The People Management Awards 2006 will eventually become the 'Oscars of HR'.

The architects of the awards have drawn on similar initiatives in place in Britain and Australia.

The contest aims to give a fair and equal chance to every type of organisation, whether they are small to medium-sized businesses, non-governmental organisations or multinationals.

The competition is divided into three categories, based on the size of the company. The judging criteria will be the same for all three categories.

'We deliberately designed the competition in such a way that companies will be competing against companies of a similar size to themselves,' said Carrie Chau Lik-yau, general manager of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management.

She said that small companies might not have the complexity of their larger counterparts, but the impact of their initiatives was just as valuable to their scale of operations as a large company's project.

In the competition, size is considered relative and is not the most important issue. The nature of the project is what is most crucial.

The application criteria had been made deliberately broad to accommodate projects of all types, she said.

But whether directly or indirectly, all such initiatives should by nature have some positive influence on the company's bottom line, not necessarily in straight dollar saving terms but also by improving areas such as productivity, efficiency and staff retention, Ms Chau said.

Such elements, in their own way, can have a positive impact on the business.

According to Ms Chau, any company's human resources project that has brought about an impact on the business is considered good enough to apply.

Such initiatives may range from achieving a new work culture, introducing new work practices or changing the attitude of employees by empowering them to deliver customised services, to equipping them with new skills in keeping with the company's changing business needs.

Other relevant scenarios include helping the organisation to attract better talent; reducing turnover and turning difficult business situations around; better engaging employees so they feel prouder of, and more loyal to, their organisation; helping staff achieve a better work-life balance and applying a better IT system to improve operations.

A panel of more than 10 judges, comprising human resources professionals and academics, will review the applications before coming up with a shortlist of candidates - ideally three companies in each category.

The selected companies will then give a presentation of their success story to the panel and answer questions before a final decision is made on the winners.

Lai Kam-tong, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, said that during the interview process, judges would examine why the companies did what they did; how they came up with the idea; how they formed teams to execute the project; the role of employees who participated; what standards they set out to measure their success; the type of IT applications and communicative methods they used; how they balanced the company's objectives with employee expectations; and the impact of the initiative and the long-term effect and success it would have.

Obviously, the more clearly a company is able to illustrate its case by quantifying it with figures and facts, the more convincing it will be.

But Ms Chau stressed that such quantifiers depended on the type of initiative being put forward.

Participating companies will benefit from the competition by sharing human resources successes with other corporations, and the winners of each category and the overall competition winner will be able to further build on their brands through the generated publicity.

'The process will also motivate the organisations' human resources teams to facilitate alignment of the teams' activities to the broader business goals,' Ms Chau said.

'There is the added pride and inspiration among employees that comes from being recognised by their peers.'

Mr Lai said: 'In the long term, we hope that it will not just be the award itself that will be important, but that this will become a platform to showcase best practices of HR management.'

HKIHRM / SCMP People Management Awards 2006

Small enterprises 50 people or less

Medium enterprises 51 to 500 people

Large enterprise 501 people or more

Deadline for entry submission September 9, 2006

Further inquiries Joanna Lam at 28815113 or 28373820