How will CIPD be ensuring qualifications are blanket recognised in EU post-Brexit?

Hello Paul

Thank you for your comments and questions, Brexit is certainly at the top of our agenda.

As we work internationally, it is important for us to establish links across the world and we are recognised by individuals and employers in a number of countries. We also have a high number of non EU students who are able to use and be recognised for their CIPD qualifications in non EU countries. In terms of our qualifications in Europe, we will not be able to ensure blanket acceptance in EU27 post Brexit as we are unable to do within the EU now. At the moment, we offer comparisons to the EQF and will continue to do this post Brexit. An individual with a CIPD qualification who wishes to work in Europe is required to apply for recognition/comparability within the country concerned and also to understand individual employer requirements. Automatic recognition ties in more with licence to practice qualifications where common minimum training conditions exist and this is not relevant to our qualifications.

As we are a UK based recognised and regulated Awarding Organisation, it would not be possible for us to issue or reissue certificates from Ireland.

We are of course very mindful of the implications of Brexit for the profession and will ensure that we continue to engage with policy makers on this, relaying what our Members tell us as we do.

I’m not sure if you are aware but we also have a Brexit hub - www.cipd.co.uk/.../brexit-hub which provides resources for our Members to help plan for Brexit.

I hope this is helpful.
Annie

Thanks Annie for the detailed and helpful reply.

As a person who has spent the greater part of their life working outside of the UK and on HR issues across and within at least 50 countries, and having operational HR in 4 non-UK countries, I would like to add my grain of sand to the debate.

To be honest I would be extremely worried if CIPD qualifications were granted semi-automatic recognition in countries outside of the UK. I clearly accept that there are some generic approaches to HR issues that will be relevant (to some degree) across borders. However, the underlying core HR skills sponsored and promoted by the CIPD relate to the acquisition (and applied use of)  knowledge that is highly UK specific. When we look across different countries we can quickly see some very important differences that will affect how HR is practices

• Firstly there are major differences in the areas of legislation that touch on HR - company law, employment law, tax law, social security law
• Secondly the structuring of the benefits that are provided by the state will dictate to a strong degree the type of benefits that a company may choose to offer - in France for instance there is very little in the way of company pension plans because the state scheme is one of the most generous in the world
• These first two factors, coupled with differences in national culture, play a major role in determining what will be an attractive package to staff in each country
• Having recruited technicians and engineers in several countries, I had to very quickly come to terms with not only the differences in the technical content of their training, but also the fact that there are different legal norms under which they must operate - what is compulsory in country A may well be forbidden in country B. Similarly, in some countries engineers can obtain the equivalent of chartered status without actually having undertaken engineering work in a company - the academic qualification is sufficient. Assuming that they will be operationally useful from day one would create major problems.
• Employee relations with formal staff/union bodies vary massively, and in some countries failure to respect formal procedures can have very serious consequences - not long ago an employer in Europe had to re-employ about 100 staff who had been made redundant, and reinitiate a six month dismissal process, simply on the basis of a technical error in the procedure. In this type of environment applying the UK pragmatic approach of "acting reasonable within the law" can have disastrous consequences

At a managerial level, it is probably easier to make the international transition, provided that the team the person in charge of possesses a high level of technical skills and the manager is there to manage and set strategic direction

As someone who teaches on an MBA in International HR (with Comp & Ben speciality), all I can realistically give to my students is an overview of the types of differences they are likely to encounter across different countries. As an illustration the notion of Bismarckian vs Beveridgian national pension systems is a fundamental differentiator and understanding how and why they are different, can help give keys to gaining a proper understanding of Indonesian, Swedish, French and Dutch national pension systems - on the other hand it is not possible on a one-year course to provide inside knowledge of all the different national pension systems around the world to a point where someone could move from country A to country B as a pension plan specialist.

I hope these limited illustrations serve to illustrate the point that in many HR roles, the technical knowledge and skills we acquire via CIPD qualifications are in no automatically transferable to another country.

That doesn’t mean that all the skills certified by CIPD are not relevant, but anyone seeking to apply them in a context for which they were not designed, is likely to make some very serious mistakes if they don't spend the necessary time learning and understanding the different legislative and cultural context of another country.

Apologies for the long post, but IMHO assuming the automatic transferability of HR skills/knowledge across more often than not leads to disaster

Thanks, Ray - terrific post!

Absolutely Ray, thank you. An understanding of the local law and culture will always be essential.

Hi Steve, Please could you demerge my most recent entry to a separate thread to avoid confusion? One thread is about CIPD qualifications. The other is about non-CIPD qualifications of any profession/industry. Thanks.

Hi Steve, Please could you demerge my most recent entry to a separate thread to avoid confusion? One thread is about CIPD qualifications. The other is about non-CIPD qualifications of any profession/industry. Thanks.

Done.

www2.cipd.co.uk/.../69030

Steve Bridger if only it was as simple to “de merge” us from our European cousins - new Brexit Secretary ?

Sacré bleu.