The study cited the top five challenges to Asian chief HR officers. These include building leadership capabilities, acquiring key talent, retaining key talent, raising workforce productivity, and measuring contribution of human capital.

Some of these challenges vary from country to country, said Tim Darton, Human Capital Management (HCM) applications director at Oracle Asia-Pacific in a briefing recently. 'What I see as the top two concerns in the Philippines are retaining key talent and raising workforce productivity,' he said. The country has a very educated workforce coupled with prolific English communication skills but retaining talent is currently not only a problem within companies but also within the country, he explained.

'There is a fairly urgent need to transform HR in the Philippines,' he said. This requires a shift from traditional to strategic HR. For example, for the past years, the HR department has come to be seen mainly as 'gatekeepers' and 'policemen' in organizations, but the HR today should begin thinking proactively as to how they can help the company move forward.

One traditional practice that needs to be changed is the prioritization of tenure over performance in an organization, said Darton. What companies should focus on instead is a performance-based HR management system. The organization should set specific goals that cascade down into an individual scorecard matrix, so the company knows how each individual contribution directly links to the productivity of the company.

This will also make the employees understand what they need to do in the organization because if people know that their contribution is important and they know they already have a clear-cut career path, then they are likely to stay in the organization, said Darton.