Nation’s human talent and the professional way forward

The National Human Capital Management (HCM) Awards ceremony formerly known as HRM awards organised by the Association of Human Resource Professionals (AHRP) is scheduled to be held on 31 March.

This year, the awards have been re-organised and presented by the Association of Human Resource Professionals as a national event encompassing both the public and private sectors, partnering with the National Human Resource Development Council as the State Sector body tasked with developing the public sector and Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)-USA/India who has been the technical partner for this event during the past several years.

A host of public and private sector companies vie for these prestigious awards and the best of the best will receive accolades at a glittering ceremony on 31 March. The Daily FT interviewed Pradeepa Kekulawala, the President of Association of Human Resource Professionals and Head of Human Resources of SriLankan Airlines about the awards, the mission of AHRP and his insights into the profession’s future. Following are excerpts:

Q: What is the contribution of AHRP to the HR community?

A: The Association of Human Resource Professionals is a network of senior and middle level practicing HR professionals bound together as an incorporated association with the purpose of bringing the HR profession to the fore front in industry and society. The HR profession essentially deals with human performance. AHRP has four pillars of activity. Professional development of the HR community, networking and forming alliances with other professional bodies and HR professionals in the world for knowledge sharing and ‘going beyond’ under which initiative national issues and policy needs in human resource development are highlighted, facilitated and resolved by partnering the policy makers. All these initiatives contribute towards enhancing the professionalism and stature of HR practitioners which is our largest contribution.

Q: Does your work positively impact the community and society in general?

A: Of course it does, as all our initiatives are aimed at facilitating the development of the nation’s human talent and also the national productivity. We in fact play a pivotal role in the country in this context, as much as or even more than other such entities.

Q: How do you explain the role of HR in a highly competitive and volatile business environment? 

A: The role of HR is twofold in the current context. It functions as the business enabler and driver which make the role a strategic partner of the business. On the other hand it’s a regulator and monitor which ensures that human engagement and development is within the framework of accepted rules, norms, standards and best practices. So on the one hand it’s a business partner and on the other a watch dog or ‘trusted friend of the people’.

Q: What are the new trends in HR?

A: The HR profession in the last two decades has evolved into a highly technical field of expertise, with a shift from emotion and judgment based decisions to analytical and objective interventions. Therefore, the key new trends are knowledge management or leveraging the knowledge in the organisation for business continuity, use of analytics and big data for facilitating and enhancing human performance and also leveraging the emotional quotient and spirituality of people for positive engagement.

Q: What are the main challenges faced by HR in current business context?

A: The main challenges are to justify and facilitate the monetary and time investment in people development amidst the business volatility and the competing priorities in the board room. Fortunately today HR is in ‘C suites’ and the board rooms and as a business partner the task is easier than before. However, aligning the entire management with the people strategy, cascading it down to supervisory and task levels with same vision, objective and spirit is the biggest challenge. Investment in people management technology is also a challenge due to the high investments and the fast paced change in the industry. Locally the lack of a proper national human resource policy framework ‘which is still in the infant stage’ is also a deterrent to progressive thinking and action, especially in the state sector.

Q: Talking about the state sector, why did you think of partnering with the state sector for these awards and accolade the public sector? What is your assessment of the human resource development progress of the state sector?

A: We believe that although the private sector is the engine of growth and the driver of industry, the public sector plays an integral enabling and facilitating role in this exercise. It is essentially a symbiotic relationship that is necessary between the two sectors. All this requires dynamic performance and engagement of public officials as well to play a catalytic role as the partners in progress. What we often see is that the public sector lacks expertise, exposure and the mindset required to establish progressive HR management and development practices. Political intervention is also a sad limiting factor. Therefore it is necessary to commence from the top, from all levels and introduce policies, procedures and a changing values aimed at focused HR management and development to the entire fabric of the public sector. We embraced the public sector this year with the aim of accolading the organisations which have laudable practices. They may be even basic but whoever who has progressive practices that can be shared and improved on will be recognised as a stepping stone to inculcating best practices in the future, in the public sector. In this regard, we highly appreciate the progressive thinking of the National Human Resource Development Council of the government and also the Ministry of Policy Planning under the Prime Minister who is looking at human talent development of the country for nation building beyond 2020.

Q: What is the method you use to measure the effectiveness of the HR function?

A: Mainly in the present context there are score boards and analytical dash boards which give specific quantifiable productivity and output related figures of your human resource. These figures benchmarked against industry norms and organisational targets give you the effectiveness of your HR function. Information technology plays an important and valuable role in measuring effectiveness.

Q: Tell us some successful HR initiatives in your own organisation. 

A: During the last six years the HR team together with the respective boards and managements have been able to transform the HR function from a supporting role to a dynamic business partnering role. Some of the key successes during this period have been the many positive achievements in business partnering, leadership building and succession planning, knowledge management and effective employee development. Our corporate social responsibility activity also has had a positive impact on society and also on employee engagement and moral. Today we stand abreast with many leading corporates in superior HR service delivery.

Q: What would be the future of HR?

A: The future would see people power channelled for organisational development through a focused engagement and segmented approach where intrinsic motivation would reign supreme in performance enhancement over monetary motivation.