What is the rationale for inviting Professor Dave Ulrich to Sri Lanka

The HR fraternity in Sri Lanka and for that matter even most CEOs of local companies would have an opportunity to listen and interact with the undisputed Global Guru of HR-Dave Ulrich. Given the high fees which Dave commands and the prohibitive cost of attending such an event overseas would have limited this experience to a few in this country otherwise. The other reason being that HR talent has most certainly emerged as the key success factor in business growth today. To explain this a little more completely, recent research not only by Ulrich’s firm RBL but also Mc Kinsey(1) has found that high growth companies(particularly in India and other Asian countries) leverage on four factors, two of which are intellectual capital and innovation, factors which depend totally on the quality of HR in an organisation. Dave is the leader in researching HR in relation to business success and he will share his knowledge at this forum.

CIMA has had a long history of showcasing soft managerial skills as an integral part of managerial competence and business success. HR as a discipline is now more than ever open to scrutiny in terms of value , cost and efficiency. To add to that HR is under threat to be outsourced and only remains as a strategic and advisory function within many firms. The Ernst and Young Global survey on business risk (2008) identifies again among the principal factors: Inability to innovate and the war for talent as serious risk factors for business growth in the future. CIMA Sri Lanka shares this concern and has pioneered along with the IPM Sri Lanka and AHRP this path finding approach to create awareness of value creation through HR.

Prof. Ulrich will attempt to define how HR will deliver value to employers, customers and investors. The session will identify specific people issues, which are important to organisations and how such matters should be managed for organizational success. Prof. Ulrich will dwell on how the HR function can be transformed through the process of innovation, structure, practices and people. He will use his wealth of commercial experience, research, learning and knowledge to present to the audience some practical work tools.

All who are responsible for managing people in their businesses and organisations? The Seminar would particularly be useful to Heads of functions, Heads of HR and CEOs in organisations who will leverage HR to mobilise commitment and achieve high performance and sustained growth.

Since the founding of the RBL Group and over the last two decades Dave Ulrich has established a reputation for excellence in Strategic HR.  He and the RBL group have made a large investment in advancing the practice of HR. This Strategic Human Resources practice is based on the twenty years of results from the groundbreaking HR Competency Study, which has documented a trend of HR functions moving from transactional HR towards transformational HR.  Transformational HR develops organizational capabilities that create competitive advantage and make a significant contribution to business performance and intangible value creation.  Experience and research combined shows intangible value comes when organisations create sustainable capabilities through their HR practices. HR professionals coach, architect, and facilitate the aligning of HR agendas and practices with the realities of competitive markets, demanding owners, global economic turbulence, changing technology, demographics, and regulations. Drawing on proprietary research-based tools, learning experiences, and consulting methodologies along with the involvement of experienced HR thought leaders, Ulrich helps clients create actionable blueprints to improve their HR function, practices, and competencies, meet the challenges of the emerging competitive environment, and deliver value to the business. This is how Dave Ulrich differs from others on three key dimensions: innovation, leading-edge solutions, and focus on the right results.

"People are our most valuable asset" has become part of the mission statement of most companies. Yet our personal encounters both locally and overseas reveal that people are ill equipped to perform their basic tasks, while most executives are promoted for their ‘hard’ work and loyalty than their team working skills and innovation. They tend to use lean manufacturing methods for example more as an axe than a people-developing tool. This vicious circle of ineffective training leading to ineffective results and more frequent ‘fire fighting’ which saps valuable time and sucks out time for training.

However when CEOs identify and implement strategy with a fully committed, engaged and talented workforce, nothing can stop that organisation from success. Liker and Meier in their Best Seller ’Toyota Talent’ (2007) put their fingers on developing people to ensure prosperity as a solution to break this vicious cycle. Toyota works hard to develop exceptional people. They tend to attract trainable people, develop them , and engage them to become committed employees to improve the bottom line. Whatever the phase of business growth CEOs need to leverage HR. Near term performance and cash flows against investment on diversification and profit improvement over the medium/ long term would call upon the enlightened CEO to become strongly operational with bottom line focus or transformational with top line focus. In either scenario worker commitment and engagement at every level is critical for success. Ulrich spells out the CEO’s role as aligning, integrating, innovative People who perform with feedback to work at improving the bottom/top lines of a business.

In this session Dave will discuss the challenges organisations face, how talent management works as a business strategy and how to devise a workable strategy that can drive talent management in an organisation

The young HR professional in Sri Lanka tend to rely mostly on formal training such as diplomas and degrees and get very little mentoring from superiors in their work scenarios. This conceptual approach alone cannot bale them out when faced with the value creation challenge at the cutting edge of business. Ulrich teaches HOW to create intangible for the owners of business, secure enduring customer share, helping build the brand image of the product/service in the community. Help deliver strategies to the Line manager while engaging its employees for greater commitment to their organisations.

Yes, the organisers have decided that all profits from the event will go towards upgrading a library in a Business School.