Employers and Human Resource (HR) practitioners can look forward to a national benchmark for quality and competence for the HR profession. This was announced by Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say on 13 October 2016 during the Asian Human Capital and Leadership Symposium.
Called the National HR Professional Certification Framework, Minister Lim said that it was launched “to set out comprehensively how HR professionals can bring value to the organisations they serve, now and in the future.”
Professionalising the Industry
Prior to the announcement, the National HR Certification Taskforce – established last year – commissioned an independent study that revealed that the HR maturity and competence in Singapore has room for improvement.
Minister Lim said that many companies and HR professionals are still preoccupied with performing transactional tasks such as payroll and headcount.
The framework aims to professionalise the HR industry by creating developmental and progression pathways for HR practitioners. To help them become important enablers of businesses and organisations, the framework stipulates 30 competencies required for HR practitioners to be future ready, and help businesses plan for and address future manpower challenges.
Chairperson of the taskforce Aileen Tan, who is Singtel Group’s Chief HR Officer, said that this is a holistic framework that ensures HR professionals understand businesses, considering the disruptions in technology and business models today.
She added: “The framework will enable them to drive through change-management within the organisation, to drive the proactive and progressive human capital practices.”
The framework is an initiative under the Human Resource Industry Manpower Plan. It will be administered by Workforce Singapore and the taskforce which consists of representatives from various industries, institutes of higher learning, associations and the Labour Movement.
Certifications
There will be three types of certification under the framework for HR practitioners of different employee levels. To be certified, they will need at least 150 hours of human capital-related education or training and have practised HR for at least two years.
The certification will last three years and officially commence in the second quarter of next year.
Ms Tan said that even though the certification is voluntary, the taskforce aims to certify at least 5,000 of the 43,000 practising HR professionals in Singapore over the next five years.
There will be pilot phase starting in late October 2016 which will assess about 100 candidates ranging from junior HR professionals to chief HR officers.
Labour Movement’s View
NTUC HR Director Jacqueline Chin, who is also a member of the taskforce, said that competent HR practitioners who are certified will bring better value to the company.
“HR must be competent enough to help to transform the workforce,” she said.
As HR is a horizontal capability that is applied to various sectors, Ms Chin emphasised that HR practitioners have to understand the business first before being an enabler.
“You cannot operate HR just on an HR platform. You have to bring your HR perspective to the business context. It is a marrying of business issues and challenges, and finding HR solutions to that,” she added.
Ms Chin also said that HR and unions are like “two sides of a coin”.
She explained: “They are two parties who are looking after the well-being and interests of employees. Both have the same objectives.”
Source: NTUC This Week
