Photos and highlights: HR Tech Interactive 2017, Singapore

Marking the successful completion of the regional conference, HR Tech Interactive 2017, Singapore, was held at InterContinental Singapore on 14 September 2017. The fifth annual edition of Asia’s most specialised conference on managing HR in the age of digital disruption was produced by Priya Veeriah, and attended by over 100 delegates.

A quick introduction by senior journalist at Human Resources, Wani Azahar, set the pace for the day, where she said: "With the aid of technology in our processes, knowledge is being transferred, competencies are being built, and employees are using self-services to get their queries answered in what are known as boundary-less organisations."

"With the HR function getting leaner, the focus is on integrating technology into the world of work like never before – and here’s where HR Tech Interactive comes in," she added.

[Check out the photos from the event]

She went on to invite the day's first speaker, who heads the global organisation and people analytics team at Merck Group, supporting its three business sectors of healthcare, life sciences, and performance materials. Alexis Saussinan, the head of organisation development and people analytics at Merck Group, shared a case study on evolving your HR operating model to support business transformation.

"What we have done over the past eight months, is we have connected every single people data point of the company into one platform. We track that every month, and we try to derive insights out of it. We have a multi-year roadmap in place. Currently, it includes business data such as sales, and we are also looking to plug in external data," he said, explaining the technology journey at Merck so far.

This was followed by our first interactive session, with five table themes being facilitated by table hosts across the room, the first of which was Talent Analytics, faciliated by Sandeep Mookharjea, global human resources business partner, Standard Chartered Bank; and Richard Lee, principal solution consultant-HCM, Workday. Joining them on the topic of HR Cloud, were Gary Tan, regional head of strategic people programmes, Bridgestone; and Jayshree Krishna, head of client delivery, ASEAN, Excelity Global Solutions.

The next three sessions were marked by interactive conversations that kept that delegates engrossed, facilitated expertly by Gary Lee, chief human resources specialist, global talent development, Grundfos; and Kristine Cheong, associate director of human resources, Duke-NUS Medical School for Social Media and Collaboration. As for Modern Recruitment Tools, on-table conversations were led by Luke J Falvey, CEO, APAC, Sonru; and Sue Anne Lee, head of talent and leadership, APAC, Rolls-Royce.

Coming in to the last segment, Gary Lee, chief human resources specialist, global talent development of Grundfos took charge of moderating a panel discussion focused on cognitive analysis.

Joining him was a capable pool of panelists: Cindy Dermawan, head of talent and learning management, diversity and inclusion, Citi; Reddiam Raghu Ram, head of human resources, Shell; and, Aparna Kumar, regional human resources lead, Monsanto.

[Check out the photos from the event]

The day concluded successfully with a rapidfire round where table hosts rounded up their key observations over the day's conversations [keywords shared in word cloud below]. With that, we came to the end of HR Tech Interactive 2017, Singapore.

Human Resources would like to thank all speakers, panelists and table hosts in pulling together facts and case studies for insightful presentations. Thanks also to all delegates for their active participation in the event and leveraging on the various networking and interactive opportunities.

Finally, but not the least, we thank the following sponsors and partners:

Platinum Sponsor Blackboard

Gold Sponsor Workday

Silver Sponsors:

• Excelity Global Solutions
• iTalent
• PageUp

• ManpowerGroup
• Ramco Systems
• Sonru