Tag Archives: SHRM

Your HR Certification is Worthless (#SHRM15)

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing my friend Steve Browne speak this morning at SHRM. His session was intended to fire up the audience, and I’d say it was a smashing success. One of his comments was powerful, and I thought it deserved to be repeated here because I talk about certification quite a bit.

If your certification is purely about getting recertification hours, having letters after your name, and trying to use that as a way to get credits, then you’re wasting your time and your organization’s time. Go ahead and leave. Or let it lapse. There’s no real value in that sort of attitude.

However, if you pursued certification as a way to make yourself better at delivering HR services for your employees, then you’re on the right track.

If you prepared for months, studied endless hours to pass an incredibly difficult exam, and sat there with sweaty palms as you waited for the pass/fail notification at the end just so you could use something you learned to make your workplace better, you did it for the right reasons.

If your certification is less about making yourself look good and more about how you can make your organization look good for candidates and employees, then you understand the true value of the certification process.

Whether you’re carrying around a PHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, HRBP, or some other type of credential, remember the end goal. The test is not the goal. Studying is not the objective. Using what you learn to make your organization better is.

How has your certification helped you? What additional impact did you have on your organization once you picked up those almighty letters behind your name? 

Are You Going to SHRM in Las Vegas? #SHRM15

A few weeks from now I’ll be joining thousands of my closest HR friends in Las Vegas for the 2015 SHRM Conference. This year is a bit different than the years I visited only as an attendee, because I will be speaking on behalf of Brandon Hall Group about strategic HR at the SHRM SmartStage, which should be a blast. Here are the details:

Strategic HR (It’s Easier Than You Think)

Monday, June 29, 2015 – 3:20pm

Session description: One of the most common suggestions a lot of HR practitioners hear is “You need to be more strategic.” The challenge for many HR pros is that the actual implementation of strategic HR practices is not always clear cut. This presentation will review several mini case studies to teach the audience how to break down problems and present strategic solutions in a simple, yet meaningful way.

Are you going?

If you are going to be in Las Vegas later this month, I would love to meet you at the event. I’m always amazed when I get to meet the great people that follow this blog. One of the fun things I get to do as an HR analyst is talk with HR pros about what’s going on in their businesses, what challenges they are facing, etc. It’s always a great conversation.

If you plan to be there, please shoot me an email and we’ll plan to connect. And if you’re not, we can still connect! Email me and we can chat on the phone or via email. I thoroughly enjoy connecting with every person I can within the HR community.

Increasing Benefit Value at No Cost (#SHRM14)

Before I jump in, I realize that there is some cost associated with everything. My love of economics doesn’t allow me to get away with the idea of a “free lunch” without mentioning that; however, I’m talking about increasing the perceived value without increasing the direct cost of the various options offered. Hang with me, there’s good stuff to share. 

My first SHRM 2014 session focused on benefit communication best practices and was presented by Mary Shafer at ADP. Here are nine tips, ideas, and concepts for improving your benefits communication.

  1. What’s the key to crafting a communication plan? Understand your objective and your audience and communicate with multiple media.
  2. If you want to increase the perceived value of an item (your benefits package), you need to help the customer (your employees) better understand the offerings and how they can help them to achieve their life goals.
  3. Think about targeted, timely messages. As an example, “Hey, it’s two months until the end of the plan year. You still have some of your FSA funds remaining. Here are a few ideas for how you could utilize those funds before they expire…”
  4. Talk in laymen’s terms, not HR-speak. Think about someone in your life that might have trouble understanding the message, and make sure you could explain it to them (a teen, parent, grandparent, etc.).
  5. Mix up the media you use–email and/or brochures are not the only options! Consider postcards, posters (bonus tip: include QR codes for smartphone scanning), mailings, video, podcasts, text, external websites, or even social media.
  6. Use employee stories (with permission) to make the options personal and help others relate. Maybe a new parent talking about how the maternity benefits helped them, an employee who utilized the short term disability coverage, or someone who transitioned to a high deductible plan and realized cost savings.
  7. This topic was recently covered in part in “Are your employees clueless about their benefits?”
  8. Be sure to measure, refine, and follow up. Results are the key here, not just activity.
  9. Pro tip: use short one minute videos to answer questions in an FAQ format and post them internally for employees to access. Not sure how to start? Imagine an employee calls you with a question about their benefits. Now, consider your response to that question. Take a few moments to write down some key thoughts, then shoot a video of your response (or just record the audio as a podcast, if you’re video shy!). That is all it takes! Do five to ten of those, then post them. As you get other frequent/recurring requests, create more of those short snippets to help answer questions.

So, what has worked for your organization? How do you communicate benefits to your staff? Are any of the suggestions above of particular interest to you? 

SHRM to Stop Supporting PHR, SPHR Certifications

So if you’re a SHRM member and/or volunteer leader, you probably saw the news yesterday that SHRM is no longer supporting the PHR and SPHR exams after 2014. Read on for how this impacts you, and for those considering a SHRM Learning System alternative, I have a recommendation for that as well at the end. Here’s the note that many of us received earlier this week:

Dear Volunteer Leaders,

As an important and valued member of the SHRM community, I am pleased to share some exciting news with you.  The Board of Directors of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has approved a plan to create a competency-based certification program for human resource professionals.

The new HR certification is based on the SHRM HR Competency Model, which consists of nine primary competency domains defined with behavioral proficiency standards across four professional levels — entry, middle, senior and executive.  The new certification will be the first of its kind focused on teaching and the testing of this practical, real-life information that HR professionals need to excel in their careers.

“The differentiator for HR professionals will not be what you know, but what you can do with what you know,” said SHRM Board Chair Bette Francis.  “SHRM has a responsibility to lead the profession towards a certification process that proves competencies.  That will benefit the individual, the profession and employers by aligning HR with the changing demands of business.”

Over the last three years, SHRM had conducted and validated research on behavioral competencies and has developed its own competency model to serve as a foundational resource for all HR professionals.  SHRM is currently working on a certification program that will create a testing regime and governance model to provide integrity to the exam process.

SHRM plans to offer the first exam for the new competency-based certification in mid-2015.  However, to ensure that no applicants are disadvantaged by this transition, SHRM will continue to support the PHR and SPHR certifications programs through the December 2014 – January 2015 test window.  Other exams will be supported through their last test window in 2014.

“We have been working towards this for several years and are taking steps to ensure a smooth transition for SHRM members and HR professionals,” said SHRM CEO and President Henry G. (Hank) Jackson.  “We are creating a clear pathway for HR professionals who are already certified under knowledge-based credentials so they can move to the new SHRM competency-based certification.  This certification will be relevant to all career levels, across all industries, and organizations around the world.”

I know you are as excited as I am about SHRM’s focus on competency-based certification and SHRM will be sharing updates with you about the new program in the coming weeks and at the Annual Conference.

Warmest regards,

Elissa C. O’Brien, SPHR
Vice President, Membership
SHRM

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Workplace Flexibility: What’s Changing (and What’s Not) #shrmtalent #workflex

Earlier today the latest workplace flexibility research from the Families and Work Institute and SHRM came out, and there were some very interesting data points in the study. A few quick hits from the 2014 National Study of Employers (link to the full study below):

  • The presence of women/minorities impacts offerings: Organizations with more women and racial or ethnic minorities who are in or report to executive leadership positions are more likely to offer a high level of health care and economic security benefits than organizations with fewer women/minorities in those positions.
  • How are employers preparing their people? Employers are more likely to provide training for supervisors in managing diversity and least likely to have a leadership development program for women (63% vs 11%).
  • The all important culture discussion: Respondents were asked to assess the supportiveness of their workplace cultures… The majority of respondents indicated “very true” to statements assessing whether supervisors are encouraged to assess employee performance by what they accomplish rather than “face time” (64%) and whether supervisors are encouraged to be supportive of employees with family needs and by finding solutions that work for both employees and the organization (58%). Far fewer employers, however, responded “very true” to statements asking whether management rewards those within the organization who support flexible work arrangements (11%) and whether their organization makes a real and ongoing effort to inform employees of the availability of work-life assistance (24%).
  • Twenty one percent of employers overall indicated they must comply with the FMLA but fail to offer at least 12 weeks of paid or unpaid leave for at least one type of leave. In other words, approximately one in five employers appear to be out of compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act.

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Strategic HR: Measuring Quality of Attrition #SHRMTalent

It’s day two of the 2014 SHRM Talent Management conference, and I attended a great session on Quality of Attrition: Management's Favorite Human Capital Metric. The bottom line is that we know that every person that leaves the business is not the same. Why they left, how valuable they were, and what the organization could have done to change the results are all elements of attrition quality that can (and should, arguably) be measured.

So who’s doing it?

According to data from i4cp, high-performing companies are more likely than low-performing companies to measure various factors relating to employee attrition. In fact, 85% of high performing companies measure factors such as voluntary/involuntary attrition, whereas low performers only measure that data approximately 70% of the time. Continue reading →

Employee Retention Tied to Career Development (#SHRMTalent)

I’m at the SHRM Talent Management Conference in Nashville this week. This morning I attended a session on improving employee retention by Linda Ginac at TalentGuard. Here are some thoughts on that topic…

Turnover is real

With average employee turnover by generation standing at 2 years (Millenials), 5 years (Gen X), and 7 years (Boomers), turnover is a real issue for organizations everywhere. According to a recent study, the average turnover in the US is 15% with just over 10% of that being voluntary/preventable.

So, what are you going to do about it?

[Related: Check out this employee retention video]

Each employee is more than their job title

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