By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — In today’s age of knowledge-based economy, human resources are key to business success.
At the forefront of the dawn of the human resources era, business process outsourcing giant Accenture announced plans to deploy its human resources (HR) Academy program for the company’s analyst and specialist-level HR professionals in the Philippines.
Next to India, the Philippines is the second country where this program is being deployed among all of Accenture’s offices.
“The HR Academy is a critical enabler for the human resources industry,” said Rahul Varma, senior director of Accenture’s Human Resource Strategy unit. “We believe that HR talent is the number one key differentiator organizations must have to become future industry leaders.”
Varma said in an interview with INQUIRER.net that for organizations to be successful, “HR leaders should sit at the table, strategizing together with other business leaders on how to solve key talent challenges and turn them to opportunities.”
To achieve this, a new paradigm in terms of human resource capability is needed. This is where Accenture’s HR Academy comes in.
The Accenture Philippines HR Academy is a structured learning program that supports the development of the HR talent potential. The program is a collaboration between Accenture and two of the Philippines’ learning institutions — the Ateneo Center for Organization Research and Development (Ateneo CORD) and the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP).
Ateneo CORD executive director Ma. Regina Hechanova said it took a year for them to develop a curriculum suited to the needs and the industry served by Accenture. “First, we identified how Accenture does human resource management and looked at the types of skills that their employees really need. From there, we customized the outputs and exercises to be included in the curriculum so it is very relevant to Accenture’s context.”
The HR Academy program is open to all Accenture employees with at least one year of tenure in the company. The curriculum requires enrolled employees to spend one day to participate in the academic curriculum.
Said Varma: “For two years, employees engaged in the HR Academy are learning from their courses and at the same time, apply what they are learning during their daily work” — a unique venue to learn simultaneously from work and academic environments.
What separates the new program from traditional HR training?
Varma said the new program offers a synergistic, very holistic, up-to-date curriculum. Aside from a unique work-academic learning environment, the labor laws included in the curriculum are those that will be applicable in the next 50 years. “Performance management is a critical factor in today’s knowledge-based economy.” HR Academy graduates are trained to perform in a multinational environment and deliver services in all business perspectives.
For the Philippines, the program will ensure Accenture’s local operations “will have the right talent to support the organization’s needs for today and in the future in terms of growth and expansion plans,” said Ramona Velasco, country human resources lead, Accenture Delivery Centers in the Philippines.
One Feedback on "Accenture: People are the ‘new technology’"
Al
Makes sense, in that, when one is a organization or company in the area of manufacturing, then one might get involved with “just in time” or MRP I/II. For a service-oriented organization like Accenture, then concentrating on HRM to manage its most important resource would make a lot of sense.
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