The challenge of leading a thousand personnel managers

It was quite a humbling experience for this columnist to have been elected unopposed as the next year's President of PMAP (People Management Association of the Philippines), the country's premier and biggest official organization of more than a thousand corporations, conglomerates and multi-nationals, as well as many individual members who are HR professionals and practitioners. PMAP used to be the Personnel Managers' Association of the Philippines but the name was changed to suit the temper of the times. People in organizations are no longer called workers or laborers, not even employees or personnel. They are now human capital, not human resources because resources can be used and abused, even exploited. And we won't allow that.

The PMAP elections were held last November 27 in the Intercon Hotel in Makati, where a quorum was present and almost all of the more than twenty chapters nationwide have sent in their votes by mail. There are chapters in Baguio, Pampanga, Tarlac, Subic, Calabarzon, Bulacan, Bicol, and the whole Visayas led by Cebu, as well as Mindanao led by Cagayan de Oro and Davao. All of them voted and did not put up any opposition to our team, which is composed of both old-timers and new blood. Our platform of government was adopted and supported and we had been proclaimed winners, with a mandate to start our term next year. We have had our planning sessions and to be finalized come December 19, when we are back from our short vacation in the US.

Perhaps, this columnist is the first ever Cebuano (from Argao, Ronda and Dumanjug) to have been elected by this national association, which has existed for six decades now. And so, our term shall focus not only on the ASEAN INTEGRATION, which is going to take place in 2015, but also to strengthen the chapters and make PMAP a truly national association. There will be three ex-officio directors coming from the Chapters who shall sit in the in-coming Board, one each representing Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. I am pleased to note that Visayas will be represented by Cebu in the person of Ms. Leah Morado, HR Manager of Pepsi Cola. She used to report to me when I was the VP for HR of that global company. She is a fine lady and a very experienced professional HR expert.

Mindanao will be represented by Dr. Josephine Go, an HR and hospital management expert in Cagayan de Oro. A lawyer, Delia Yu of  Calabarzon will represent Luzon. PMAP is dominated by women. The outgoing president is a lady and majority of my trustees are females. Of course, I can work well with them. In San Miguel, Pepsi Cola and Petron, I always worked with women. They are hardworking, very organized and are always keen on the details. They have their own ways and idiosyncrasies but they produce amazing results. I am excited to have a very hectic and fun-filled year ahead. It will be tiring but I am gradually realizing after retiring from government, that the meaning of ''RETIRED'' is to be tired again.

The central focus of my term is to make the Filipino human capital ready for the ASEAN INTEGRATION. That is a formidable task. In 2015, all professionals and skilled people in the ten-member ASEAN nations will all compete in one, integrated economic environment, akin to the European Union, where political and economic borders are set aside. Thus, Filipinos will compete with Thais, Malaysians, Indonesians, Singaporeans and Vietnamese, aside from those coming from Cambodia, Brunei, Laos, and Myanmar. Our advantage is our mastery of the English language, but sooner, Mandarin will be the lingua franca in ASEAN. We better learn to speak Chinese fast enough in order to have a fighting chance. We have a lot of competitive edges but we do have vulnerabilities too. PMAP will help address both the strengths and weaknesses.

We intend to establish a chapter or an affiliate HR organization each in Kuala Lumpur, in Singapore and in Jakarta. We shall also sign Memoranda of Understanding with the HR associations in each of the ten countries, and benchmark our core competencies with our counterparts there. In twelve months, we are expected to deliver results and we hope to hold our national conference either here in Cebu, which I do personally prefer, or elsewhere if so decided by the majority, sometime in the last week of this coming September. Our Cebu City Mayor, Atty. Mike L. Rama was an outstanding personnel manager before he entered politics. Governor Junjun Davide used to handle labor and HR cases as a practicing lawyer. I will definitely invite them to grace the national conference, together with national officials and foreign dignitaries. I look forward to a productive PMAP year in 2014. Mabuhay.