CHROs are everywhere—even the circus. 

Marie-Noëlle Gagnon, the CHRO for Cirque du Soleil, isn’t your typical people management executive. Overseeing around 4,300 employees working in 48 active shows across more than 80 countries, she manages a unique workforce that includes both corporate staffers and performing artists. Although the artists are hired through a separate department, Gagnon plays a part in the experience of all workers.

She first stepped into the role just three weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown, as live entertainment, along with the rest of the world, came to a stop. The show couldn’t go on, and as a result, around 95% of performers and artists were laid off. But Cirque is back on track with its traveling and residency shows, and Gagnon is determined to keep its culture alive.

Fortune spoke with Gagnon about what it took to revive the legacy circus after the past few tumultuous years, her unusual responsibilities, and what she looks for in Cirque talent. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Cirque du Soleil was forced to close down during the COVID pandemic. How did you work on bringing employees back when shows started once more?  

We all had a common purpose. It was very clear what we had to achieve, our North Star was clear. We need to bring back all our shows. 

For the artists, it was easier to convince them to come back. Because when you work for Cirque du Soleil, it’s major league. So we were able to rehire or hire artists quite quickly. We had to also rehire or hire our technicians, and there was a real labor shortage at the time with the pandemic, and the entertainment industry was very difficult. Then people were asking us when we were recruiting, “Can you guarantee that Cirque du Soleil will not close again?” And the answer was, “We can’t. We don’t have any crystal balls.” So we really had to be very transparent, and we said, “We cannot guarantee you anything, but wouldn’t it be a great story to be part of the whole relaunch of Cirque du Soleil shows? Come and do this with us.” 

We were very intentional in our actions. We had a very specific plan to rebuild the entire Cirque du Soleil talent team one after the other. I had to recruit every single one of my leadership team members. And what I’ve done is basically I said, “Look, I don’t know what the future looks like. Hopefully fans will be back, but we’re gonna be creating fantastic shows again. Let’s do this together, and let’s have fun while we’re doing it.” And it paid off. Fans were back, millions of tickets were sold.

How did you rebuild culture after years of being apart?

Each show will have their own microculture. We have an overarching culture at Cirque with strong values, but the approach was different, and my philosophy post-COVID at Cirque was: “one size fits none.” 

From a corporate standpoint, I decided to not put any mandatory number of days at the office. It’s really about empowerment of the manager, so I left the entire freedom to the manager to decide what is best for their team. This is what I found to be the best strategy post-pandemic, making our managers accountable for their microculture. This is what really makes a difference in the day to day of an employee.

What responsibilities do you have that the average CHRO doesn’t have?

What is quite unique with Cirque is the whole immigration part, because it’s thousands of visas and work permits that we have to deliver on an annual basis. You have visas for artists, cast, crew management, also what we call the “accompanying members,” because some of our artists, cast and crew, can travel with their partners and family. When you think about the touring shows, these are the ones that are touring from one city and one country to another. So every time we enter a new country we have to make sure everybody has the right to be and work in this country.

I’m also in charge of everything that is health and safety. We’re doing human performance at its best, so we will never compromise anything from a health and safety standpoint. 

What does it look like to monitor the health and safety of artists? 

When you think about the artists that are up in the air doing magical things, first they need to be aware of what are the safety protocols if something bad happens. So everybody gets very tight training on what to do in emergency situations.

To make sure that we are actually following protocols, we have very tight KPIs that we are monitoring on a regular basis, and we report up to the board all our health and safety metrics. We’re measured on health and safety. So training is super important, and sometimes when you have what we call “near miss,” we put in place a corrective action plan so everything is tracked. Everything is recorded, and we need to make sure it will not happen again. 

We need to work also from a prevention standpoint, because of the injuries that can happen when they perform. So we need to make sure [the performers] are in top shape. So there is a team of people surrounding our artists: coaching, performance medicine, physical therapists. 

Are there any pain points in your role as CHRO at Cirque?

For me, it’s the whole HR technology aspect. I wish we would have more tools to help make better decisions and quicker decisions. Nowadays, you can no longer rely on your intuition to make the best decision. It’s all about facts and data, especially when you are exploring uncharted territory. Making sure that we’re using technology to boost business performance will definitely help the employee experience. It is something that in the coming years we’ll be investing in more and more. It’s on my wish list, HR technology.

What do you look for when hiring someone for Cirque?

You need to be open minded, you need to have a strong agility, and you need to be very comfortable with the gray zone. When we were relaunching our shows, we were rethinking, “Okay, now what? What does the next 20 years of Cirque look like? What does the future of HR look like?” To me, ambiguity is kind of exciting in a sense of everything is possible. The world is your oyster. Let’s put some clarity around what is gray. 

Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com

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