During May 24th-26th SMART Myanmar held the first 'Human Resources Management Lab' of 2017. This workshop is a three-day interactive program module developed by SMART Myanmar to instill and teach best practices in garment factory HR management, especially focused on systems and policy based improvements. A total 30 participants attended this training, mostly middle-management staff from garment factory HR departments. SMART's HR Management Labs are normally taught 3 times per year and are open to all garment, footwear and textile factory HR staff. Jacob A. Clere, Team Leader of SMART Myanmar opened the session by welcoming and introducing participants to the 3 day workshop. The sessions were led by Ms. Nancy Feng, SMART Myanmar's Senior Technical Expert and some sessions were taught by SMART Myanmar's HR technical experts Zar Chi Tun and Hsu Yin Win. To conduct effective role playing and group discussions, all participant were divided into five groups, in which they actively participated and and discussed real life organizational HR case studies. Ms. Feng presented on strategic HR management and responsibility, especially HR planning, the importance of root cause analysis, how to properly calculate and analyze turnover rates, HR action plans, best systems for handling remuneration, recruitment processes, effective communication within large organizations, handling grievances and training development. During the first day of training, Ms. Tun, presented effective problem solving strategies in the factory. During the second day, Ms. Win explained about the PDCA Process. The participants learned how to become more highly organized, systematic and multi-tasking professionals and how to better incorporate responsible business practices into their management approach. The participants involved were very satisfied with the training workshop, recognizing that the knowledge acquired will be instrumental for their day-to-day HR activities. After completion of three days training, certificates of completion were awarded to each of the participants who attended all 3 days.

“The best thing I learn from SMART Myanmar project is to increase my awareness to think more from workers' perspective, how to make the communication easier for them. I started to reflect on our orientation training to make it more effective. We are planning to provide refresher training with more catchy, simple posters and explanations.”

~ Ms. Khin Yamone Zaw, training participant from one of SMART's training programs in 2016.