Why Dillon Consulting’s New President Is Now Based In Saint John, Not Toronto
SAINT JOHN– When it comes to advancing your career in a national company, most would assume that would mean a move to a bigger city centre like Toronto. But that wasn’t the case for Sean Hanlon, the new president of Dillon Consulting, a national consulting firm with 18 offices and more than 800 employees across Canada.
Hanlon became the company’s president in January but has been with Dillion since 2002. Back then, Dillon’s New Brunswick operations were smaller.
“The first two-and-a-half years I joined Dillon I traveled every day from Saint John to Fredericton because we didn’t have an office here yet,” said Hanlon in an interview with Huddle. “There were about 10 or 12 people with Dillon at the time in New Brunswick back in 2002.
“In 2005 myself and another colleague opened an office here in Saint John and the rest is history.”
Dillon Consulting now has 80 people working in New Brunswick, with about 40 people working in Saint John. The company is soon taking over the rest of the historic Ordnance Building in the south end of Saint John to accommodate all the new staff.
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“I go on the road and come back and there’s more [staff]. We’ve got people in the hall right now with desks,” said Hanlon “So we’re taking over the rest the building and renovating that to get ready for [more growth].
In April 2018, Hanlon accepted the position of interim-president but never considered taking on the role permanently because he would have to move his life to Toronto.
“In the previous leadership, there was an expectation that if you wanted to be in these roles you had to move to Toronto, and I wasn’t willing to move to Toronto,” he said. “I’m not about titles, and my wife is a teacher and she’s got a great job here, so I wasn’t going to move for the role.”
But upon evaluation, the company realized that with the advancement of technology and the general shift in workplace culture that has taken place over the last 10 years, the role of the president could actually be done remotely.
“The way the workplace is nowadays, people don’t move around and transfer as readily as they have in the past, because there’s usually two-income families and people get established and it’s much more flexible/ The company is a little more open-minded when it comes to leadership transition that before,” said Hanlon.
“We do a fair amount of Google Hangouts for our meetings. We got our leadership across the country … traveling around to other offices is a requirement anyway so it really doesn’t matter where I’m at.”
Though it’s one thing to say a workplace is flexible, having leadership show it is another.
“We want to be a flexible work environment here so people can think outside the box on how we work,” said. “Some people work from home, have different hours, now the leadership is modeling it.”