People Behind Visier: Kevin MacDuff

Name: Kevin MacDuff
Title: Solution Management Director II
Residence: Vancouver
Hometown: Maple Ridge

Kevin’s career journey is anything but linear. From working in theatre, to getting a CPA designation, he eventually found his way to a solution management career at Visier. In his words, being a Solution Management Director means collaborating with customers, researching important business questions, and figuring out how to architect Visier solutions to best fit their needs. 

Let’s get to know more about Kevin, his work and his life! 

What motivates you at work? 

People are at the heart of everything I do. In HR, you get the rare opportunity to influence inclusion and employee experience. I want to help managers make better decisions and essentially make work not suck for their employees! 

What has been a big learning moment in your career?

I’ve learned that simply answering the question or coming up with the answer is not even halfway to actually understanding something. The problem-solving-type people often stop after answering the question, but before they understand implementation and change management. After you figure something out, the more important part is how you communicate your learning and use it to make change.

What’s important to you about people analytics?

There’s an assumption that analytics will take care of explaining things, but can’t be put into action. Where analytics actually becomes important is in relation to individuals. When you use data to assume an objective stance, you understand both sides of a situation and can provide this data to support a win-win outcome. 

How does your team influence the product?

The solutions management team determines market problems—which ones we should pursue and which ones we should stay away from. We try to stay ahead of our customers so we can incorporate their progress and lead them further, without going in the wrong direction. We listen to problems as people are trying to solve them in order to make sure that we’re not getting off track. We want to stay just far ahead enough of the customer base in order to stay listening and not go too far away from the basics. 

What Visier feature do you think is super cool?

The career path and sourcing path. The hardest thing in HR is understanding time series and which elements impact a series of events. We could never make it work before it came to fruition in the career path feature.

What’s your favourite Visier memory?

Dragon boating! We had races amongst various teams. I remember I was probably a little too into it. 

Life Questions: 

What’s one hobby you’d love to get into?

I’m a bit of a serial hobbyist. I just got a puppy, Toast, and I really wanted to try agility training with her! 

Kevin’s dog, Toast!

What book are you reading?

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini, and When Pigs Fly by Jane Killian. 

Dream travel destination? 

I want to go back to Japan—Hokkaido. They have amazing mountains and ski resorts. 

Do you have a fun fact about yourself that you would like to share?

I’ve had a lot of different careers. I’ve been a theatre performer, actor, writer, plumber, designed kitchens, been in operations management, did accounting and taxation, studied to be a chef—and now I work in people analytics! 

What was your dream career as a kid, and does it relate to what you’re doing now? 

As a kid, I wanted people to ask me questions that I could answer. I wanted to be a theatre professional for a long time, but now I’m back in that spot I wanted to be in as a kid, because business and consulting lets me answer people’s questions. 

What are you most looking forward to after the pandemic settles down? 

Cooking. When I turned 40, I cooked 40 dinners for folks throughout the year, and I’d love to do that again.