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

The delegates lighting the traditional oil lamp

 The ceremony with the physical participants

The World HR Congress 2021 which commenced with the inauguration ceremony on 6 December as a hybrid event at the Auditorium of the Colombo 5 Head Office of CIPM Sri Lanka ‘HR House’ with the participation of 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 Secretary Priyankara Seneviratne, CIPM Sri Lanka Council members, past presidents of CIPM Sri Lanka, CIPM Sri Lanka CEO U.A.C. Obeysekera concluded in person on 8 December after two full days of value packed presentations, discussions, and deliberations. 

Minister of Labour Nimal Siripala De Silva participated online at the ceremony 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 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 CIPM Sri Lanka President Jayantha 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, USA prior to being held in Colombo, Sri Lanka 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 wellbeing of people in a diverse and inclusive society at work has become an important agenda and has been given prominence for good,” said World HR Congress 2021 Chairman Dhammika Fernando. 

Participants at the virtual conference were able to communicate directly with speakers to ask questions, learn more about their research or to just make a connection which was able to promote greater interaction making a great impact with a vibrantly interactive software platform which made the online event more productive.