SHRM Vs HRCI the competitive Certification Dichotomy

                                                                  SHRM Vs HRCI

I think it’s high time I commented on the issue of SHRM (A professional Association of HR practitioners like Nigeria’s CIPM and UK’s CIPD)and HRCI ( A certificate awarding institution awarding diploma credentials such as PHR, SPHR, GPHR, HRMP, HRBP).

In this little discussion, I prefer to play the devil’s advocate especially as against HRCI. It is important to note that both are US based organisations and are initially meant to serve the US market niche before they both later decided to make more profit; hence they choose to globalise their reach.

 Background to this SHRM and HRCI competition:

SHRM (Society for HR Management) and HRCI (HR Certification Institute) are different organisation but both have been working hand-in-hand for over 35 years

In the late 1960s, some professors from American universities such as Cornell University, University of Minnesota as well as Michigan State University found that a profession in social sciences should be defined by five characteristics such as:

1.      Being a full time venture.

2.      Schools and curricula must be aimed specifically at teaching the basic ideas of the profession, and there must be a defined common body of knowledge.

3.      A profession must have a national professional association.

4.      A profession must have a certification program.

5.      A profession must have a code of ethics.

Based on this definition, the American Society of Personnel Administration (now called SHRM) set out to create a set of criteria that would define HR Management as a profession. As part of this process, ASPA (now known as the Society for Human Resource Management) approved the formation of a task force to study the possibility of an HR accreditation. In 1973, based on the task force’s recommendations, the ASPA Accredited and administered the first HR exams in 1976. As the HR profession matured, the accreditation program changed.

And in 1976 HR Certification Institute was born, and that was it!

The HRCI got it entirely wrong immediately they decided to be a global leader in issuing certifications such as PHR, SPHR, GPHR, HRMP, and HRBP which happens to be just the 4th item on their agenda as prescribed by its founding boards as explained above. HRCI prides its self of having awarding certificates to HR professionals in over 100 countries and surprisingly Africans especially Nigerians happens to top these certificate fanatical claims. 

HRCI professionally get money in exchange for our penchant for paper certification hence, neglecting the core attributes of professionalism such as education, training, professional networking and ethical standards. Playing the role of Marxist here, some training firms were even set up to align with her fellow imperialist to train and cart away dollars on a yearly bases to US, all in the name of preparing our HR folks for paper qualification which may or may not be commensurate with what theses HR Pros can offer in terms of competencies.

On the other hand, SHRM which happens to be one of the key voices in the creation of HRCI has maintained its value for professionalism, training, networking, ethics and corporate governance standard. SHRM even extends it membership to international communities by providing online membership platforms to HR professionals. This was not the case with HRCI. SHRM gives free HR templates to HR Practitioners and even provide regular HR newsletters to those who subscribe to it. SHRM is even generous enough to have developed preparatory materials and tool kits for those preparing for HRCI exams.

Where SHRM got it wrong was when she isolated herself from awarding certification. To me, SHRM should have assumed the responsibility of being a professional association as well as certify HR Practitioners as against developing separate institute for certifications. The UK’s CIPD and Nigeria’s CIPM have both excelled on this strategy.

However despite this, SHRM tends to be more recognized than even the HRCI itself. SHRM had popularized HRCI and has done more to educate global HR professional than HRCI and as such its materials, service offerings and business definitions sells more than HRCI. Speaking from African perspective, people would preferred a more concise certification  such as SHRM-CP(SHRM-Certified Professionals) or SHRM-SCP (SHRM-Senior Certified Professionals)  than  too many lungs breaking certifications like  PHR, SPHR, GPHR, HRMP, HRBP certificates being awarded by HRCI.

From the foregoing, I think SHRM’s recent moves to issue certifications to its members she had been developing for years is not a bad idea. I would even recommend HRCI be merged with SHRM or be entirely scrapped.

But come to think of it, what happens to our highly exalted professionals that had bagged HRCI’s PHR, SPHR, GPHR, HRMP, and HRBP?  My simple reply would be: I think we can cross that big river when we get there!   

for more info about my claims, kindly find details via: http://www.hrci.org/docs/default-source/web-files/history-of-hrci-updated-2009-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=0

Thanks all.

Seyi Babatunde