externally hire people who already have the skills and aim for rapid performance rather than learning development. It’s a more radical approach, and in all sincerity it’s one that never crossed my mind. I didn’t give a damn about the risk that investing in my employees might not always lead to great results. I wanted to see what was possible. There’s a first time for everything, and this was just another first at Womance! And you know what? It went really well. We had 6-7 dedicated employees follow the management training and complete the group workshops and the change is already being felt. In fact, I think they gained confidence above all else, and this newfound confidence changed everything else in their work. I can’t wait to see what happens over the next few months and years, and I’m really proud of them for welcoming this new experience with openness and a desire to learn. All of them were really happy when we presented them with the idea of training. They all had a thirst to learn and it was magical to see.

Otherwise, in May I announced some big news to the team. I can't wait to tell you about it! It made me so happy to see their faces beaming when I told them about the upcoming changes, and I have an inkling that you might be very happy too! Stay tuned for more!

- Andréanne Marquis, founder of Womance