Today I’m going to talk openly and honestly about SHRM, HRCI, and things that matter to today’s HR professionals. I have my SHRM-SCP and my SPHR, and I expect to keep them both for the foreseeable future. I think both have merit as of today (February 2018). But maybe that is going to change…
Newsflash: if you get certified as an HR professional, you need recertification (or “recert”) credits to keep your certification (unless you want to take the test again every three years!) As a chapter leader AND a speaker, I see the other side of the equation that most HR practitioners do not. I have to submit my content for credits, and I also have to work with my chapter to submit our content as well to get the appropriate credits.
Over the years, HRCI has become increasingly stubborn and challenging about awarding SPHR-required business credits for sessions. After several failed attempts in 2016 to get credits awarded for our chapter (for sessions like “building a strategic hiring plan for your organization” and “evaluating the ROI of training initiatives,” we actually ran into an even BIGGER problem. We received business credits, promoted it with business credits to our members, and then HRCI changed their mind after the session was over and our attendees were stuck with general credits, despite paying an extra fee for a business-credit session. Madness, right?
I finally came away with this conclusion: if you want to get business credits, you have to attend a session that has 0% HR content. Take a marketing class. Go to a statistics program. Just don’t do anything that mentions HR in the title or the session abstract and you’re fine.
During my recent SPHR renewal in January, I actually had to plug in some master’s level marketing courses I took as my business credit hours because of the weird issues HRCI has given me (and my chapter) in the past about the higher level credits.
SHRM, on the other hand, doesn’t differentiate between business and HR credits, which means once you get approved you are good to go. You still need 60 credits but it’s up to you to find the mix that supports your career growth and development. If you want to be more strategic, take more strategic content. If you want to be a recruiting expert, take more recruiting content. Pretty simple.
In all transparency, I have been trying to contact HRCI to discuss this because I think they can do better. They need to do better, and we all know it. In the last few years more than 50,000 HR professionals have read the article I wrote about which HR certification to pursue, because there’s a ton of frustration and misinformation around.
At the outset of the SHRM/HRCI split, I said that HRCI had a great following, but SHRM had its hooks in the chapters at a local level, which means it can really be strategic with recertification credits, certification training, reimbursements, etc. to advance its goals.
If I was leading the strategy at HRCI at the time, I would have had two goals: first, I would have begun creating a grassroots network of HR leaders (maybe in conjunction with chapters, since they already represent an established network) to keep support for HRCI certifications and show the value at a local level. Secondly, I would have advised HRCI to become more flexible and supportive of the chapters and professionals as a way to compete with SHRM’s deep roots, yet it seems to have gone the other way, potentially hampering its long-term success and value to the everyday HR professional. I’m seeing and hearing comments like this more often than I’d like to admit:
When the separation happened I never imagined I’d be saying this because I worked incredibly hard to earn my PHR and SPHR. However, I am now comfortable announcing that I will not be renewing my legacy certification. #IAmSHRM #SHRM-SCP @SHRMCertified @SHRM #SHRMBiz #SHRMVLS
— Angie Schaefer (@HR_Mindset) February 10, 2018
In fact, I just finished an HR event last week with more than a dozen certified HR leaders, and several of them said they were letting their HRCI certifications lapse now that they had renewed their SHRM certifications for the first time. That could be 2-3 years out before it starts actually making a difference (if there’s a sizable population following suit), but it’s something HRCI needs to take seriously before it’s too late.
As I said when I started this conversation, I think both have merit and I just did an analysis of when to pursue a PHR vs a SHRM-CP certification, so there isn’t really a wrong answer at this point. I just think the recertification credit issue is going to keep pushing people like me who are “in the loop” on how recert credits are awarded away from HRCI due to the ongoing friction.
What are your thoughts? If you have your PHR or SPHR, are you keeping it? If you don’t, are you leaning one way or the other (SHRM vs HRCI)?
Article source:Ben - The Hidden Battle for SHRM and HRCI Recertification Credits»
Check out more of Ben Uebanks' work at Upstart HR
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