Conference on Human Resources Management, 6th HR Days 2018, Croatia, Rovinj

A two-day HR Days conference was held in Lone hotel, Rovinj, in which Dragana Rakin, founder, and executive of Prudent Agency, took part.

This year’s conference was opened by Jamil Qureshi, one of the most recognized motivational speakers and experts in the psychology of work performance. In his lecture on How to Turn Your Ambition Into Achievements? he especially focused on decision-making as well as the importance of maximizing the potential among employees who are motivated by avoiding negative consequences or have a minimal compliance attitude.

One of the lecturers was Terence Tse, Financial Consultant and COTRUGLI Business School lecturer who, when speaking about megatrends and the HR function, emphasized the relevance of understanding a wider social and economic context in business planning, and also pointed out that by keeping up with the so-called megatrends, we can avoid their potential negative effects.

Andy Longley, the global talent executive in Adidas and organizational psychologist of Transformation of Organizational Culture Through Leadership lecture, introduced the participants with a way of maintaining the culture of success in a corporate environment by applying sports techniques of coaching.

Maja Parmač Kovačić, assistant professor of psychology of work and organizational psychology within the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, focused on the burning issues of the usefulness of personality tests for predicting work success. For an organization, prevention is crucial when hiring. How to detect individuals that create a toxic environment, how to assess the validity of data in application tests, how to recognize an attempt at deception of a potentially aggressive individual etc. That is crucial for every organization.

Bruce Greenhalgh, Mindfulness coach and consultant dealt with the topic of employees’ mental health. “The work environment changes rapidly and such work changes affect the health of employees. Considering the issue of extending working life, there is the question how to create the necessary conditions for a comfortable life at an advanced age. Apart from physical health, do we pay enough attention to mental health?“, Greenhalgh asked.

In his lectures on social networks, the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republic of Croatia, assistant professor Dr. Sc. Robert Kopal emphasized the importance of control over the networks we create in personal as well as in business context.

“Social networks are those we shape by ourselves and unlike the digital ones, it is us who determine who the influencer is. From an HR point of view, it is important to realize who do our employees know and what kind of a social capital do we have in our organization. Planned social networking in project management will lead to maximizing the flow of ideas as well as productivity and employee engagement“ Kopal says.

Renata Barić, the official psychologist of the Croatian water polo team, has come up with practical advice on how to keep your cool in situations that may seem unsolvable at first.