The Institute of Banking and Finance held its IBF Beacon Series, featuring Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, on 8 April 2009 at the Marriott Hotel Singapore.

During his presentation, Professor Pfeffer examined myriad HR issues ranging from reward systems, HR “benchmarking” and employee motivation. He noted that HR in the financial services sector is faced with a variety of challenges, and they included getting the pay systems right, attracting, retaining, and motivating talent in a sector facing challenges and maintaining and developing a talent pipeline.

“HR has several crucial tasks during the current volatile times,” stressed Professor Pfeffer. HR needs to attract great people, engage their workforce, retain great people and develop and grow leadership and technical talent. During difficult times all these tasks assume more significance because employee turnover would be even more costly and as such organisations would need to enhance capability, talent, and employee engagement to avoid damaging long-standing customer relationships.

During the session, the audience engaged in group discussion scenarios to contemplate several probing HR issues. Topics ranging from human capital management and talent retention issues were brought up during the dynamic session.

Concluding the workshop on a philosophical note, Professor Pfeffer urged the participants to continue such thought-provoking dialogues and to think innovatively on how they can improve their organisation’s HR practices. “Life is simple, and we tend to complicate things. What I have said today is common sense, and common sense has now become more uncommon.”

The Beacon seminar saw a good turnout of senior HR executives and industry leaders, from the banking, insurance and training institutions engaging in a highly interactive workshop session.