“HR as a Business Partner” Roundtable Meeting at IHRM
IHRM held a roundtable meeting titled “HR as a Business Partner” at Reda Saed Conference Hall in January 23rd, 2013. The meeting was run by the head of Business Partner Department in MTN Syria, Mr. Hani Al-Rabbat. The roundtable meeting was attended by IHRM members and friends who are the managers of HR Departments in the private, public and non-governmental organisations in addition to some of fresh graduates, students, and interested people in HR in addition to the media.
IHRM president, Dr. Munir Abbas, spoke at the beginning of the roundtable meeting about IHRM eagerness to pursue the latest professional developments in the field of human resources, and present it in front of the IHRM members in order to get their opinions and build on their experiences in a manner that serves the development of the HR profession in the private and public Syrian companies which is the primary objective of IHRM.
Dr. Abbas added that the topic of “HR as a business partner” is one of the most important and recent trends of the science and practices of HR. This trend is a part of IHRM mission since the establishment of IHRM which is making HR management as a business partner. Moreover, the largest companies in the world have recognised the importance of this trend and they recognised that the capital of the company is not enough alone to make a profit and achieve sustainability of the business. They recognised that that path of achieve that is through investing in their human resources, dealing with them as a true partner, and motivate them to do their every possible effort for the benefit of the organisation.
MTN Syria is applying this concept today and considered as a role model in this field which is relatively new to the rest of the Syrian companies. Therefore, MTN Syria, as a part of its social responsibility and the contribution to raise the awareness of the modern and correct practices of human resources, is presenting today this concept with the mechanisms of applying it.
Mr. Hani Rabbat, head of the HR Business Partner department at MTN Syria, was chosen to explain to us this function and the methodology of applying it correctly in addition to the participation of the attendees which will enrich this experience.
From his part, Mr. Rabbat stressed that this initiative is related to the concept of HR as a business partner and that this concept is relatively new and MTN Syria is the leader in applying it in the Syrian market. He mentioned that MTN Syria would like to share with the IHRM members its experience in applying this concept in the past few years.
Mr. Rabbat talked in his lecture about the major components of the project of “HR as a business partner” in addition to the benefits that MTN Syria has gained from applying this project and its reflection on the performance of the HR management in general.
Moreover, he stressed that the performance of the human resources in companies is directly linked to the productivity of the companies. This means that the deficiencies in applying any of the HR programmes will negatively affect the performance of the company as a whole. From this point of view, we were able to find solutions to improve the performance of the human resource management to enable it to be a partner to the different departments in the company and improve the performance of the organisation as a whole.
