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In the future in the HR profession, could people get Chartered or Fellow membership based on longevity & not level of experience?

Andre

We all know both the current state of the HR jobs market and how different and difficult it is today compared to this time 20-40 years ago. Very few roles to go around, intense competition for each and every one, and a structural and systemic imbalance in terms that it's quite common nowadays to need the CIPD 7 and a Masters / PhD and the Associate Membership just to get your foothold into the profession and land an entry level role such as an HR Administrator, which 20-40 years ago was more commonly reserved for school or college leavers with just GCSEs and / or A Levels. Over qualification inflation and course devaluation due to excess supply and low demand in a crowded jobs market. If everyone holds a BA degree, it's commonality and lack of scarcity becomes the new GCSE. Technology, automation, robotisation, downsizing, offshoring and management delayering as part of global business process re-engineering trends also play a part here.        

As an analogy, it's very similar in the legal profession that due to the near impossibility of getting a Solicitor training contract or a Barrister pupillage due to the numbers of opportunities and candidates nationwide, many people with the LPC, BVC and MA have to settle to become a Paralegal, Legal Administrator / Assistant, Legal Executive,  Legal Recruitment Consultant or a Legal Secretary, and maybe hope to get it after 10 years+ 

Put another way, your job role title level and formal educational qualification level no longer automatically correspond, match and correlate together. 'Some people' in HR however also manage to do it the other way and get ahead without paper qualifications as they can somehow by hook or crook 'get the experience.'      

However, a more disturbing trend and pattern that I have recently noticed (depending on how you view it or not) is that what technically happens if the presumed 'temporary solution' actually starts to become permanent in nature, and then gradually turns into your actual long term career role and level in terms of yes, you did manage to break into HR and have worked in HR based on having the CIPD 7 et al, but then (for a variety of reasons and circumstances outside of your direct control) if never actually goes any further or deeper than that?   

In short, you start out as an HR Administrator and then subsequently cannot get beyond, above or off that level despite having and holding all the relevant papers? After a decade you are still one.  

Would such a scenario be somehow viewed by the profession as a type of  'partial success'  that yes, you did manage to get into HR, work in HR, hold an HR role and gain HR experience along with the CIPD 7, but you also could not move beyond that point, grade, band and pay scale either?      

If this structural and systemic problem also goes long term, could you see any possible provision built in for people to get the higher levels of CIPD membership based on their long term service in and to the profession, despite of being unable to obtain the higher level job roles in it at the same time?    

Or otherwise, consider them as a type of 'Associate HR professional'? You are not an HR Manager, HR Advisor or an HRBP, but are a long standing, highly experienced, well respected, liked, knowledgeable and expert HR Administrator / HR Assistant.    

In addition, every profession is like a pyramid that most of the jobs are concentrated on the lower levels and the higher you move up, it tends to thin out accordingly with fewer good roles on the top. Police force hierarchies are a clear indicator of this. They mainly need rank and file Police Officers on the ground fighting crime on a daily basis, but do not require hundreds of Inspectors, Commanders or Assistant Chief Constables. 

I would value all your respective comments on this, as I gradually see this as the direction both the overall UK jobs market and HR profession as a whole is gradually moving in. A glut at the bottom in terms of entry level and trainee roles, with only a smaller number of select and hand picked candidates able to move any further up and into it. 

In summary, it may become that an HR Administrator becomes a postgraduate career role, level, pathway and lifelong career in its own right, with even apprentices trained to be one.          

  • in reply to Keith

    My mind interprets, analyses information and draws conclusions in another way to that of most other people. With unwritten social nuances, cues and rules, the problem is that I cannot read them as I cannot easily presume what a person may or may not be thinking as everyone reacts to or takes things in a different way. The other issue is that I am interested in HR but can't do human relations myself. These are largely things which you are either born with or not. I have tried taking classes in social thinking therapy which addresses social skills difficulties by developing understanding of other people's intentions, emotions, motivations and then responding accordingly to them, but its still an uphill struggle to articulate and express it naturally.

    Put another way, I do not automatically take to people who I don't know like ducks to water, buy into group think but have more my own unique style, approach and personality. In short, I am more an outsider who hovers on the edges and prefers to do things individually then as part of a group.

    I also struggle to notice subtle differences in speech, body language and behaviour and most other people are able to pick up automatically on.

    The Equality Act 2010 however makes certain provision for this, so if someone like Boris Johnson who makes the occasional gaffe and is more of an unconventional maverick can possibly get a PM's role, could someone still get a Senior HRD's role even if they tend to trip up from time to time over human interaction and social relationships?

    The main advantage here is that I have a very clear understanding of this deficiency. can explain / justify it very well and also apply the strategy of telling people that I did not pick up on or interpreted it in this other way as I have XYZ, yet the law says that provision must still be made for ABC.

    It therefore comes down to a twin issue of functionally and capability.

  • in reply to Andre
    Andre

    All I can really usefully say is to repeat my earlier comment. You are not listening to the feedback you are being given.

    If you reread above and try and see it from a different angle it might help.

    Good luck. I fear these constant debates aren’t actually helping you.
  • in reply to Andre

    I'm afraid that your asking the question as to whether the occasional "gaffe" or "tripping up" over human interaction is permissible, as it were as a precondition to your practice, seems to answer for itself whether you would be suitable for a Senior HRD role.

    Would the holder of the key to our nuclear deterrent ask if an occasional "gaffe" in its use is permissible? Does Johnson, regardless of what one thinks of him, believe himself that leaving the EU without a "deal" (or at all) will be a disaster? Would he ask for "reasonable adjustments" to be made so that someone else could do the tricky stuff while he just did the admin', but still got paid the salary, had the car, lived in No10 with weekends a chequers.... etc.?

    I suggest the answer to all would be "No".

    Your actions as an HRD would have effects on people's lives. You fail to overturn a bad disciplinary decision on appeal and that's someone's mortgage unpaid; their kids birthday and Christmas wishes unfulfilled, possibly their relationships breaking down. You make a bad decision on how someone's grievance should be reflected by a change in policy and that could affect whether an ET1 lands on someone's desk claiming £x tens of thousands in discrimination at a later time, potentially destroying the business and all those (including ourselves) dependent on it. (It has happened). You approve a blanket ban on FW as it seems impractical in your "systematic" approach to HRM and that means a mother cannot keep working, or a father's wish to share his child's precious early years more fully will be lost.... forever.

    Those are the sort of errors we know any one of us might make (and almost certainly will), but we must never consider them as being acceptable: "Permissible", as "reasonable adjustments".

    Simply because they are not "reasonable" errors to permit, though they might be forgivable (as a fact of HR practice in the circumstances of the case). We do not accept others suffering detriments for our predicted lack of competence or ability. No matter what its cause. It is a simple matter of good faith. We practice in good faith, or not at all.

    P

  • in reply to Andre
    Hello again Andre

    I suggest you Google some job descriptions for HRD roles and analyse them in the light of your fourth, fifth and sixth posts in this thread. HRD roles vary somewhat, so don’t just pick one; pick several. Try and form a realistic opinion on how many of the main tasks and responsibilities someone with the characteristics you list in that post could perform and the experience and skills the person would need.

    I imagine that list in your fourth post is generic and applies typically, rather than being personalised to you, therefore there might be some parts of an HRD role that you could perform that someone else might have difficulty with. We can’t judge this but you can.

    Once you have formed a view on which parts of the job you would need adjustments to carry out, then you can think about what adjustments would allow you to carry them out and whether an employer is likely to find them reasonable.

    Do you have a mentor? Is there anyone you would trust sufficiently to discuss this exercise with?

    In another post you quoted some advice you were given about playing to your strengths. I think that was wise advice. On the evidence of how you present yourself in these discussion threads, in an HRD role (or HRBP) you wouldn’t be playing to your strengths. You would not just make the odd social gaffe which people could understand once they knew that you have what you described as a deficiency, you would consistently misread situations and misunderstand what was said to you. You would misread the intentions of the people interacting with you. I think you’d be completely at sea. You have said that you “tell it how it is”. Actually, it seems to me that you tell it how you see it. The problem is that how you see it might be quite unlike how it is but no one can convince you otherwise, which might link back to a difficulty reading people and situations.

    I can’t see a good outcome for you if you keep on trying for roles where you lack the soft skills on which success, or even a merely tolerable performance, depends. You must be very interested by HR to be so persistent; you clearly have an analytical mind and an aptitude for study so I’d advise you to give Keith’s suggestion of considering a career as an academic serious consideration.

    I am being very blunt because I realise from the information you have provided that it is hard for you to pick up hints or polite circumlocutions and I need to flex my style in order to communicate effectively with you. I hope I haven’t misread you and caused you offence or hurt.
  • in reply to Elizabeth Divver
    Dear Elizabeth,

    Many thanks for your reply and I act as a CIPD mentor myself, advising people on how to get back to work, as I have previous experience in that. I will however look into your suggestion of finding a Mentor to assist with this.

    Academia suits me well, but the issue with my style is that it is more direct and to the point. People tend to know exactly where they stand with me, and with having neurodiversity, I tend to interpret things more literally and do not so easily laugh at the same jokes (I have my own sense of humour) or pick up on sarcasm or innuendo in the workplace so easily. I have a highly analytical and scientific mind and also fully understand what Keith said that there is a finite limit in terms of what reasonable adjustments an employer can make for that. Ultimately, you can either perform a role such as Chief Head of People to the necessary level and standard or not. But if you can't do the job, that is then a key legal ground under capability to dispense with someone's services.

    I can do soft skills, but how they subtlety flow and come out is not so natural and I have to make more of an effort with them. What I have also tried to do is to try for HR roles in countries (where I can also speak the language) such as The Netherlands, Germany and also the USA where they tend to be more direct and to the point than the UK. The beating around the bush has never been my style, although I also recognise that it often comes down more to what people don't say than what they do say. I have also looked at self-employment as well.

    Therefore, the issue is that I am in a people based profession but struggle with people skills myself and are also not interested in the IT side of HR. We all have our own respective personalities, strengths and cannot change who and what we are, but I personally view this more as a challenge and opportunity to perhaps prove that although I am weaker on the soft skills side, I can still bring it up to the necessary level and standard by successfully navigating the minefield of human relations. They are and can be difficult from time to time.

    * After all, even people who don't have neurodiversity are still not 100% perfect and completely ept in social interaction and can still find these things difficult from time to time. I just tend to more them 'slightly more difficult than the average person,' such as also pitching my conversation at the right level, in the right context and the right things to say. *

    If it however helps, some of the greatest brains in the world had this condition as well, such as Albert Einstein, so it can also provide a set of key strengths and skills that the average person without it does not have either.

    Kind regards

    Andre