Powering a Changing World

March 4, 2019

By Carol McGlogan

EFC has been on quite a journey over the past year. To coincide with the rollout of our new brand, launched last spring, we have rolled into a new office space — another layer in the overall vision of EFC to be “the voice of the most innovative electrical community, powering a changing world.”

As I step into our new office, I feel a sense of revived energy emitting from the aesthetic and functionality of the space — promising to “power a changing world.” The removal of private offices encourages collaboration in an open concept plan. The upgraded meeting rooms with state-of-the-art conferencing technology enable improved remote coast-to-coast meeting participation. New ideas that stem at meetings are written on our boardroom glass walls, encouraging members to work together to solve issues that help advance the industry. And, leading-edge lighting and controls technology is prominently showcased to project our industry’s leadership in smart buildings, energy savings, and quality work environments. 

The new office space serves as an inspiring backdrop to set great things into motion…and a lot of progress is already underway to help “power up” this industry:

• Powering a changing world video: EFC has released a new video series to promote the many career opportunities available in this industry. This video is one means through which we will attract talent to our industry. It supports our scholarship program and our regional school outreach programs, and is now available to members for their recruiting efforts.

• The Power of People: EFC is supporting “people power” with new initiatives around diversity and inclusion, as well as the upcoming release of new training modules that help new recruits navigate and demystify the industry ecosystem and codes and standards. In parallel with these initiatives, HR professionals from our membership continue to meet regularly at HR committee meetings to share best practices while also gaining insight on how to address new issues surrounding people management.

• The Power of the Future: to address our future source of power and innovation, we recently co-hosted an electrification summit with the Canadian Electricity Association (CEA). Participants explored the impact of electrification on the grid, our products, customers and regulations. A whitepaper on this topic will be presented at our upcoming conference in May.

• The Power of Productivity: last year, we produced a research study on digital supply chain excellence. At our conference, our new Supply Chain Committee will conduct a workshop on people and process issues with digitalization within our channel. 

• The Power of Innovation: we continue in our efforts to support the advancement of codes and standards activities and harmonization projects to remove barriers to market growth. 

• The Power of Information: we will be enhancing the analytics capabilities within our statistics program to strengthen the information power we provide to members. Stay tuned for more details on this important initiative. 

These efforts demonstrate the role EFC plays in powering a changing world. This is a shared vision with our members; one that requires everyone to participate, so we together can empower the industry and individual companies to make a significant difference to society.

Carol McGlogan is President & CEO, Electro-Federation Canada.