As the meetings and events industry faces rapid technological change and shifting workforce expectations, succession planning has become a critical priority. Kurby Court, president & CEO of Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, discusses how the organisation is building resilience through strategic talent development, cross-functional training, and a commitment to preserving human connection in an increasingly AI-driven world.
How would you characterise 2024/2025 for the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, and which industry sectors – the likes of aviation, technology, healthcare – have been driving your strongest performance?
Kurby Court
2024 and 2025 have been defining years for the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre (CTCC), with strong growth driven by Calgary’s rapidly diversifying economy. Life sciences have been one of our fastest-rising sectors, fuelled by the opening of the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre and a surge in medical and research events. Aviation is also accelerating, supported by major airport investments, aerospace innovation, and the expanding ecosystem around drone and autonomous technologies. Energy continues to be our powerful anchor, as Calgary remains one of the world’s leading centres for energy innovation and transition. Together, these sectors are attracting a broader mix of global conferences and technical meetings to the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre.
What development projects or facility upgrades are currently underway or planned, and how are you balancing investments in physical infrastructure with technological innovation and sustainability?
CTCC is advancing multiple development and facility upgrade projects that balance critical infrastructure renewal with client-focused service enhancements. On the infrastructure side, we are replacing our boiler system and connecting to Calgary’s District Energy system, a centralised solution that will significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and improve long-term sustainability and service redundancy. At the same time, we are investing in client-facing spaces to align with evolving industry expectations. For example, our former guest services area, which had reached end of purposeful life, was redeveloped into the Prairie Crocus Lounge, enhancing service offerings, elevating guest experience, and ensuring lifecycle renewal is paired with meaningful programme improvements.
Let’s discuss succession planning, which I understand is a priority. Can you describe your formal process for identifying high-potential employees and preparing them for leadership roles? How embedded is this practice within the organisation’s culture?
We prepare our employees for leadership roles by having them develop resiliency skills whilst leading special projects that may be outside their comfort zone. It encourages them to work with other leaders within the organisation and get a better understanding of what management positions require. We also integrate leadership training and advancement into their key performance indicators (KPIs) and support professional development to ensure we are mutually accountable to support their growth. High-potential employees are appointed to attend industry conventions as representatives for the CTCC. These experiences contribute to employees expanding their professional network and industry knowledge whilst networking with other leaders in our industry. We also support employees going to conferences that may relate more to their speciality so they can become subject matter experts within the organisation. Upon their return, they are required to present their learnings to the executive leadership team. Finally, we encourage high-potential young professionals to participate in next generation programmes that are becoming the standard across most of the associations we are active within.
When a key position opens up – whether planned or unexpected – what does your readiness look like? How far in advance are you planning for succession, and does this extend beyond the executive level to middle management and specialised roles?
In the event of a scheduled or unscheduled departure or for holiday cover, our goal is to have every layer of management with a succession plan in place. This enables us to ensure business continuity whilst having a development path for those identified individuals. For us, it all comes back to resiliency. If you want employees to be resilient, you must provide them the opportunities to be resilient.
What specific development programmes or mentorship structures do you have in place to ensure continuity when someone leaves, and how do you handle succession for highly specialised roles where talent might be harder to replace?
In 2022 we created the client services coordinator (CSC) role to better support client events and to create a development programme for future event managers. The hands-on nature of the role provides a thorough training programme that builds the skills they need to advance into an event coordinator and then event manager role. Since the inception of the programme, one has advanced to an event coordinator and two are now event managers.
Similar to how we send employees to industry conferences, we also use industry educational programmes to develop our teams. We have sent multiple employees to programmes by AIPC as well as ICCA Skills. For highly specialised roles, we make sure we support their professional development by providing educational opportunities that grow their specific skillset. It is important for the executive and senior leadership to remember, when you are investing in employees’ development, they need to be fully engaged in learning and not distracted by the day-to-day operations of the business.
Since 2023 we have worked with the Canadian Immigrant Women’s Association and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) to provide hospitality job training internships at the CTCC. In these internships, CIWA interns are placed at the CTCC for four weeks to shadow a specific department. It also gives the interns integrated occupational, English language, and essential skills training. To date the CTCC has participated in four intakes, mentoring fourteen interns, and successfully employing four in administrative roles where they are flourishing.
From an operational standpoint, we provide cross-functional training for all those departments. This helps to mitigate risk not only if an employee were to leave but helps to manage our day-to-day operations. When a highly specialised role is identified, we handle succession by first looking from within for available scope, skill and capability whilst assessing if there are employees who would be capable of or have the bandwidth for specialised training. If we cannot fulfil the role from within, we move to external recruitment. As CEO, I am a firm believer of promoting from within whenever possible.
How would you describe employee loyalty and retention at the centre? What initiatives have you implemented to foster a culture where staff see long-term career paths, and what’s your approach to balancing internal promotion with external recruitment?
We have employees who have been here for 20 plus years. Fostering a culture of belonging, it is important for every employee to know that they are valued and that they are empowered to ensure an exceptional experience for our clients. Every employee has a purpose, and when we renewed our strategic plan, we took the time to solicit feedback from every employee on what they value, what is working, what needs to change and what ideas they have to advance our goals. We then bring our strategy forward regularly, not only to showcase goals and milestones reached, but to address what may need to change given a potentially shifting landscape.
With respect to internal promotions, we embrace promotion from within. We do balance internal promotions with external hires in more specific roles such as finance and IT. It is great to bring in new hires to the organisation who can bring different perspectives to how things can be done. We also find that once they understand the business events industry they tend to love the work they do and want to further understand the industry.
From a risk mitigation perspective, what concerns you most about workforce continuity – losing institutional knowledge, skills gaps, or leadership voids – and what contingency plans do you have for sudden departures?
We are currently working with four generations of employees, each with different requirements, expectations and lifestyles. Layering technology advancement, the use of AI and given what we do for a living, my biggest fear is losing the skill and art of human connection. Whether that is in sales or conflict resolution, it is eyeballs to eyeballs and AI cannot replace that. Having succession plans in management helps with retention of institutional knowledge and brand values.
How do you approach knowledge transfer and cross-training to ensure operational resilience, particularly for roles with significant client-facing responsibilities?
Cross-departmental understanding and training, job shadowing, hands-on approach from management is how we ensure operational resilience and cross-training within the organisation. When high-potential employees are identified, their KPIs reflect opportunities to grow their knowledge with mentoring from their direct manager and others from the leadership team. Roles like our guest services have opportunity to work with more senior members on the team and gain a great understanding of our standards for client-facing positions. Our succession planning is very important to identify when skillsets and knowledge transfer for a particular role needs to be a priority.
In a competitive labour market, what’s your value proposition to employees, and how do you differentiate the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre to attract new sectors or event types that haven’t traditionally been core to your business?
We take a multi-dimensional approach to this. First and foremost, our employees’ wellbeing is incredibly important to us, and we ensure our leadership knows to continually communicate this to all levels of employees. Recently, we increased our benefits programme to provide extended coverage for access to mental health support not just for our employees but for their families. To me, this is a huge value proposition to attract talent. We live in an increasingly volatile world and people want to know their workplace puts their mental wellbeing first. Work-life balance is also incredibly important; the fast-paced nature of our industry can burn people out, and we keep that top of mind. We are in the people business; our employees need to take care of themselves so they can take care of our guests.
We are aware the next generation of employees have different needs and wants. We follow those trends closely and work with our HR team to adjust our interview and hiring processes to accommodate these new parameters. For example, flexibility is important and at this time we still uphold a work-from-home policy for employees who can do so. It is a tailored approach for each employee that they arrange directly with their manager. Finally, we place a lot of emphasis on our culture. We provide lunch and learns that cover topics like neurodiversity in the workplace, accessibility and how to improve your social media presence. Our social committee plans internal events in line with World Mental Health Month, holiday events and other fun activities employees can take a break and participate when at the office.
Looking ahead, what are your top priorities for the next 12 to 24 months, and what do you want to ensure is in place – both operationally and in terms of organisational health – as you think about your own legacy and eventual transition?
First and foremost, my priority for the next 12–24 months is leaving the organisation better than when I inherited it in all ways. Next is to continue to be an organisation of thought leaders who consistently lift others up. Finally, to ensure we are an organisation that is enabling the next generation of leaders who are knowledgeable and most importantly humanistic in their approach to business.
