Challenge Factory
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About us

Challenge Factory is a research and advisory services firm that helps clients achieve productivity gains and positive social impact.

We apply best practices from the international career development field to build human-centric workplaces where people are valued as equity, not as assets that depreciate over time. Our clients don’t just compete in today’s challenging labour markets. They lead.

As a certified B Corporation, we believe a better Future of Work can be shaped through evidence-based, innovative solutions that meet the needs of all interest holders—across organizations, industries, communities, and economies. Every step we take to identify and develop talent, no matter how hidden, delivers measurable results.

Challenge Factory’s origins

Challenge Factory founder Lisa Taylor was a technology strategy consultant in the 1990s, helping clients prepare for an increasingly digital global economy. By the mid-2000s, it was clear to her that traditional workforce systems and processes weren’t working the way they used to. Leaders were facing new questions, and they were short on answers.

Lisa led a team of more than 120 in those days; average age 48. When she talked with them about their career path, they confessed to being bored and unsatisfied. It felt like they were focused only on the short term, until a final mortgage payment or some other milestone meant they could start to think about the future.

That struck her as a terrible waste of time and talent. Lisa began studying demographics, labour market dynamics, and career life-stage theory. She believed that the next wave of disruption would have less to do with technology than it would the Future of Work—the norms, values, and activities that workers want in exchange for their labour, across a longer career.

Lisa quit corporate life and founded Challenge Factory. Its early focus was on shifting demographics, the ageing workforce, career transitions, and tools for workforce managers. She helped clients build new career systems, structures, and expectations to maximize the potential of workers of all ages—in particular older workers with an opportunity to extend their careers past the traditional retirement age.

That was 2012—years before the ageing workforce, gig economy, and hybrid work would emerge as the acute career and labour market challenges they are today.

Hidden talent and career development

Out of that evolved Challenge Factory’s current focus on hidden talent and career development. Lisa identified the need for a systems approach to address changing workplace and labour market dynamics, one that extends beyond a more simplistic emphasis on supply and demand.

Better than traditional human capital consultants, Challenge Factory recognizes that career development best practices can drive productivity results across teams, organizations, and economies.

Today, Challenge Factory’s work is leveraged around the world by leaders, educational institutions, and governments as new workforce programs, training paths, and policies are formed.

What drives Challenge Factory today? Four core beliefs:

  • Wasted workforce potential is wasted impact.
  • The Future of Work is human. People are at the centre of work, and technology is there to enable them.
  • Seismic shifts in human- and technology-driven innovation have made change a constant in today’s workplaces. Organizations must learn how to work within this new normal.
  • Business can be a force for good.

Our history

2012

  • Challenge Factory is incorporated and Lisa Taylor hires the company’s first staff member.
  • We launch a career test-drive service that provides a guided day-in-the-life experience to executive leaders and other clients going through career transitions. Over 70 jobs are available to test-drive. We develop the term Legacy Career®.
  • Lisa Taylor is invited to meet with General (Ret’d) Walt Natynczyk, Deputy Minister, Veterans Affairs Canada, to discuss the impact of identity on career change generally and implications for the Department to consider as new approaches to military-to-civilian career transition supports are developed.
  • We identify the similarities between the career transitions that older workers and military Veterans experience. We begin to develop deep expertise in how to close the gap between employers and the hidden talent pool of Canada’s military Veterans.

2013

  • Challenge Factory starts helping organizations address their workforce needs. Our consulting services focus on how ageing workforces impact workplaces. We help private and non-profit sector organizations with issues that require workforce modelling, new Legacy Careers® paths and programs, alumni programs, and leadership support to facilitate better career conversations and approaches with staff.
  • We develop an onboarding program that helps the Toronto Community Housing Corporation understand the complexity of day-to-day challenges faced by frontline staff in six key roles.
  • We deliver the Ontario Nurses Association an intergenerational career and learning program for labour negotiators in anticipation of future workforce shortages.

2014-2015

  • Challenge Factory’s unique career transition service delivery is featured in a CBC Television documentary called The Boomer Revolution. It explores how demographic change is impacting the lives of boomers. Lisa Taylor, discusses the career development of Canadians in mid and later stages of life.
  • The Urban Land Institute selects Lisa as one of the Top 100 Women in Canada for her work in leadership, employment, and city building.
  • Lisa also wins the Career Professional of the Year, awarded by the Career Professionals of Canada. Recipients are selected for the contribution their work makes to advancing the future of the career development sector.
  • We pilot an experiential program called Leaders Helping Leaders that brings together Veterans and transitioning older workers to test how inclusive learning programs could break down barriers and lead to better outcomes for both cohorts. The Government of Canada asks us to train managers of Military Family Resource Centres across Canada to ensure stronger awareness of career development.

2016

  • Challenge Factory wins a major contract with ArcelorMittal to reimagine the Future of Work within Canada’s steel manufacturing industry. We develop a comprehensive HR strategy to help address and leverage the industry’s ageing workforce, introducing our Broken Talent Escalator® model. This becomes a foundational tool and thought leadership piece for understanding outdated workplace structures, programs, and approaches to intergenerational workforces.
  • Lisa joins the board of directors of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment Association.

2017

  • Funded and published by national charitable organization CERIC, Lisa authors Retain and Gain: Career Management for Small Business. The playbook identifies low-cost tips, activities, and actions that small businesses can take to attract, engage, and retain staff.
  • We conduct a first-of-its-kind national study to quantify how Veterans work (their communication styles, motivators, values, and behaviours) and what specific biases employers hold about them. The findings help inform Veteran career transition supports across the country, as well as other important learnings for hiring managers, recruiters, and career development professionals.

2018

  • Challenge Factory leads a National Conversation on the Future of Work with more than 1,000 participants across Canada. We take the project to Cannexus18, Canada’s national career development conference, and film a documentary that showcases the hopes, fears, and ideas that Canada’s employment services and career development professionals have for the Future of Work. This work is supported by the Ontario Centre for Workforce Innovation, a project of Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), with partial support from the Government of Ontario and Government of Canada.
  • CERIC funds a second playbook. Lisa authors Retain and Gain: Career Management for Non-Profits and Charities. It focuses on providing managers with practical career development tools to use with employees.

2019

  • Challenge Factory undergoes exciting international growth. We are nominated by the World Trade Centre Toronto to take part in its Trade Accelerator Program through the Toronto Region Board of Trade. The program recognizes businesses, with a focus on women-owned businesses that are ready to enter new international markets.
  • Lisa is selected to be one of five Team Canada members to attend the International Centre for Career Development & Public Policy Symposium in Norway. Lisa is also selected to be one of three speakers to address the ICCDPP’s 33 member countries. The symposium catapults Challenge Factory onto the global career development stage.
  • Lisa co-authors The Talent Revolution: Longevity and the Future of Work with Fern Lebo. Published by the University of Toronto Press, this seminal book exposes work-life longevity as the most influential driver transforming today’s workplaces—a competitive edge for organizations smart enough to capitalize on it.
  • We set out to close the gap between employers and Veterans by creating tools and resources for employers. Our approach focuses on raising employers’ awareness and understanding of Veterans as a skilled, hidden talent pool that can help them fill their labour and skills shortages.

2020

  • The COVID-19 pandemic hits. Challenge Factory implements key business decisions to ensure its growing staff is supported and the company is responsive to new challenges and opportunities:
    • All regular contractors are offered employment contracts.
    • All staff are provided health, dental, and life benefits.
    • An immediate pivot is made to support public sector workforce needs, bringing Challenge Factory’s expertise to new clients and audiences.
  • We begin a years-long collaboration with the Labour Market Information Council (LMIC). We become a strategic and trusted advisor, community animator, and project manager for LMIC during the creation of the LMIC Data Hub, a central data repository that hosts labour market information from vetted sources across Canada.
  • The People and Career Development Association (Singapore) invites Lisa to present an in-person training course to business and policy leaders.
  • We publish The Canadian Guide to Hiring Veterans.

2021

  • Emree Siaroff joins Challenge Factory as Vice President of Consulting and Leadership. With more than 30 years of global and domestic human resources experience, Emree’s past as a CHRO expands our consulting capabilities. The advisory role that we have been playing for senior leaders is formalized into our Trusted Advisor Leadership Counsel.
  • We launch Workforce Architecture, a digital magazine that applies career development, Future of Work, and revolutionary change thinking to today’s workforce needs.
  • Lisa authors Retain and Gain: Career Management for the Public Sector for CERIC, which includes a lens on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
  • We launch two new employer-focused resources, the online MasterClass in Hiring: Tap into the Hidden Talent Pool of Canada’s Veterans and Hidden Talent: A Challenge Factory Podcast.

2022

  • Challenge Factory’s curriculum development work enters a new phase. Building on the platform and expertise that began in 2015 with the launch of the Centre for Career Innovation, Challenge Factory undertakes new learning mandates. We partner with the Information Communications and Technology Council on two projects.
    • The first is an online asynchronous training program to help youth apply career development practices and reflection techniques during their internship experiences.
    • The second is a series of bilingual videos for youth that showcases elements of Canadian culture and workplace behaviours beyond basic etiquettes and norms.
  • Lisa becomes an Associate Fellow with the National Institute on Ageing. She is also recognized as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women by the WXN Top 100 Awards.
  • After a years-long process, Challenge Factory earns a Certified B Corporation designation. B Corps are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on shareholders, workers, customers, the community, and the environment.

2023

  • Lisa Taylor is invited to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affair as an expert witness. The committee’s final report is published in October 2023. Lisa delivers three recommendations to the Committee:
    • Use a career development model when designing the National Strategy for Veterans Employment After Service. And adhere to Canada’s national Competency Framework for Career Development Professionals when outlining any service or intervention to be included in the strategy.
    • Focus on equipping Veterans with career agency rather than identifying specific jobs or career paths for them.
    • Make it easier for small- to medium-sized enterprises in the private and non-profit sectors to hire Veterans through employer-focused supports and incentives.
  • Working across North America, Challenge Factory’s consulting group helps leaders and organizations address a range of workforce challenges, including:
    • Women’s leadership in male-dominated industries.
    • Succession planning and leadership in the mining and engineering industries.
    • Return-to-work policy and culture implications in professional service firms.
  • Demand for Challenge Factory’s Trusted Advisor Leadership Counsel services continues to grow. We bring on new Trusted Advisors in Canada and the U.S.

2024

  • Challenge Factory publishes Hidden Sector, Hidden Talent: Mapping Canada’s Career Development Sector. This is a first-of-its-kind evidence base about the size, membership, and impact of Canada’s career development sector. It is launched at Cannexus24, Canada’s career development conference, during which Lisa Taylor delivers a keynote presentation. Media attention is high and enthusiastic. Project partners include CERIC and the Canadian Career Development Foundation.
  • We partner with the True Patriot Love Foundation, a national charity dedicated to supporting Canadian military members, veterans and their families. Together, we map the Veteran transition ecosystem in Ontario and liaise with Veterans Affairs Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces (Transition Group) to integrate strategies and activities across organizations.
  • Lisa meets with the Veterans Affairs Canada team behind Canada’s new National Veterans Employment Strategy, including the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence. Lisa is joined by True Patriot Love CEO Nick Booth and Chief Program Officer Namita Joshi to share findings from our recent work to make Ontario a Veteran-friendly province.
  • Challenge Factory reconstitutes its Advisory Board with a focus on building its market leadership in Canada, the US, and internationally.