HRM Awards 2010:

Accolading the nation’s best HR practices

The Association of Human Resource Professionals (HRP) with Hewitt Associates India announced the fourth “HRM Awards 2010 - Super 10” at a media conference held at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel yesterday. The event marked the occasion of signing the memorandum of understanding between the HRP and Hewitt Association of India, a leading human, resource consulting firm of global presence.

Hewitt Associates India Consultant Akshaya Singh Shekhawat, HRP President Isuru Tillakawardana and HRM Awards Committee Chairman Rohan Pandithakorralage at the briefing. Picture by Saliya Rupasinghe

Registrations are now open for Sri Lankan Public and Private Sector business organizations to enrol in the competition leading to the adjudication of “Super 10” Gold winners who demonstrate the highest professionalism in HR activities. The awards ceremony will take place in May 2010 with an international learning conference which aims to enrich the Sri Lankan corporate community on current and innovative human resource practices.

The HRP in keeping with its vision “To bring HR to the forefront”, pioneered the National HRM Awards in 2002 and has organized the event twice since then. The HRM Awards, which benchmarks human resources management in Sri Lanka, is expected to draw over 100 companies for the registering and evaluation processes of the awards this year.

The “HRM Awards 2010 - Super 10”, aims to identify and recognize “Best HRM practices” in companies that develop employees, improve business operations and help gain and sustain a competitive advantage. HRP has entered into strategic alliances with Hewitt Associates India, a global HR consulting firm as technical partners to this year’s event to bring quality and transparency to the awards and strengthen the professionalism of the local HR practitioners.

The evaluation process will place a special emphasis on the efforts and strategies adopted during the last two years to improve HR processes within the organization. The prospective outlook in the local economy and increased awareness about HRM awards among the business sector will inspire companies that have undergone several HR challenges and emerged successful during the past two years to showcase their best practices in HR Management.

Among the considerations for the proposed awards is for Hewitt Associates India to create benchmarks and criteria for evaluating HRM quality and effectiveness. Questionnaires will be prepared and sent to all companies that wish to participate, from which companies will be short-listed for competing in the next stages.

Consultants will then prepare a detailed analysis by visiting the selected entities to validate the information provided in the questionnaire, after which the data will be passed on to an independent judging panel consisting of esteemed academics and industry leaders and global HR and business leaders for evaluation.

Neither Hewitt nor HRP will get involved in the final selection. The judges will consider a wealth of data that will be given to them and an overview of the organization’s HR practices, which will be documented through the HR process inventory, executive questionnaire and based on site visits.

Ultimately, the judges will look for those organizations whose HR processes are the best and strongly aligned to business objectives to select the winners. The winners will only be revealed at a celebratory evening to be held in May, 2010.

HRM Awards Chairman Rohan Pandithakorralage said “The HRM Awards 2010” panel of judges will constitute of eminent Sri Lankan academics and professionals together with leading International HR and Business Leaders”.