National HR conference provides opportunity to profile best practices in SL organisations
The National Human Resources Management Conference 2017 (National HR Conference 2017), the flagship event of the Institute of Personnel Management, Sri Lanka (IPM), this year adds a new feature – providing an opportunity to the Sri Lankan business community to share the best HR practices.
Introduction of this new feature was announced by Prof. Ajantha Dharmasiri, President, IPM Sri Lanka at a media conference held last week at the Colombo Head Office, to launch the National HR Conference 2017 which will be held on June 20-21 at the BMICH.
He stressed that the proposed forum is expected to fill the lacuna that prevails in the sphere of literature on the HR practices in the country – the best practices which are evolved from among Sri Lankan organisations. These best practices would be showcased and the efforts would be rewarded, Prof Dharmasiri pointed out.
The other events are the National HR Excellence Awards, the Geat HR Debate and the HR Service Provider’s Exhibition.
Asked by the Business Times on the HR challenges, constraints and problems that would be discussed, he said these issues are considered to be very important and are scheduled to be discussed.
He said that there will be panel discussions on transformation of leadership, future labour productivity and more than that, the huge challenge in talent development and the labour shortage. These are strategically oriented HR and digitalisation and talent development, particularly technologically related talent – emerging HR Leadership – High-tech and High-touch. He said that this conference would see the largest gathering of senior HR practitioners, consultants, academics and non-HR related personnel from Sri Lanka and the South Asian region.
At the launch he said that there is over-emphasis on private sector HR and less focus on the public sector which has to be rectified through a dialogue on best HR practices and their applicability to both private and public sector.
The keynote address at the inauguration would be by Dr. Ravi Fernando Chairman/CE, Global Strategic Corporate Sustainability Pvt Ltd, Executive in Residence – INSEAD Business School, France.
The other speakers include Dr Saman Vimalaratne, Financial, Management and Corporate Restructuring Advisor/Regional Director, Magnifier INC PTE Ltd; Raj Raghavan, Director and Head of Human Resources, Asia Pacific Region, Amazon; Prof Ajantha S Dharmasiri, President, IPM and Chairman Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura; Ms Mara Jolja, Co-Founder of Connectel, New Zealand; and Ms Esther Mcintosh, Country Director, World University Services of Canada.
The panel discussion on the topic of ‘Transformational Leadership’ will be moderated by Ajith Bopitiya, CEO, TRIKONSULT. The panellists include: Carl Cruz, Chairman, Unilever Sri Lanka; Jagath Pathirana, Director and CEO, Expo Lanka Holdings PLC; Ms. Bindu Vinodhan, Founder, The Institute of Leadership Learning and Transformation; Ms. Smitha Murthy, Leadership and Organisation Development Consultant, Bangalore, India; and Ms. Shehara Jayawardana, Group Joint Managing Director, McLarens Group.