World HR Congress 2021 concludes after 2 days of high value deliberations

World HR Congress 2021 concluded recently after two full days of value-packed presentations, discussions and deliberations.
It commenced with the inauguration ceremony as a hybrid event at the auditorium of the Colombo 5 head office of CIPM Sri Lanka ‘HR House’. 
Participating were CIPM Sri Lanka President Jayantha Amarasinghe, World HR Congress 2021 Chairman Dhammika Fernando, World HR Congress 2021 Co-Chairman Prof. Ajantha Dharmasiri, CIPM Vice President Ken Vijayakumar, CIPM Sri Lanka Hony. Secretary Priyankara Seneviratne, CIPM Sri Lanka council members, past presidents of CIPM Sri Lanka and CIPM Sri Lanka CEO U.A.C. Obeysekera.
Labor Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva participated online as the chief guest. 
ILO Country Director Simrin Singh, World Federation of People Management Associations President Bob Morton, keynote speaker Prof. T.V. Rao and other key foreign dignitaries participated online. 
The congress proceedings were held as an online virtual event on the theme ‘Exalting People Professionals Amidst a Planetary Pandemic: Explore, Expand and Excel’.
“Overcoming the challenges and moving forward with confidence, CIPM Sri Lanka in collaboration with the WFPMA and APFHRM has been honoured with the privilege of hosting this global event,” said Amarasinghe delivering the welcome speech. 
The pinnacle people profession confab of the world – the prestigious World HR Congress, was previously held in Istanbul, Turkey and in the year 2018 in Chicago, the USA, prior to being held in Colombo this year.
“In this current context, it has been realised that HR is the most critical area of management across the globe amidst enormous challenges of economic viability, business growth and the development across nations affected by the global pandemic. The modern workplace is changing and HR professionals are at the forefront in this new world. As businesses recover from cultural and economic impact of COVID-19, we are faced with the impact of a new set of challenges. How do we transit into the new hybrid world while maintaining culture and innovation? How do we do this in an equitable way? Every HR leader in this world has a critical role to lead their organisations through these challenges. In order to create fairness in the workplace, we must rethink the entire HR organisation and how our HR processes and systems work together,” he added.    
“The pandemic has presented us the practitioners with great challenges in our organisations and at the same time, it made organisations think and act in a people-centric manner in all their business activities. As a result, we will have long-lasting shifts in the way people work and change organisations to different dimensions. Especially, the well-being of people in a diverse and inclusive society at work has become an important agenda and has been given prominence for good,” 
said Fernando.