New HR Excellence Awards jury names

The HR Excellence Awards, Asia's most respected awards recognising and celebrating excellence in outstanding human capital strategy, welcomes the cream of the HR crop at Agility, Citibank, Goodyear, Knorr-Bremse and Shell to its roster of prominent judges for the 2016 awards.

The prestigious awards ceremony will take place in Malaysia on 4 October, in Hong Kong on 6 October, and in Singapore on 19 October.

“The HR Excellence Awards judges are achievers, innovators and leaders themselves so they know the concepts and structures they are looking for,” said Aditi Sharma Kalra, regional editor of Human Resources magazine.

“The great standards the HR Excellence Awards has set for its award categories mirror its credibility and commitment to industry excellence.”

Here are the latest additions to the HR Excellence Awards 2016 jury:

With over 13 years of experience in the HR field, Asha Menon has proven her expertise in policy design, system development and implementation, talent acquisition, rewards and recognition mechanisms, continuous learning and development, competency mapping, capability building and effective performance management systems, employee relations and industrial harmony, restructuring and change management, strategic planning, resulting in organisational development.

Today, Menon is the director for human resources at Agility Logistics, leading the human resources division in line with the organisation’s goals.

Her knowledge and skills were developed as she went through corporate chapters of setting up HR departments, growing talent pipeline, harmonisation work in mergers and acquisitions and organisational cultural transformation, among others.

Cindy Dermawan specialises in talent management, learning and leadership development for over 15 years.

As the head for talent and learning management, diversity and inclusion at Citibank, Dermawan is responsible for leadership and strategy in the talent and learning space and diversity and inclusion effort.

She also supervises talent management and succession planning at the country leadership level, professional and leadership development programs for employees across levels and country agenda for diversity and inclusion.

Dermawan holds a Master of Arts in Organisational Communications and Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

To see employees realise their full potential as they grow their careers and achieve company’s business goals is the vision of Usha Devi, human resource director at Goodyear.

In her current role, she oversees the overall HR function including a unionised manufacturing facility and business teams.She possesses over 25 years in HR gained both in local and multinational companies including Avery Dennison, Nippon Sheet Glass and Texchem.

Benjamin Wong, the HR director for Asia Pacific at Knorr-Bremse, has over 20 years experience in HR, 14 of which in China, living and working in Suzhou and Tianji. He served as the HR VP for Asia Pacific at Vesuvius Advanced Ceramics and China HR Director at Otis China.

Wong is a Certified Practicing Accountant, with Australian & MBA qualifications, a professional member and international committee member of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resources Management and a member of Australia Institute of Human Resources.

HR can make a real difference to business outcomes, according to Archana Bhaskar, vice president human resources for talent and development at Shell Eastern Petroleum.

With over 25 years experience across industries, geographies and companies, Bhaskar has worked a few years in HR consulting for large Indian corporations on professionalising their HR policies and practices.

She graduated from Delhi University and took an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. After working through a range of local roles, she performed European regional & Global roles in HR based at the Unilever Headquarters in the Netherlands.

Some of the other companies represented on the HR Excellence Awards 2016 jury are Agility, Cisco, Citi, DKSH,McCann Health, Watsons, and many more.

All judges, such as Sue Anne Lee, vice president for human resources at Volvo Trucks, are director or vice president level HR professionals with regional responsibility.

Past HR Excellence Awards winners are a who’s who of the most respected HR teams in Asia –American Express, ANZ, British American Tobacco, DBS Bank, Galaxy Entertainment, HIS Global, Hong Kong Broadband Network, Inland Revenue Board, IPG Mediabrands, Leaderonomics, Lumileds, Manulife, Maybank, Mitsubishi, National Environment Agency, Schneider Electric, Sime Darby, Singtel, Unilever and many more have all proudly accepted HR Excellence Awards trophies over the past six years.

For more information on the HR Excellence Awards, to review the award categories and the judging panel and to download the entry kit, please visit www.hrexcellenceawards.asia or contact:

- For Singapore: Ren Torres, project executive, renamelt@humanresourcesonline.net, +65 6423 0329 - For Malaysia: Hema Siranjeevi, project executive, hemalathas@humanresourcesonline.net, +65 6423 0329 - For Hong Kong: Kenneth To, project executive,  kennetht@humanresourcesonline.net, +852 2861 1882