Monday August 18, 2014
By NISHA T. NAIDU
For an industry that focuses on recruiting, training and investing in their talent, HR practitioners can tend to overlook the importance of doing the same for their own profession and industry.
Currently, less than 1,500 human resource practitioners in Malaysia have obtained professional human resource (HR) certifications – a significantly low number when compared to other industries such as accounting, which has approximately 30,000 qualified and certified accountants in the nation.
On Aug 15, TalentCorp made a strategic move to change that, with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) exchange with four training providers of HR certification programmes, with an aim to raise the bar of the Malaysian HR industry through upskilling.
The move was made with the vision of bringing Malaysia’s HR industry to international benchmarks, and to build a future pipeline of certified HR professionals in Malaysia.
The question here is, why would HR practitioners want to upskill themselves, when the industry in the past has been of a ‘learn as you go’ one?
TalentCorp CEO Johan Merican, provides us with some insights to the matter.
1. Learning the sciences
“Human resource is like dancing – it is a combination of the sciences and the arts,” Johan quotes Nora Abd Manaf, group chief human capital officer of Maybank.
There is the scientific part of human resources, the part that has gone through methodological and thorough testing to reveal proven results. These results do not change. Rather, how you execute these scientifically proven methods based on the given situation, do.
While your experience might allow you to pick up some of these scientific techniques as you go along, these experiences are not structured to ensure you’re learning all you can in your field.
Getting certified will fast track your way to learning these sciences, and make sure that you are equipped with the key competencies that are needed to be able to succeed, and to be a better HR manager.
2. Structured career pathway
From an individualistic perspective, these certifications will help set a standard for the industry to build a more structured professional career pathway for HR executives, as well as to boost and excel the careers of young and upcoming individuals in this field.
3. Managing talent acquisition
The trend of organisations these days have gone past the stage of worrying about finances and budget when embarking on a new project. Now, the prior concern is talent. Does the organisation have the right talent to execute such a project?
This responsibility then falls on the HR team. Are they equipped with the adequate knowledge and skillset to be able to scout and hire the right people? Can the team perform at a high-functioning level to achieve this efficiency?
These are among the areas addressed through these recently launched certification programmes.
4. Standardize the HR benchmark
This upskilling concept is more of a norm in industries such as accounting, where they are regularly in the process of working towards one professional certificate or the other.
In the HR industry, however, it is common to find personnel from a variety of educational backgrounds that are unrelated to HR. In these cases, it is especially important for these people to go through this certification process to establish their credentials in the field, thus setting a benchmark for professionalism in their industry.
Furthermore, as an incentive to up the standards of HR professionalism to international benchmarks, TalentCorp is offering to co-fund 50 percent of the programme fee, with the remaining being paid by the respective employers.
The four local training providers for the HR certifications are K-Pintar Sdn Bhd for the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI); SMR Group for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD); Malaysia Institute of Human Resource Management (MIHRM);and Kelly Outsourcing & Consulting Group (KellyOCG) for the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM).
For more information on the four certification programmes, visit http://www.talentcorp.com.my/
Related article: Raising the bar of Malaysia’s HR industry