An exclusive report on the recent 11th World HR Congress and Business-Connect Exposition in Singapore. Management guru Dave Ulrich and Alan Webber, founder of Fast Company magazine, were among the many quality presenters. Mobility challenges in China were a strong theme of the event.

An emerging issue is individual ROI

"Change is not an event, but a process," said Professor Dave Ulrich, the management guru hailing from University of Michigan, during his presentation which rounded off the four-day HR congress, run every two years by the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations, which was hosted and organised this year by the Singapore Human Resource Institute.

"An organisation is not a structure, but is its capabilities.  [Ask] 'What do you do?' not 'what are you?'," said Professor Ulrich, who noted several important points including the revelation that leadership is not a person but a brand, something that most companies with dynamic leaders are failing to realise.

Topics covered at the event, which attracted 2000 local and foreign delegates including 400 CEOs and business leaders and represented 62 countries, ranged from those of local interest including regional best practices in HR for government and public companies, to those of international interest such as strategic HR, measuring human capital, and global leadership initiatives.

The theme, 'how can HR be more strategic?' ran throughout the conference.

Don't give up

Professor Ulrich's thorough and engaging presentation on 'whether HR can truly reinvent itself, and if so, where does it start?', provided an extensive road map of what we know and what we can now do, focusing on areas such as strategic clarity, organisational capabilities, and the change process.

Most of Professor Ulrich’s presentation was based on his new book, The HR Value Proposition, a must-read for HR managers tasked with building practices into their HR programmes rather than blindly following a set of principles. According to Ulrich, building practices takes time and HR managers should not be discouraged.

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