How do you spell the future of HRO?  A - P - A - C.
 
  Michael Beygelman, Adecco’s president of North America RPO, summed up our 2010 HRO Summit APAC best: “The growth opportunity in Asia is amazing. In six months . . . [pause for effect] you can develop enough business for a decade.”
 
 
 
 
Richard Crespin
 

In planning HRO Summit APAC, we sought to help shape the market and accelerate the growth and maturation of HRO in the Asia-Pacific region. From the very first minute of the May event, it became imminently clear that the market would shape us. The pure scale and pace of growth and change throughout the region boggles the mind. To wit, here are few fast facts, courtesy of our keynote speaker, Dr. Chris Chan, chairman of the MBA program at Hong Kong University:

• At 11.9 percent sustained year-over-year growth, China and Hong Kong have the world’s fastest growing economy, sustained in the face of a currency dispute, sourcing challenges, asset bubbles, inflation etc.
• Southeast Asia has more than 550 million people and some of the world’s fastest growing economies. Singapore’s GDP alone grew by more than 30 percent in the first quarter of this year.
• Since the 1980s, the Indian economy has grown from $32 billion to more than $1 trillion today. The Mumbai metro-region alone will exceed the GDPs of Thailand and Hong Kong by 2030. India’s healthcare industry will grow by 23 percent annually, reaching $77 billion by 2012, and India plans to become one of the world’s top five pharmaceutical hubs by 2020.
• 64 percent of Chinese, 50 percent of Hong Kong-based, and 54 percent of Singaporean businesses expect to increase hiring in 2010.
 

The summit began with an exclusive closed-session for HR executives only: the buyers forum. Nearly a dozen HR executives met for a half-day session to discuss the pressing issues facing companies trying to transform and improve the way HR performs for employees and employers. To get the conversation going, I presented the results of a “pulse survey” of more than 100 APAC-based HR executives on their attitudes and concerns about the future of HR in the region (to see some highlights, visit: www.hroa.org). From there, the discussion ranged over a host of topics from what APAC-based employees want from their careers, to the uniqueness of operating HR in APAC, to the specific issues these executives face in their own HR outsourcing programs. Various core issues presented themselves:

• How do companies establish baseline performance before outsourcing and compare their current and future performance with best-in-class?
• What needs to go into the business cas,e and how do HR executives measure and ensure progress?
• Given that service level agreements (SLAs) are lagging indicators, how do we structure agreements, governance, and relationships to ensure effectiveness? When should we use carrots vs. sticks?
• What do vendors need from buyers to live up to their cost, price, scale, performance, and innovation promises?
• When operating in already low-cost economies, how do we derive cost savings without merely relying on labor arbitrage?
 

On the following day, more than 125 HR executives, service providers, advisors, academics, and members of the media met to address how APAC-based companies can take on the challenges of a people-driven economy, as the world economy and Asian economies in particular begin to take-off. More than 38 percent of the delegates came from buy-side companies, 30 percent from providers, 12 percent from advisors/analysts, with the remaining coming from the academy, the media, and other organizations. The vast majority—nearly 65 percent—of delegates held senior positions, with titles of director, senior director, vice president, senior vice president, president, CEO, or other members of the C-Suite.
 

Based on the buyers forum discussions, in his opening remarks to the full summit, Chris Phair of Johnson & Johnson and a member of the HROA’s APAC chapter board of directors, welcomed delegates and challenged the vendor community to help HR executives address several key challenges:

• How do vendors prepare clients for change?
• Get real: How would you have done things differently to avoid pitalls/failures?
• Focus and be honest: What do you do well, and what do you not?
• What factors should companies consider in order to determine if outsourcing is the right solution for them?
• What’s unique about implementing and governing in APAC?
 

The day was packed with case studies from American International Assurance (AIA), Credit Suisse, GE Money, GE Healthcare, Globe Telecom, and other global multi-nationals and APAC-based companies, as well as panel discussions on the persistent challenges of implementing in APAC and the future of talent in the region. Ragi Singh, head of HR for AIA presented the intriguing story of how AIA—in the midst of the economic meltdown and near collapse of its parent AIG—transformed employee benefits and HR. Zachary Misko outlined GE Money and GE Healthcare’s approach to revolutionizing recruitment through implementing LEAN. Susan Grace Rivera, former head of HR for Globe Telecom, highlighted Globe’s progress in improving the employee experience and tackling a complex payroll and benefits implementation.
 

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Tibor Beles of Oracle, Paul Knowles of Alexander Mann, James Mendes of FutureStep, Chaitanya Sreenivas of IBM, and Nicole Paulson Washko of Pricoa Relocation, to delve deeply into how to breakthrough the obstacles to successfully implementing and governing complex HRO engagements.
 
They specifically looked at how to establish baseline performance, create business cases, and structure SLAs and governance for success. In a final “big picture” panel moderated by SharedXpertise CEO Elliot Clark, Caleb Baker of Talent2, Michael Beygelman of Adecco, Rosaleen Blair of Alexander Mann, Karen Browne of Advantage xPO, and Terry Terhark of The RightThing went toe-to-toe discussing the specific challenges facing APAC-based HR executives in recruiting and retaining top talent. Clark asked them the tough questions, probing them to compare and contrast one another’s strengths and weaknesses and to really get under the covers of what makes the difference in successful HRO and RPO engagements in the region.
 

In a fun intermission during the intense intellectual forays into HR’s complexities, Duncan McKee, a trained jazz musician from STIX, taught the delegates in 30 minutes how to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on hollow tubes. It was a great lesson in collaboration and a fun and lighthearted moment in the midst of a very focused set of discussions.
 

By the end of the day, the buyers had a chance to get most if not all of their core questions addressed by the vendor community. HRO Summit APAC did help live up to its mission of accelerating the growth and maturation of HRO in the region, but it also opened many eyes—including my own—to the vast opportunities and challenges facing multi-national and regional companies as Asia takes off. Moreover, in the next decade, as Asia becomes more of a people-driven economy, HRO will play an increasing role in how these companies and economies meet their growth targets.
 
Richard J. Crespin is global executive director of the HROA and president of membership services for SharedXpertise.