With Nepal now moving in step with best business practices around the world, Human Resource (HR) management has become a trending topic among local businesses houses. If once HR departments were few and far in between, they are now a mainstay in most big organisations and slowly expanding to medium-scale or smaller businesses. With the scope and demand for HR growing in the country, like-minded HR professionals banded together to form the Human Resources Society Nepal (HRSN) in 2013 in order to create a forum where professionals could share ideas, knowledge, experiences, issues and cooperate with each other to strengthen the HR profession and practices in the country.

Along with promoting awareness about the significance of HR management in the Nepali context and assisting HR professional to enhance their competence, HRSN also hosts an annual conference that brings together HR professionals from various Nepali organisations. This year, the fifth iteration of the National HR Conference was held at the Hyatt Regency on Sunday. With both home-grown and international speakers, the event featured Prithvi Shergill, chief human resources officer of HCL Technologies in India as the main keynote speaker, Dr Tsering Lama, country director of Child Reach Nepal, Bina Rana, HR head at Standard Chartered Bank, Shekhar Golchha, the executive director of HH Bajaj and Rupak Mohammed Zaidi, member of the HR Society Bangladesh as panellists and speakers. The event was organised under the theme of ‘Employee Care’.

“As HR has evolved in such a fast pace in the world, the sector should not only look after their employees but also need to look at the business aspect of the organisation. I believe all HR professionals need to understand and follow five principles—Competency, Effort, Engagement, Profit and Performance (CEEPP). If a HR specialist understands and follows this method, an organisation would excel on its own,” informed Rupak M Nasrullah Zaidi, head of HRM and administration at Prime Finance and Investment Limited in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “I see a balance between employee performance and profit of the company—they go hand-in-hand. Another saying I follow is Be Business Champions (BBC). This formula helps me motivate employees,” Zaidi adds.

Another speaker, Dr Tsering Lama, spoke on why innovation is needed among HR professionals and practices. Lama drew attention of the crowd by informing that old problems and new challenges demand innovative solutions which in turn will unblock the Nepali potential for professional growth.

“To look after and take good care of employees, three vital points need to be taken for account:  access, empowerment and communication,” Lama said. Lama also highlighted three questions on challenges a leader faces—How will you take your leadership to the next level?; How will you sustain your leadership by continuing your development?; and what is the purpose of your leadership? Having addressed these questions, he asserted that people are at the centre power. “Why do we fail? Failed leaders did not fail due to lack of talent but rather they lacked emotion intelligence,” he asserted.

Prithvi Shergill, the key note speaker for the event, previously worked for Accenture, a global professional services company before joining HCL Technologies as the chief human resources officer. HCL is known for providing the great employee services and benefits. Shergill said he agreed to join the HR conference to collaborate, understand and work better with the HR fraternity in Nepal and share his and the company’s experience on working closely with employees.

“As a part of HR fraternity I feel one has to be multi-disciplinary—you need to ensure that you need to understand your employees and have an analytical mind,” said Shergill. He also shared that HCL focuses on four points on employee care—beliefs, behaviour, programmes and business outcome. He believes that employees always come first and HR personnel should focus on having a transparent mirror-to-mirror understanding, inverting the pyramid and recasting the role of the CEO along with trust, transparency and flexibility. He also emphasised, “When you promise something, you need to fulfill the promise and deliver. If you don’t deliver you will lose the trust of an employer.” Having said that, Shergill informed that an employer needs to create a relationship beyond the contract and where an employee has access to a CEO or someone greater in the company make them feel motivated and driven.

Shergill mentioned that HR not long ago had a different name and was known as personnel administration. But businesses realised that HR is an integral part of operations and keeping employees satisfied was the only way to improve both retention and profit of a company. On hiring a candidate at HCL, he mentioned that he gives a bonus to those who are good listeners, who have aptitude to work in any conditions, who understands what the customer is really asking for/grasp the knowledge for the position he/she has applied for, who can hear not just today’s problem but will able to face tomorrow’s issue that a customer will face. The company appreciates candidates who come up with ideas and harness it effectively and are oriented towards the company and gives a value to the company. “I think HR is a steward for the company culture, making sure that culture is helping the business grow. I think we need to be a steward to make an impact in business outcomes by leveraging work and people practices,” he informed. However, Shergill informed that as a chief human resources officer, he does faces hurdles at work and he mentioned that there are two types of challenges: one challenge in ensuring the kind of performance, productivity you want you work force to do, are you doing enough, second, it’s the employees if they can adapt and work with the company or not.

“This is a proud moment for us to have such eloquent speakers and HR experts addressing the participants,” said Kumar Joshi, the president of the HR Society, in closing, “I hope HR will be taken much seriously now and the issues will be addressed at the national level. Although, the HR situation has improved for the better, it’s still taking tiny steps.

The HR fraternity has much more to learn and we are happy to receive positive responses from the participants.”

With the venue packed with HR professionals from the length and breadth of the country, organisers have hailed the conference as a massive success and a giant leap for the HR sector in the country. They assert that it is with conferences and ‘meeting-of-the-minds’ that will truly drive Nepal’s HR sector ahead, which in turn will benefit both employees and employers.