Beyond the Obvious - Leveraging HR's Competitive Advantage

The Asia Pacific HRM Congress, 2009 held in Bangalore on 18th & 19th September, saw the HR fraternity once again coming together from various countries to share their unique experiences and learnings. The event was one of its kind as many delegates represented the organizations across the Asia Pacific region including countries like Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc and senior HR industry leaders like Adil Malia (Essar), Aquil Busrai (IBM), V. Ramachandran (Motorola), Sudhir Goyal (UB Group), VC Agrawal (IOCL), Shantanu Banerjee (Steria), Jonas Ang (Kelly), Sreekumar B (Yahoo) amongst others who represented their respective organizations.

The tone of the conference was set by eminent speakers from HR on the theme – 'Developing strategic capabilities to evolve with the shifting business landscape'. There were few panel discussions involving the industry HR stalwarts coming from diverse backgrounds along with the workshops conducted by the Gurus – Richard Mosley, a world renowned authority on employer branding and Prof. Indira Parikh, ex-dean at IIM-A.

I was privileged to represent Xchanging at the event where I presented on the topic :'Beyond the Obvious - Leveraging HR's Competitive Advantage'. I shared my perspective and called upon the industry that if we need to move from great to greater, we need to get out of our comfort zone in the shifting business landscape (refer to the below Video)

I also responded to questions posed during the conference related to why HR professionals do not make it to the CEO positions? Few more thoughts on the following were also touched upon: In how many organizations does an HR Leader enjoy equivalent or more respect than the CFO? Is there any game where a coach of the personnel has lesser perceived value than the scorecard keeper? It only happens in our HR community.

...followed by few thoughts and questions on whether the industry has evolved with time, what other spheres should an HR professional focus on apart from functional expertise to make it BIG, effective leadership style and some workable tips to build foundation for a successful HR career.

Such platforms as the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, provide unique opportunities to think from different perspectives, to keep pace with current trends & best practices prevailing in the industry, upgrading one’s knowledge quotient and of course business networking. I understand that the World HR Congress is scheduled for Feb'2010 in Mumbai co-ordinated by Mr. RL Bhatia and Team from FUN & JOY at Work. If interested (you may like to participate).