The NAHRMA Board held its first 2003 meeting on January 30, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada during the launch of the Canadian Council of Human Resource Association’s National Standards.
It was suggested that, given the stature of Mexico, they should also have a designation to advance the profession in North America. CCHRA members who have participated in the development of the National Standards and SHRM members who have worked in developing the international HR certification could help Mexico in its efforts to develop certification. It was highlighted that any efforts in Mexico have to be done recognising the culture of the country. Rather than copying other programmes, Mexico should select the parts of the Canada and US models that would work for Mexico. The structure should be based on the culture of the Mexican organization.
Subsequent to the January meeting, the NAHRMA Board met in Mexico City on 10 April 2003, during AMEDIRH’s Congress and Exposition. CCHRA and SHRM presented the process through which it developed their respective programs. It was a very good discussion that provided a great amount of information and some guidance to AMEDIRH as it embarks on the development. It seemed that AMEDIRH, given its contacts with the Government of Mexico (the Secretary of Labour opened the conference), might in fact have the necessary support to achieve this goal in the short term.
It was suggested that eventually there should be reciprocal recognition of the HR certification among the NAHRMA member country associations.
1. CANADA
All recent indicators of the Canadian economy suggest that the domestic economy is still healthy. Manufacturing shipments, wholesale and retail sales all came in stronger than expected.
The housing market continued its current winning streak. Housing starts, although lower in March, have ended 6.1% higher than the same quarter last year, and the new housing price index grew by a vigorous 0.6% in February. Clouding this rosy picture is the US economy. The negative effect of US weakness can be seen in the 0.9% drop in exports to the US in February. However, with part of the war in Iraq over, oil prices falling and some improvements in retail sales, it is estimated that its GDP will register a 3.1% growth, compared with a 2.6% growth for its neighbours to the south. It appears that the rate of growth of the Canadian economy will continue to have a positive effect on employment growth over the coming years.
Implications for human resource managers
The majority of new jobs are in the services sector and today the Canadian economy, following the example of other industrialised countries, is based on what is called the knowledge economy. The revolution caused by the proliferation of both information and communication technologies has a major influence on manpower needs; highly trained and highly skilled workers are in increasing demand in all sectors of the economy. This has an impact on workers and on management of human resources, since more skill sets are required and are constantly changing in the many different trades and professions. In fact, as soon as new technologies, new industries and subsequently new jobs emerge, the skills of a large number of workers quickly become obsolete. It is predicted that in 2004 70% of new jobs will require a post-secondary education, even a university degree for 25% of these.
These new requirements produce a shortage of qualified workers in a variety of professional fields (health care, engineering, management, etc). This in turn demands that HR managers must address continuing training and employee qualifications, key elements in maintaining the performance of businesses.
In view of skills and labour shortages, employers must be creative in implementing strategies to attract and retain qualified employees. It should be noted that this shortage of qualified employees is exacerbated by certain Canadian demographics in the making: the population is aging and young people are fewer and fewer in number. The average age in Canada reached a historical peak in 2001 when it stood at 37.6 years. This phenomenon has its effects on the active population, requiring HR managers to provide effective succession planning.
Other demographic predictions indicate that in 2011 the net growth of the active population in Canada will be entirely related to immigration. Coupled with the effects of globalisation on corporate structures, HR must be prepared to manage the integration of cultures and differences in the workplace.
The combination of these factors will result in an increasing number of businesses recognising the need for HR management.
Canadian Council of HR Associations (CCHRA)
On January 30, 3003, CCHRA launched the new National Standards for the HR profession in Canada. CCHRA President, Anne Charette, reported that the project officially started in 1995 with both the support of the Canadian government (with a contribution of C$2.5 million), and the participation of thousands of professionals from the HR community, academia and the public sector in Canada. The new competencies-based model promotes portability/mobility to work around the country, coast-to-coast. Ms. Charette noted that a national perspective was important, but the involvement of the provinces was vital in the process.
Testing of the new National Standards would be conducted on-line twice a month, and it would be administered by an independent entity that will report to the CCHRA board, with testing revenues going to CCHRA. The Council has estimated to reach a break-even situation in three years. Testing projection numbers are very conservative, and are based on HRPAO historical numbers because the association has a process already in place.
The new designation will not be a requirement for employment. However, in the past, provincial associations worked to have their own designations recognised by the community, but now there are different types of incentives to recognise the new designation.
In Canada not everyone will have a designation. CCHRA represents over 25,000 HR practitioners across Canada through eight Provincial associations, and approximately 12,000 hold the designation. Designation numbers vary from province to province. The association in Ontario, HRPAO, has over 12,000 members and 4,500 have the CHRP designation; Quebec has 6,000 members and 5,200 of those are CHRPs; and British Columbia, the third largest association with 2,500 members, has 670 designates.
One of the advantages in Canada is that the designation is dependent on membership in the Association, while in the US membership in the association is not a requirement.
Ms Charette said that HR professionals in Canada see themselves more as support to top management and not as sitting at the executive table. Positions at the strategic level are not the majority, and there is a great necessity to educate the professional to provide the support.
2. MEXICO
Not surprisingly, Mexico has suffered a cut to its growth outlook. Its close commercial ties with the United States formalised in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has forced the economy to follow the slide of its northern neighbour on a 1:1 scale. During the past three years the economy declined, due in part to the high dependency on the exports to the US. Mexico has been trying to recuperate from negative financial results, and this past February registered a surplus of 65 million dollars for the first time since June 1997. The sources of this surplus originated, on the one hand, in the higher value of oil exports, and on the other, in the lower growth of imports, linked to a lower domestic expenditure, a slowdown of manufacturing exports –which use imported inputs, and a contraction in the imports of capital goods.
Amedirh
The association held its annual congress and exposition on April 9-10, 2003 at the Convention Center Banamex (formerly, Convention Center Las Americas), with more than 500 participants. AMEDIRH hosted NAHRMA Board members who met to discuss HR certification in Mexico with current AMEDIRH President, Gustavo Perez Rios, and other AMEDIRH Board members.
3. USA
Reports on the 2003 economic outlook for the USA indicate that GDP increased slightly in the first quarter of the year. The intensification of war-related worries helped to drag down growth below leading indicators’ first quarter estimate of 2.4%. On a more positive note, prospects for the second half of the year appear to be improving, albeit modestly – although a dormant labour market is keeping the risks of a recession on radar screens.
The risk is that a rising jobless rate could put a crimp in consumer spending and stunt the upturn in the economy. That's already happening in the auto market, where a new round of hefty incentives is failing to stir up sales. Sales of cars and trucks fell 6% in April, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 16.5 million units, well below the 21.1 million sales rates in October 2001, when 0% financing was introduced. Consumers worried about losing their jobs are more likely to save their cash than spend it
Overall unemployment at 6%, a still relatively low rate figure is masking a much tougher reality. More than 500,000 jobs have disappeared in the past three months, pushing the total lost above two million. Long-term unemployment, at 1.9m, is at its highest for 10 years. And these numbers do not include the large number of ‘discouraged workers’ (people who would like to work but have given up looking) and the even larger number of ‘underemployed’ (those who are working, but not as much as they would like to). People who become unemployed now stay out of work on average for almost 20 weeks, the longest since early 1984. The proportion of workers who exhaust their unemployment benefits before they find work is the highest
since records began in the early 1970s.
A big reason why the job market is so weak even though the economy is (just) growing is the continued impressive growth in productivity. Ever more efficient firms need ever fewer workers, and with the economy barely growing that means job losses, particularly in some industries. According to economists at Morgan Stanley, hotels, airlines, restaurants and amusement parks, which together account for only around one in 10 private sector jobs, contributed nearly half the job losses in the past three months.
Another deterrent to hiring people is the price of benefits. The growth in the cost of health-care insurance accelerated to 6.1% in the first three months of 2003, the highest rate since 1992, when costs were actually decelerating.
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
SHRM has gone through a year of many changes, and is committed to its new mission to serve the HR professional (STP) with the essential resources that the professional needs, and to advance the profession (ATP). A key part of the new ATP strategy is to help executives see that HR is integral to the business success of an organization. Under STP, SHRM will provide more focused information and more original research, eg in compensation, benefits and employee relations.
Development of an international certification is part of SHRM efforts to advance the profession. The international HR certification will be for HR professionals in charge of international HR and cross-border mobility (originally operating in the US but also with applicability to outside the US) at multinational organisations. HRCI is currently working with subject matter experts from the Society’s international division, SHRM Global Forum, to develop the exam.
Another objective of the project is to develop educational materials. SHRM has defined six domains, which cover the knowledge and tasks of the international HR profession. There is not much on how to do international HR; most HR professionals depend on networking. The programme does not compete with anything that is being offered anywhere in the world for international practitioners.
Last year, the International Practice Analysis Task Force, made up of representatives from HRCI and the SHRM Global Forum, identified six domains of knowledge in international human resources: strategic international HR management, global organisational effectiveness and employee development, global staffing, international assignment management, global compensation and benefits and international employee relations and regulations.
In addition, SHRM and the SHRM Global Forum are creating educational materials to help future candidates prepare. The materials, which will be ready in December of this year, will largely be self-study with web support, and will follow along the six domains of the exam. Further information is available at www.shrmglobal.org.
Currently, more than 60,000 HR professionals have earned the PHR (Professional in Human Resources) and/or the SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources). The Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR) certification will be earned by passing a new and distinct examination and, as with the other exams, requires professionals to recertify by meeting continuing education requirements every three years.
Just as the PHR and SPHR certifications show that a person has mastered the body of knowledge of domestic HR management functions, the GPHR certification will display mastery of international HR. The first GPHR exam will be administered at the SHRM Global Forum Conference in the spring of 2004.
Another SHRM Global Forum project is the worldwide HR research about the state of the profession. Twenty-two countries covering the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa are currently participating. Each participating organizationwill receive an electronic copy of the global report plus an e-copy of their own country report. Reports are to be ready the last week of August/beginning of September.
