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Article from Human Resources, Hong Kong, November 2000
PMAP Conference
PMAP’s 36th annual conference – a personal account
I recently delivered a paper for Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) 36th national HR conference in Cebu City, the Philippines. “HRM, INC.: The People-Powered Enterprise” was an intensive three-day conference focusing on the key business challenges facing organizations that are competing globally. This was the first time I was attending a national HR conference in the Philippines.
The sight that greeted me the evening before my presentation awed me, and will probably stay in my memory bank for a while. I had taken a walk to the ballroom where the conference was held – and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was BIG. It was going to be a major event.
I later found out that out of a total of about 1,100 members, who were mainly HR professionals in the Philippines, a grand total of more than 800 participants had been signed up. Wow! The PMAP office bearers read like a Who’s Who of the HR community in the Philippines, coming from major organizations such as Globe Telecom, San Miguel, Caltex, Oracle and the likes. Impressive!
The organizing committee lined up a strong panel of experts and as far as I can tell, most of them were very good speakers, who had something important (not revolutionary, but nevertheless important) to share. And they were not limited to local professionals, some came from Singapore, India and also Indonesia. I also noticed a good mix of HR professionals, business leaders, management consultants and even the Trade Union Congress and the Department of Labour and Employment.
The audience was of equally good quality. They asked questions, good ones at that, at the end of each presentation. And they could have gone on and on, if not for the limitation of time.
For a republic that is tackling so many on-going challenges (some life and death ones), PMAP certainly has not derailed from their key objective, to work with HR professionals in motivating and empowering their workforce to tackle the tough demands of global competition and increasing customer expectations.
The local HR community certainly knows where an dhow to fight their battles in the war for talent development and retention. To say they are focused would be an understatement, they are extremely focused.
And so, for the better part of three days, we all shared and learned from each other.
The final show was the most impressive closing ceremony I have ever witnessed. Not only were there three categories of award, Outstanding Personnel Manager of the Year, Outstanding Employer of the Year and Outstanding Personnel Program of the Year, the excitement was drummed up by having two very high (perhaps world class) quality singers to dedicate a song to each of the winners. Great stuff, simply outstanding.
The icing on the cake was the special guest of honour, the President of the Philippine Senate, the third most powerful man in the entire Philippines, after the President and his Vice President, I’m reliably told, and also a PMAPer. This says volumes about the PMAP clout over there!
The Guest of Honour’s speech had a very relevant message. In the new economy, the knowledge economy, human resources is confirmed (yet again!) to be the most valued asset any organization could ever have. Each organization has no choice but to utilize its fullest potential – the combined knowledge and contribution of each worker. To quote what he quoted during his speech: “The gold is in people’s hands” – a Japanese saying.
Anyone at that closing ceremony could feel the pride of each PMAPer, just being part of that closing ceremony was enough. Everyone was a winner. Each took away new information, best practices and useful tools to recommend to their respective Managements.
Participants even took away a newly-learned song, “The People-Powered Enterprise”, the theme song for the conference. The lyrics of this song were written by yet another PMAPer – such diversity of talents! PMAP has done a wonderful job in organizing this very successful national event, and this is food for thought for other national Personnel/HR associations who can certainly strive to emulate some of their achievements.
I am not sure whether I will be invited again to share my knowledge and expertise, but one thing is for sure, I am certainly looking forward to the 37th annual HR conference.
Paul Heng
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