Resident Coordinator's Remarks at the Global HR Conference

Ibu Armida,

Martha Helena Lopez,

Lisa Buttenheim,

UN colleagues from the global human resources community.

It is a privilege to have you all gathering in this city we call home. I hope your stay here will be memorable.

Your expertise continues to keep the UN system cutting-edge as we position ourselves to deliver on the UN 2.0 quintet of change.

You are the first point of contact for all our talent and responsible for managing the full employee lifecycle, which is critical to an efficient work environment and their satisfaction.

As staff are the UN’s biggest asset, strategic management of people and skills premised on latest methodologies and technology, delivered seamlessly through a well networked system, will drive impact.  

This will be pivotal for SDG acceleration as we stand at the midway point to the 2030 Agenda.

As an RC, I see the value of human resources in action each day. Let me share with you three areas where this stands out most to me in Thailand.

One, technology experts from within the UN, like FAO, UNEP and UNODC, play a critical role in monitoring 11% of forest cover nationwide to keep an eye on illegal logging, encroachment and wildlife trafficking using satellite imagery and QR coding of trees.

This also helps secure carbon credits through community forests, which boost conservation efforts led by small scale land holders.

Two, strategic foresight has brought the country’s 76 governors to commit to the SDGs, which provides the UNCT with a critical partnership to fast-track the localization of these goals.

This partnership is proving transformative as it enables us to reach 2 million women weavers to produce fabrics that use natural dyes and traditional motifs to preserve cultural heritage and protect the environment.

We are bringing on board ten top designers to scale up sustainable fashion, enabling women weavers to secure higher incomes.

Three, science-based solutions by the WHO are instrumental in piloting a model to manage hypertension for people in remote border areas through telemedicine. The protocols are delivered through village health volunteers who support basic treatment and management of high blood pressure.

As an accelerator, this will be scaled up nationwide to reach 10 million people with transformative outcomes for public health.

These examples give you a prism to understand the kind of skillsets we will need to scale up to deliver on the 2030 agenda in a middle income country context.

What does this imply for the HR community?   

As we reposition the UN to be a development partner of choice, we need an HR team that will be forward-leaning, flexible in its approach and adaptive in finding talent towards seamless upskilling that keeps pace with rapidly changing country contexts for greatest impact.

SDG progress varies from country to country, but HR professionals will have a critical role to play in accelerating its pace through targeted recruitments in specific skills for transformative changes. 

Part of this involves big data analysis, which is becoming a core skill we need to deploy strategically to understand narratives on social media.

ESCAP is also using these critical skills to bridge the data gap for SDGs across the region.

This conference provides you with a perfect opportunity to take HR to the next level across the UN system as we identify solutions to drive impacts.

All your contributions towards that goal will be invaluable.

Thank you.