IPM National HR Conference 2017 in June

From left: Great HR Debate 2017 Chairperson Shiwanthie Wijesuriya, National HR Exhibition Committee 2017 Chairperson Primrose Mascarenhas, NHRC 2017 Technical Committee Chairman Chris Obeysekere, IPM Sri Lanka President Professor Ajantha Dharmasiri, NHRC 2017 Chairman Ken Vijayakumar, NHRC 2017 Deputy Chairman Priyankara Seneviratne, NHRC Awards 2017 Chairman Anura Pandithage and IPM Sri Lanka Chief Operating Officer P.G. Tennakoon

By Zahara Zuhair
The largest human resources (HR) conference in South Asia, IPM National HR Conference 2017, is set to kick start on June 21, at the BMICH, exploring digitalization, disruption, diversity and design.
The two-day conference, organised by the IPM Sri Lanka, the nation’s leader in human resources management, will be held under the theme, ‘Emerging HR Leaders: High Tech and High Touch’.
As the current workforce comprises of multi-generations, multi-cultural and multi-skilled people, which is not easy to manage, IPM Sri Lanka President Professor Ajantha Dharmasiri said that novel thinking and fresh thoughts are needed to inspire and instruct this new wave of workforce.
Therefore, he said that this conference will be an excellent opportunity to get new insights and learn the new way of approaches.
He said that the challenge remains is to how to cater to people from different generations together as the thinking pattern of each generation is different.
“Roughly talking, people who are born before 1960 are called the baby boomers; people who are born between 1960 and 1980 are called generation X; people born between 1980 and 2000 are called millennials or generation Y.”
“For example, baby boomers prefer black and white - they send you a registered letter. And generation X is the e-mail, then generation Y is the texting generation. So in a typical workplace we have writers, mailers and texters and generation Z, who are born after 2000, we don’t know how they will be; it is a different ball game. They will be the next high-tech generation,” he explained.
“The IPM NHRC 2017 will bring together many experts in the fields of HR and technology to share their insights on how digitalization is fuelling disruption in the HR landscape, driving deep inroads into HR and society at large changing the way we have known it, and driving the need for change in the way we manage the people in the workplace and the workplace itself,” he said.
NHRC 2017 IPM Sri Lanka Executive Council and Chairman Honorary Secretary Ken Vijayakumar said that the uniqueness and significance of the conference that IPM consistently strives each year to attribute to this flagship event is widely acclaimed and substantiated by the ever increasing number of attendees at the conference each year.
“Meeting the emerging challenges in the HR landscape is gaining constant and profound focus. The role that human resource management plays to deliver the competitive advantage has to be redefined to be breast of the challenges in global perspective. The pace at which high-tech, automation and the integration of solutions based on IT keeps evolving - have opened exciting pathways for tech-savvy human capital with the right blend of HR business acumen,” he said. 
In addition to the featured events such as the National HR Excellence Awards, The Great HR Debate and the HR Service Providers’ Exhibition, the IPM NHRC 2017 Conference will feature a unique and new event, ‘IPM Great HR Practices’, which is yet another first by IPM Sri Lanka, giving its flagship event an 
international flavour. 
Also, it was noted that a drama will be another new feature at the conference and they will be selecting the most innovative, most customer-oriented and most informative stall at the exhibition.
The print media partner for the conference is Wijeya Newspapers.