Holistic Upskilling to Maximise Human Capital

The world today is becoming more and more connected, that interaction with people of different nationalities and cultures has become the norm rather than the exception. This is more evident for SMU alumni Valentin Posadas Jr, or VJ to his friends and acquaintances.

VJ oversees the regional activities of Arctic Shores, a company that combines neuroscience, game technology and AI to derive psychometric assessments of job candidates. The Master of Human Capital Leadership (MHCL) graduate found the programme to be invaluable in nurturing the essential global mindset needed to address today’s economy. Not only did he learn about the theoretical aspects of cultural differences and how to manage people from different backgrounds, but he also had the opportunity to apply these learnings on a daily basis within the SMU classroom and his workplace.

The multinational background of SMU faculty and students gave rise to lively class-wide debates, hinged upon varied, real-life business scenarios. Various case studies introduced spanned various regions and industries, which ranged from the challenges of running a tobacco plantation in Cuba to how a luxury soap brand from India thrived on an international scale.

VJ adds: “My classmates came from both the public and private sectors, held positions of varying seniority, and ranged from millennials to baby boomers. The professors of the programme were as diverse my classmates too, with Americans, Dutch, Indian, German and Singaporeans among them. Such interactions have benefited me in my current role, as it requires me to talk to partners in China and India, clients from various industries in Australia and Indonesia, and colleagues from different functions the UK and Italy.”

Despite having been in the HR industry for over 18 years, VJ decided to embark upon the MHCL programme in hopes of updating himself on the latest in Human Capital management principles. He also wanted to gain a clearer perspective of business practices in a global environment and expand his knowledge of HR frameworks and business models.

“The programme has given me the ability to not only improve a company’s human capital, but also develop business insights about the organisation as a whole and how it is affected by the market it operates in,” explains VJ.

As such, VJ feels he is better equipped to navigate the entire business cycle and make more informed decisions not just in HR but also in other functions such as finance management, marketing and sales. Moreover, he has taken his skill sets to the next level. By mastering statistical analysis, and the ability to substantiate learnings through research, he helps build credibility for the game-based assessments his company has developed and is introducing to the market.

In fact, the MHCL had been instrumental in helping him understand the role of technology in his chosen field. He believes HR practitioners should update their knowledge and skill sets regularly in order to remain relevant, especially with the current pace of technological advancements and proliferation of Artificial Intelligence.

While technology already plays a key role in helping to assess and manage human capital, he believes that it will become more significant soon, as more systems are developed to help simplify processes and capture data to assist in making wiser business decisions.

“Even with the rise of technology, people will still make the final decision, but now they are armed with data that has been captured and processed by technology to provide stronger evidence to the decision they have made,” he says.