Claude Balthazard, Ph.D., C.Psych., CHRL

Vice-president Regulatory Affairs and Registrar

Human Resources Professionals Association

2

Office of the Registrar2018 Fall Understanding Regulation series

Thursday,November 1, 2018

The Professional Liability Insurance Requirement Explained

Thursday, November 6, 2018

Professionalism

On-demand webinars

• Our previously aired Understanding Regulation and How-to webinar series can be found on the Regulatory Webinars page of our website.• Listen to recording

• Download the power point slides

• View the Questions & Answers

5

https://www.hrpa.ca/professionalregulation_/Pages/Regulatory-Webinars-Archive.aspx

Housekeeping

• Webinar will be recorded and posted online

• Webinar is eligible for CPD

• CPD code will be set with the post-webinar survey

• Post answers to questions that we could not answer in the webinar

Questions Involving Specific Individual Circumstances

• Not the appropriate place and time to address specific individual circumstances

• Sometimes the correct answer depends on some details that are not provided with the question

• Please contact the Office of the Registrar registrar@hrpa.ca with questions involving specific individual circumstances

mailto:registrar@hrpa.ca

Poll

In your opinion, how professional are Human Resources professionals? Most are very professional, with some rare exceptions

The majority are professional, but there are a lot of exceptions

It is about fifty/fifty

There are a lot of professional HR professionals, but there seems to be a lot more that aren’t

Truly professional HR professionals are the exception

Agenda

• What is professionalism?

• Some interesting work on professionalism

• The development of professional identity

Professionalism and the protection of the public

• The most important component in the protection of the public is the professionalism of the members of the profession

• One of the key things that HRPA must do is to foster, encourage, promote professionalism

What does it mean to be a professional?

• Being professional (adjective) and being a professional (noun) are not the same

• Some professionals act in a manner that is not professional, and some non-professionals behave in a professional manner

• Getting paid for doing what one does is not enough

Professionalism

(Sociologists)Professionalism

referring to institutions

How the profession is organized

(Non-sociologists)Professionalism

referring to individuals

The attitudes, values, and behaviours of members of the

profession

Ten elements of professionalism

The Chief Justice of Ontario Advisory Committee on Professionalism listen ten elements of professionalism for lawyers:

• Scholarship• Integrity• Honour• Leadership• Independence• Pride• Spirit and enthusiasm• Civility and collegiality• Service• Balanced commercialism

CIPD has been doing some interesting work on professionalism in the last few years

It is part of their Profession for the Future strategy

The first research report was published in October 2015

This first report was followed up by a second report published just a few weeks ago in January 2017

Key themes of CIPD’s work on professionalism

The CIPD research on professionalism pulls together a number of important themes:

• Gap between ‘professed’ ethics and actual behaviour

• Business partner v. professional role

• Professionalism and the process of professionalization

• Professional identity formation

CIPD’s starting point:The movement for better business

• “The movement for better business is focused on advocating ethical capitalism, where profits are important but not the only outcome at the expense of workers and society”

• “There is a critical role for the HR profession of the future to play, by developing its expertise in human and organizational behaviour and using that to help create business solutions that have lasting benefits for all stakeholders”

• “Although competence is important, it is ethics that sets us apart from non-professional occupations”

“…advancing the concept of professionalism brings ethical behaviour to the world of business. In short, making a commitment to a profession involves taking on ethical responsibilities that require rejecting a strictly selfish commercial view.”

Duska, R., Duska, B., and Ragatz, J. (2011). Accounting as a profession: Characteristics of a profession. In Duska, R., Duska, B., and Ragatz, J. (Eds.). Accounting ethics (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

the use of

specialist, expert

knowledge

necessary to

perform a particular

type of work or role

the use of

knowledge for the

good of the society,

implying an ethical

responsibility

a renewed focus on

trust has highlighted

the importance of

situational judgement

as key to professional

behaviour

Through the

combination of their

expertise and ethical

responsibility

professionals enjoy a

degree of trust to carry

out their services and

are granted a unique

right of practice and an

authority to make

decisions in line with

their professional

judgement

What is professionalism? (2015)Re-sequenced

The ‘gap’ is the issue

• Situational judgment is the term CIPD has coined to refer to the combination of competence and ethics in making decisions

• “The ability to apply situational judgment and demonstrate moral integrity are what sets them [professionals] apart as professionals, and are important characteristics in helping organizations create long-term sustainability”

• “…while HR practitioners and business leaders want to make ethical decisions, in some circumstances they either deprioritize ethics or do not feel able to apply ethical principles in practice.”

• CIPD calls this the ‘gap between ambition to uphold ethical values and actual practice’

The bigger picture:Professionalization and professionalism

• “‘Professionalisation’ can be viewed as a gradual process, since professional techniques usually develop gradually before professions attain the highest levels of professional status.”

• “It has therefore been suggested that professionalism should be perceived as a scale or continuum, rather than as a cluster of characteristics.”

• “We [CIPD] developed a checklist of the elements of professionalism as we understand it today for the CIPD’s 2015 report; this model was based on a literature review of the evolution of professions.”

CIPD Elements of professionalism (2017)Element of professionalism

Description

Body of expert knowledge and skills

Based on specialised training or education

Social legitimacy Occupational status – the expertise of the professional group acquires authority

Ethical responsibility The use of knowledge for the good of society

Self-regulation The prescription of standards of performance

Identity A common identity within the professional community and a sense of loyalty to fellow practitioners

Situational judgement Applying expertise to specific circumstances, while often resolving conflicts of interest between multiple stakeholders; drawing on both knowledge and ethical competence

Service orientation The importance of trust and quality of service in professional relationships with clients

Continuing professional development

A requirement to regularly update expert knowledge and invest in maintaining the level of professional skill

Closing the gap

• For HR to deliver on its promise, for HR to progress along the path of professionalization, and for HR to be considered a true profession, HR is going to have to close the ‘gap between ambition to uphold ethical values and actual practice’

• But the gap is based on something deeper—a role conflict

The fundamental paradox

• “There is a fundamental paradox that characterises HR professionalism: alignment with business strategy lies at the heart of the majority of HR roles, while one of the key attributes of a profession is the ownership of standards that not only go beyond, but actually override, those of the organisation.”

• In search of power, status, and legitimacy, HR professionals have simultaneously pursued two different strategies

Two alternative strategies for the profession to achieve greater status, influence, and achievement

Business partner strategy

• By aligning ourselves with senior management and become really useful in moving forward the organization’s strategy, we will be valued by senior management and get greater status, influence, and power.

Professionalization strategy

• By becoming a true profession (with or without state recognition), we would have the respectability and clout to command respect and get greater status, influence, and power.

Kochan (2004)

“The human resource management profession faces a crisis of trust and a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of its major stakeholders. The two-decade effort to develop a new ‘strategic human resource management’ role in organizations has failed to realize its promised potential of greater status, influence, and achievement. To meet contemporary and future workplace challenges, HRM professionals will need to redefine their role and professional identity to advocate and support a better balance between employer and employee interests at work.”

Role conflict

• Many HR professionals experience role conflict

• There are different reactions to the role conflict

• Some experience it more than other

• Some prefer to minimize the conflict

Identification

Organizational identification

Business partner role

Professional identification

Professional role

Professional identity

• While HR professionals like to think of themselves as professionals, in actuality their level of identification with the profession is not as strong as it should be

• “HR professionals have a slightly stronger sense of identification with the organization than with the profession. When under pressure from the business, organizational identity may take precedence over professional identity for HR practitioners, which could provide some explanation for the gap between ambition to uphold ethical values and actual practice.“

Enhancing professional identity

• As identification strengthens, people are more likely to internalise the values of the profession, and behave in ways that are consistent with its norms

• This suggests that the more someone identifies with their profession and its values, the more likely they are to demonstrate behaviours that are aligned with those professional values

CIPD’s line of argument

• Professionalization means moving towards greater levels of professionalism—this defines the profession for the future

• This means a greater emphasis on the ethical dimensions of HR practice

• To do this, we need to resolve the role conflict by giving primacy to the professional role

• To do this, we need to strengthen professional identification

How does it fit with HRPA?

• As it turns out, by going for statutory self-regulation, HRPA and its members did make a commitment to put professionalism first (which was the intention of the Legislature)

• Let’s see how this works

HRPA’s Mission and mandate are part of a deal

Give

Getto

The profession agreed to create and maintain a professional regulatory body which mission and mandate is to manage the

profession in the public interest

The extraordinary privilege of self-regulation(with all its consequential benefits

for the profession and its members)

Questions

Suggestions for webinar topics?

Feedback?

registrar@hrpa.ca

mailto:registrar@hrpa.ca