There has been a slow but marked withdrawal of senior HR executives from AHRI in recent years. As Griffith University’s Janine Walker writes, AHRI’s introduction of a Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures will do nothing to encourage the return of such executives
There has been a slow but marked withdrawal of senior HR executives from AHRI in recent years. As GriffithUniversity’s Janine Walker writes, AHRI’s introduction of a Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures will do nothing to encourage the return of such executives
AHRI executive director Jo Mithen and appointed national president Peter Wilson recently wrote to their members about the new AHRI Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures. They did not write to ask for ideas, suggestions or opinions. They did not write to ask if members of the Institute want these rules. They wrote to advise that when you renew your membership you are signed up for the new rules automatically.
After reading the new disciplinary procedures, which would become a condition of my membership when I paid my 2006 subscription, I regretfully declined to renew my membership and have left my State Council of AHRI and the Institute.
Speaking just for my part of the organisational world, human resources directors in public organisations like mine are already wide open to scrutiny. We operate every day with industrial tribunals, anti-discrimination commissions, the Ombudsman, the Information Commissioner and the Crime and Misconduct Commission perched on our collective shoulders. The prospect of judicial review of our administrative decisions casts a shadow across our in-tray everyday. Our colleagues in the private sector are only marginally less regulated. Now AHRI wants to become another regulator.
The stated purpose of AHRI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and its enforcing complaints provisions is “to establish the ethical and professional conduct expected to lead and elevate the human resources profession”.
The question of whether people who work in human resources need an institute with regulatory powers and disciplinary procedures goes to the heart of the question of what sort of profession human resources is. Is it a profession in the broad and very loose use of the term which is a specialised body of knowledge and skills, which may be an interest or an occupation for people from many different backgrounds and on quite different career paths? Or is it a profession in the formal sense like law, accounting, dentistry and others, which are the descendants of the three original professions, ministry, medicine and law? The latter are professions where entry requirements are mandated and practice and employment are governed by certification, licensing and professional registration and standards for purposes of control, broader social good and public confidence.
The policies and practices of AHRI in recent years seem to assume that becoming a regulated profession is the Institute’s goal and that this is universally accepted to be a good thing.
The Institute (owned by DeakinUniversity up until recently) has focused on credentialing tertiary programs and grading members. The executive director, appointed by the university, expressed the view from time to time that the Institute’s goal was to have organisations specify AHRI membership and grading as qualifications for employment in their HR function.
An alternative model for the Institute’s programs could be to focus on the development of the knowledge base which supports people management and lifting the status and interest in the improvement of people management and its contribution to business and the economy. This approach would have an interest in the qualifications and career paths of people who work in specialised human resources functions, but its primary focus would be people management and everyone who participates in its practice no matter where they work in organisational structures.
With this model there would be a strong interest in ethics and values, however, the investigation and disciplining of members for actions that do not relate directly to the internal organisational affairs of the Institute would be irrelevant. An institute constructed on this model would prioritise growing and disseminating the knowledge base and supporting the development of members and their careers – not operating as career gatekeepers.
Successful examples of professional institutes operating on this model include the Australian Institute of Management, the Australian Institute of Public Administration and the AustralianCollege of Health Service Executives.
Notably, all of these bodies have aspiratory and encouraging codes of conduct – but no investigatory or disciplinary procedures. The introduction of a code of ethics and professional conduct is appropriate to either institute model, however, complaints and disciplinary procedures with investigatory powers are a fork in the road. These procedures belong to regulated professions, not professional bodies committed to lifting the standards and status of a body of knowledge and the development of people who engage with it.
I joined AHRI when I took up a generalist HR role after many years as an industrial relations specialist. I liked and admired the senior HR people who held office in the Queensland Council of AHRI. The conferences and special interest groups and workshops were well run, speakers were good, I met and mingled with senior executives and academics and my membership got me a tax deduction and my employer a discount on my attendance fees. These activities and benefits continue to be the backbone of AHRI’s success. They develop and promote the knowledge base and develop the capabilities and careers of participants. I am not persuaded that members and their organisations are actually looking for anything more from AHRI.
I am quite certain that organisations and experienced HR executives are not looking to AHRI to become an actor in the control and regulation of staff they employ as HR specialists. I can safely predict there will be consternation and disbelief the first time AHRI office-bearers knock on a CEO’s door to involve themselves in the scrutiny of internal organisational matters under the guise of investigating a complaint that the work of a staff member who belongs to AHRI may be inconsistent with a code of conduct to elevate the HR profession.
The outcome is that I have become yet another HR director to walk away from AHRI and I will have to tolerate the “I told you so’s” of colleagues who I had urged, without success, to stay engaged with the Institute in recent years. On my own, I don’t matter much – I will continue to send my staff to AHRI activities, but I will not encourage their membership – but it is the continuation of a trend.
There has been a slow but marked withdrawal of senior HR executives from the affairs and governance of AHRI since its purchase by DeakinUniversity. I believe these latest rules, and the way they were developed and introduced, are a consequence of the declining voice of senior executives in the Institute and they will do nothing to encourage them to return.
Janine Walker is director of the office of human resource management at Griffith University and adjunct professor of management at the Griffith Business School.
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