Client

The Workforce Development Agency (WDA) of Singapore has funded HCS to design a process to expose1080 HR professionals to the concepts of Professional Communities of Practice (CoP). The HR CoP project unfolds in 2010-2011 as 36 CoP workshops of 15 professionals occur each year. Each workshop will be facilitated by a facilitator trained in the workshop process. To quote Madame Ho Geok Choo of HCS “We want to create a community of practice amongst people managers where we see them to be coming together to share, learn, and practice, as well as to unlearn, relearn, and learn.” Later, Madame Ho narrowed the scope to “we want participants to get a taste of CoP, to become ambassadors for the CoP approach.” The broad and long term goal of this CoP project is to create sustainable Communities of Practice in the HR knowledge domain in Singapore and the pilot project is a beginning. WDA, the funding agency, requires these KPI's and the project is designed around them.

Objective

Over 1080 HR professionals are to be exposed to CoP in half-day workshops, 15 in each of 72 workshops over a two year period. Each workshop is to focus on one of 12 distinct HR practice areas in 2010. The professionals are expected connect not only during classes, but also through online means where they can have fruitful discussions with their peers and facilitators beyond classroom.

Solution

The CoP Pilot Project runs on the Techsailor Community Connect platform, enabling facilitators to share knowledge via forum and blog posts. In addition, the groups feature enable the facilitators to break the discussion into smaller groups. Members get to see all their group-specific discussions as well as generic forum posts in one consolidated page, ensuring no information is missed out. The CoP portal was officially launched by the Minister of Manpower, Mr. Gan Kim Yong