HR practitioners say business acumen ‘extremely important’
The most recent Pulse Survey by Canadian HR Reporter and the Toronto-based Human Resources Professionals Association found 78.8 per cent of HR professionals think the CHRP certification process should include a business knowledge requirement.
“I think business acumen is extremely important,” said Robert Smith, one of the 621 respondents and a veteran HR professional in Dundas, Ont. “But it’s not just a matter of getting it through education. I would like to see practical experience.”
While HR professionals should be encouraged to take courses outside of the HR scope, nothing beats on-the-job experience for providing a wider business perspective, said Smith.
“That maturity level needs to develop as they gain experience in the business world,” he said. He would like to see work experience be a requirement of the CHRP, in the same way a lawyer has to article for a period of time before being called to the bar.
While HR professionals agree business knowledge is important in order to be successful in HR, respondents to the survey had different ideas about how that knowledge should be measured for the purposes of obtaining the CHRP.
Most respondents (70.7 per cent) think HR professionals should be required to complete a certain number of business courses before being awarded the designation. But slightly more than one-half (53.6 per cent) of respondents think the CHRP exams should include a multiple-choice section on business and 40 per cent think the exams should include a business case study.
When weighing all the requirements for the CHRP, Peter Marinelli, an HR manager at the Learning Enrichment Foundation in Toronto, would like to see more weight given to work experience over education because experience is a better predictor of performance.
“I have met countless people and hired countless people in the past where they have a certificate in a certain area and they still cannot do the job,” he said.
While work experience is essential to developing business knowledge, it might be unfair to make it a requirement for the CHRP because a lack of the designation could make it harder for some practitioners to get a job, said Lynn Janna-Firkins, director of HR for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa.
But that work experience can make all the difference in an HR professional’s career, she said.
“As an HR person, a lot of the strengths you gain come from understanding the business that you’re in,” she said. “That’s what helped me the most in getting me to where I am.”
More than one-half (56.2 per cent) of respondents think business knowledge is currently the biggest knowledge gap for HR professionals and only 2.6 per cent of respondents think 80 per cent to 100 per cent of current HR professionals possess an adequate level of business knowledge. Most respondents, 72.8 per cent, think somewhere between 20 per cent and 59 per cent of HR professionals have enough business know-how.
“If you’re going to become a strategic partner or a business partner, you need to understand what’s going on in the business,” said Smith.
The CHRP has given the HR profession more credibility in the business world, but to ensure the designation remains valuable, it needs to measure more than just HR knowledge, said Smith.
“Human resources encompasses every area of the business,” he said. “Human resources actually impacts the organization at every step in every decision.”
