Photos and roundup: Talent Management Asia 2016, Malaysia

Fresh on the heels of organising the region’s leading HR strategy conference in Hong Kong, the Human Resources team hosted Talent Management Asia 2016 in Malaysia on March 15-16, 2016.

The event featured a solid mix of keynote speakers setting the mandate for talent and HR leaders; case studies in engagement and learning from organisations such as Digi and Maxis; with tremendous opportunities for networking, and powered by a host of sponsors and partners.

Day one featured an opening keynote by Shahzad Umar, executive director of group HR at Nestlé Malaysia, unveiling the extensive transformation the company has undergone in recent years.

He explained: "We were able to get close to 50,000 suggestions from employees on how things could be done differently. We combined most of those ideas in a framework called FIT - Fuel to grow, Innovate to grow, and Transform to grow."

ALSO VIEW: Photos from Talent Management Asia 2016, Malaysia

He was followed by Willis Towers Watson's director of health and corporate wellness in APAC, Dr Rajeshree Parekh, who shared the firm's latest report findings: "Company culture is underrated by employers - it was ranked 8th in the list of employer priorities, but third in the list of employee priorities."

Post a morning networking session, Yazad Dalal, senior director of HCM strategy and transformation at Oracle, took centrestage, for a panel discussion on building change management - featuring panelists from BT Malaysia, Feruni Ceramiche, ManpowerGroup, and USG Boral.

CC Ngei, managing director of Feruni Ceramiche, was one of the day's most popular speakers, with a story on how an SMB can compete with the MNCs, from the business leader's perspective.

"In the past six years, I spent most of my time with the people - something I am very passionate about. It is always my first priority in running the company. If we only keep looking for ROI, things can get really short-term," he admitted.

Photos from the conference: [more photos on Facebook]

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The post-lunch session on day one saw the introduction of parallel streams - where delegates could opt to attend sessions on either recruitment and retention, or talent development and training, both of which featured high-profile speakers from Maybank, CIMB Group, and more.

Day two saw an equally exciting lineup of speakers, from business heads, such as Sharma KSK Lachu, CEO of Cut-e Malaysia and John Deschner, CEO of Ogilvy Malaysia; as well as HR leaders such as June Beh, director of partner resources and compliance at Starbucks Coffee Malaysia and Brunei, and Debra Ovinis, country head of HR at BT Malaysia.

Oracle's Dalal, who opened the conference's second day, got detegates pondering, with analogies between marketing and HR: "In the future, the CMO will be obsessed with one thing – lifecycle management. Doesn’t that sound exactly like what we’re supposed to be doing in HR?"

Alex Butt, co-founder and managing partner of Glides Consulting, looked at how to keep employees focused on the right things.

"There are three tracks to creating greater accountability – the self track, which is about taking personal accountability; the culture track, which is about building an accountable culture track, and holding others accountable track," he shared.

The conference closed curtains after two insightful panel discussions, one on the ways to engage top management, and the other on trends around performance measurements, as well as case studies from the CPO of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Jacob Jacob, and Ogilvy's Deschner.

The Human Resources team would like to thank all sponsors and partners:

1. Platinum sponsor – Oracle
2. Gold sponsors – Cut-e | Glides Consulting Partners | Willis Towers Watson
3. Silver sponsor – ManpowerGroup
4. Exhibitors – Beacon Hospital | Crown World Mobility | HireRight | Knolskape
5. Knowledge partner -  The KPI Institute
6. Event partner – BGC Group
7. Association partner – Malaysian Institute of Human Resource Management