HR Professionals to Gather in Cebu

Cebu will host this year’s Public Sector HR Symposium wherein close to 2,000 human resource professionals from all over the country will convene to discuss managing transitions, particularly in the context of governance and public service.

The symposium will feature local and international resource speakers who will share best practices, tools, and techniques to enable people and organizations to not only cope with, but also to harness, organizational changes.

Civil Service Commission (CSC), the central HR agency of the Philippine Government, is organizing the event together with the Australian Governmentt through the Philippines-Australia Human Resource and Organisational Development Facility.

In a press statement, CSC said the event is timely as the Philippine bureaucracy is set to begin the transition from the previous to the new administration following the recent elections.

Changes in policies and ways of working across government are expected.

“Effective change management is important in organizational functioning, especially for an organization as huge and as diverse as the Philippine bureaucracy. It ensures that the quality and efficiency of governance and public service delivery are not compromised as people inside government deal with change,” the press release stated.

“Civil servants need to maintain a healthy balance between continuity and change. At the same time, government managers and HR practitioners should be able to lead and guide civil servants as they navigate through uncertainties and difficulties,” it added.

Speakers lined up for the event are, namely: Emily Abrera, president of the Foundation for Communication Initiatives; John Philip S. Orbeta, president of Ayala Automotive Holdings; Prof. Ronald Holmes, President of Pulse Asia Research, Inc.; Juan Miguel Luz, professor at the Asian Institute of Management Executive Development; Audie B. Masigan, chief operations officer of People Sparx Incorporated.

Guest speakers from the Australian academe who were invited to share their insights on managing change are Dr. Muayyad Jabri, associate professor at University of New England, and Dr. Jennifer Waterhouse, senior lecturer at University of Newcastle.

On the first day of the symposium, a graduation ceremony for the first batch of Leadership and Management Certification Program (CPro) trainees will take place.

CPro is a certification program that provides an alternative mode of satisfying the education requirement (Master’s Degree) for those aspiring for Division Chief and equivalent executive/managerial positions in government.

Since 2013, the CSC and the Australian Government have jointly hosted the Public Sector HR Symposium.

Last year, more than 1,800 HR practitioners attended the event which was also held in Cebu.  (rmn/PIA7-Cebu/CSC)