National Summit on People Management 2017

‘National Summit on People Management (NSPM) 2017’, organised by the Department of Human Resource Management, Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies of University of Kelaniya for the second consecutive time was recently held at The Kingsbury hotel. This time the theme of the conference was ‘Peopling for Innovation’ which corresponded with today’s context of people management and development at micro and macro levels. The summit congregated all the stakeholder segments including the professionals, academics, policy makers, postgraduates, and undergraduates. Around 200 participants represented all stakeholder segments. 

The chief guest of this event was Dr. Sarath Amunugama, Minister of Special Assignments. The Professional keynote speaker was Dian Gomes, Chairman of Hela Clothing Ltd. and the Academic keynote speaker was Prof. (Dr). Chandima Gomes, Professor of Electrical Engineering at University Putra Malaysia. The keynote address for the postgraduate caucus was given by Associate Professor Dr. Roziah Mohd Rasdi, Department of Professional Development and Continuing Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia and for the Undergraduate Confab the keynote speaker was Buddhi Paranamanna, Project Manager, Hela Clothing Ltd.

The Summit comprised of four distinct sessions namely, ‘The People Management Colloquium’, ‘The Academic Convention’, ‘The Postgraduates’ Caucus’ and ‘The Undergraduates’ Confab’. 

Dr.  Udaya Mohan Devdas, the NSPM-2017, the Chair and the Head of the Department of HRM, Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies, University of Kelaniya delivered welcome speech with a brief for the rationally to initiate NSPM-2017 as an innovative platform for collaboration. 

The Chief Guest, Dr. Sarath Amunugama, the Minister of Special Assignment, highly appreciated the department of HRM, university of Kelaniya for their professional approach to discuss HRM and HRD phenomena and emphasis on looking at innovatively in public sector HRM and HRD practices. Dr. Narada Fernando, the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Management studies of the University of Kelaniyapraised the commendable efforts of the HRM department and heighted the importance of the topic selected for NSPM-2017. 

Dian Gomas, as the professional keynote delivered an inspirational speech on identifying ‘right-leader characteristics for result generation’. As a significant event at NSPM-2107, a collaboration was initiated by exchanging letters of commitments between Dr. Udaya Mohan Devdas, and Dr. Rajeswari Narendren, the Director of Academy of HRD-India to establish AHRD –Sri Lanka chapter.  

NSPM panel discussion was the main event under the people management colloquium which integrated new insights from the practitioners, academics and decision makers, in arriving at implementable action plan on the selected theme. This time the panellists involved in a fruitful dialogue on innovative people management and development practices that emphasized on human resource development as a key at corporate and national level in contributing to national development. 

Association of Human Resource Professionals (AHRP) partnered with NSPM-2017 as the corporate resourcing partner for the People Management Colloquium. The corporate panellists representing AHRP were: Chandana Wijayanama, General Manager, HR – South Asia Gateway Terminals Ltd., Roshan Kulasuriya, Human Resources Director – Coats Thread Exports Ltd., Paduma Subasinghe, Senior Vice President Group HR Browns & Co. Plc. and Chandi Dharmaratne, Senior Director HR of Virtusa Polaris.  Prof. (Dr.) Chandima Gomes (Professor of Electrical Engineering at University Putra Malaysia), Dr. Rajeshwari Narendran (Director Association of HRD, India), and Dr. Sulochana Segera (Founder – Women in Management) represented international domain of HRD and women perspectives in HRD.

Starting the academic convention, Prof. Chandima Gomas gave the ‘academic keynote’ on ‘need based innovative research’ and Dr. Rajeshwari Narendran (Director Association of HRD, India) gave a special guest talk on HRD developments in India. The academic convention was a platform for sharing research insights. The postgraduate caucus started with the key note speech by Associate professor (Dr.) Roziah Binti Mohd Rasdi at, University Putra Malaysia and followed with Master of Human Resource Management action learning project presentations. Then the undergraduate action learning project outcomes were presented at the ‘Undergraduate Confab’ after the keynote from Buddhi Paranamanna, Project Manager, Hela Clothing Ltd. on ‘Innovation People Management Practices’ at corporate levels. 

The NSPM 2017 achieved its objectives by:

• nInitiating a new international collaboration with Academy of HRD-India to strengthen the measures taken to establish Academy of HRD-Sri Lanka by the Department of HRM, University of Kelaniya;
• nGenerating new research agendas for academics,  postgraduates and undergraduates to follow in National HRD, HRD in women development, and innovation corporate HRM and HRD practices;
• nStrengthening the relationship with the association of Human Resource Professionals in enhancing undergraduates’ value to the country; 
• nStrengthening the industry-university collaboration by taking around 80 industry partners and academics and students  on to one platform;  
• nInitiating a policy guideline for National HRD and public sector HRM to be presented to the policy makers and decision makers;

Strengthening social capital of the department and networking among  participants gathered in;

• Initiating MoUs with the university and industry through the intervention of the department of HRM, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka. 

Collaborations with AHRD-India Chapter

 The proceedings of the Summit were published in the ‘Kelaniya Journal of Human Resource Management’, the department prestige refereed journal; ‘People Management Review’, the department’s journal for corporate friendly version; and ‘People Masters’ Journal, the journal of the department for the Master of HRM students. This massive event was organised under the guidance of Dr. Udaua Mohan Devdas, Head, Dept. of HRM and the chair of the NSPM-2017, the co-chairs, W.A.S. Weerakkody, and H.M. Nishanthi the senior lecturers of the Dept. of HRM. The silver sponsor of the event was CAMSO LOADSTAR while main sponsors were the Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies, Master of Human Resource Management Program of the Deportment of HRM, University of Kelaniya and the Research council of the University of Kelaniya.