Top of Mind

Nick McKissack is Chief Executive of HRNZ. Nick is passionate about people development and sharing the success of members and organisations leading the HR profession in New Zealand.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I once employed an HR manager who actually didn’t possess some of the basic HR capability that you would expect in any HR generalist. I witnessed errors such as introducing bespoke and ambiguous terms and conditions into employment offers, failing to protect employee information and inaccurate advice to managers on employee relations problems. The costs of mistakes in essential HR practice can be significant. Unravelling variations to people’s employment terms, working with people mismatched to a position and dealing with personal grievances arising from unmet expectations all have a people and financial cost.

I had no one to blame but myself. On paper, this person had plenty of generalist HR experience, and I’d assumed they had dealt with all the basic HR policies and practices. But there it is, the curse of assumption. When I thought about this afterwards, I wondered what sort of process I should have followed to avoid those costly mistakes. Clearly, I needed a much deeper dive into that CV during the initial interviewing process to unpick that technical HR capability suggested by the various roles the person had held – to be fair to myself, I did use a recruitment agency for this appointment!

In truth, if I had my time over again, I would simply ask for someone who had achieved Chartered Membership of HRNZ. To get Chartered with HRNZ, you have to tick all the boxes of fundamental HR capability. If you’re the recruiting manager for an HR role, HRNZ is basically doing half the job for you – collecting the evidence, doing the interview and checking the referees. What’s more, to stay Chartered, you have to complete the ongoing professional development that ensures you keep your knowledge up to date. Of course, Chartered Members aren’t just capable of doing the basics, they’ll have shown a high level of competency over a range of areas and committed to a code of practice for HR professionals.

It’s been heartening to see an increasing number of members get involved in the Chartered Membership accreditation process. As the number of Chartered Members continues to rise, we’ll start to see employers include this in the requirements for serious HR roles in New Zealand.

The HRNZ professional development framework is broader than just our Chartered Member accreditation. HRNZ’s framework includes a code of practice for HR professionals, a competency framework, professional accreditation, a process for managing continuing professional development and our eLearning platform. We’ve also recently created a self-assessment tool so members can assess their capability in relation to the HRNZ framework and decide what they need to do to get accredited at either Emerging Professional or Chartered level.

The framework lets our members manage their professional development right through their HR career.

The investment our members are making in getting Chartered right now will put them in good stead in any future recruiting situations they might face. I only wish the HRNZ Chartered Membership process had been in place 10 years ago.

Nick McKissack, Chief Executive HRNZ, nick.mckissack@hrnz.org.nz