On January 19th to 21st, 2021, the WCO Headquarters held a Global Webinar Series. Using the Kudo platforms with the simultaneous translation (English and French) with the live presentation, more than 100 Customs Officer worldwide gather around in this occasion. The purpose of this webinar is to share and collect international best practices related to the role of Customs Human Resources professionals in managing the COVID-19 crisis and potentially future similar crises.
This three-day global webinar was opened by remarks from WCO Secretary General, Kunio Mikuriya. On his remarks, Dr. Mikuriya conveys the importance of putting people at the centre of changing in order to create greater resilience during this recovery time from the pandemic. Prior to this unprecedented situation and up until now, WCO Human Resources Professionals have worked upon this issue by constituting the fundamental pillars of WCO organizational development package and current WCO Capacity Building Strategies in based people-centric approach in which human element in the heart of the action. In his closing remarks, Dr. Mikuriya hopes all participants can learn the best practices shared by the Customs Global Community's outstanding speakers during the conference. The rest of the session was successfully led by Si Mohamed as a WCO People Development Programme Manager.
On the first day, the focus of the discussion is about the role of HR leader in times of crisis and HR business continuity plan. The role of HR highlighted a new perspective on positive leadership, which is not only to contribute but also become someone flourishing of others. The work environment has also changed; thus, what really drives the performance of employee should be approached differently. Measuring behaviour, values index, and the dimensional balance could be the key to achieve the best performance. In times of crisis, the HR business continuity plan should continue to serve the staff in an appropriate way to ensure their engagement and productivity while being safe and healthy.
On the second day, the discussion started on ways to manage teleworking to maximize the accountability and engagement of remote teams and cover how to organize the work environment after recovery. The best practices to adopt ensuring staff and client safety during a crisis also shared by ISO Technical Committee. The break session initiated was also interesting because it presented a yoga session as a way to heal anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, and fierce competition. The last session highlighted the current situation that affects people, both physical and emotional significantly. So it went around to reinforce staff resilience and safeguard motivation to support staff in managing their stress and anxiety.
On the last day, the discussion focused on redesigning the training and learning operating model, including delivery, in order to enhance the employee learning experience and incorporate the elements remotely. The session also explored practical strategies for combining employee performance and well-being at work. Before the session came to an end, WCO Head of Administration and Personnel, Hans Pieters, summarized the global webinar with a call for actions. To thrive in the new normal, the HRM 4.0 generation should be act as an emergent leader, be agile and flexible to pivot multiple scenarios, rethink HR operating models to build staff and organizational resilience, leverage on new technologies, and make employee experience as the key metric. He also emphasized that the future of Customs Human Resource Management would be putting people first. After all, the fruitful session within three days was highly appreciated by members.
To download the materials, copy this link to your browser: bit.ly/WCOWebinar-ManagingHR
