PASAY CITY, November 5, 2018 – The Department of Education (DepEd), through its Bureau of Human Resource and Organizational Development (BHROD), gathered around 1,000 human resource practitioners during the first HROD Convention held from October 22 to 24 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.

In a video message, Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones stated that the event’s theme, “DepEd 2018: Service Excellence through Strategic and Competency-based HROD,” was meaningful, urgent, and useful, especially as the Department is in the process of reexamining its organizational structure.

“DepEd is also improving its capacity to attract, train, and retain the best of our human resources,” she further highlighted.

The convention aimed to bring together all DepEd HROD practitioners, and align initiatives and resources to strengthen the foundation of HR and OD in the Department. This event also explored how to best benefit from new technologies, high impact HROD strategies, and new ways of working to create an agile, efficient, and digital organization able to address the changing needs of the Department, its management, employees, and other stakeholders.

The topics discussed include:
• HROD in the Global and Asian Landscape;
• Emerging HROD Systems and Initiatives in the Philippines;
• HROD in DepEd: Challenges, Directions, Framework, Strategies, and Interventions;
• Public Service Excellence through Quality Management System and Program to Institutionalize Meritocracy and Excellence in Human Resource Management (PRIME-HRM);
• Cultivating a Mindset for Growth and Development; and
• Leadership Excellence in Public Service

The event also conducted parallel learning sessions on personnel services, learning and development (L&D), talent management system (TMS), and employee welfare and wellness.

Moreover, the Education chief mentioned that this event served as a venue to discuss the challenges that DepEd is facing, particularly in the aspect of HROD, and highlighted her high regard to commitment in facing and solving these challenges: “This convention gives us an opportunity to discuss the real challenges that we are facing at present… I place very great importance on commitment, especially since the Department is facing many challenges on the service departments of the government.”

“It is a challenge for us how to respond to all the expectations of our citizens, and at the same time, keep ourselves open to advice, to reports, to feedback, and to assessment from the different sectors of society,” Briones added.

“Most important of all, we must instill in every one of us an even stronger commitment to the Department’s goals, its thrust, as well as its objectives and support for the reforms that are now being initiated,” the Education chief concluded.

Present at the event were Undersecretaries Jesus Mateo, Annalyn Sevilla, Nepomuceno Malaluan, and Victoria Catibog, Assistant Secretary Revsee Escobedo, BHROD Director Ma. Lourdes Pantoja, and other DepEd officials and personnel.

END