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By Henry Okonkwo
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) has reiterated its drive to rid the profession of quacks and criminals that are portraying the image of the profession in bad lights, and polluting Human Resource (HR) practice in the country.
President of CIPM, Wale Adediran, made this vow recently during the institute’s virtual 51st Annual General Meeting (AGM).
Decrying the activities of quacks and criminals, Adediran disclosed that efforts are in top gear for practitioners in the industry to enjoy professional certifications that would be issued by the institute to individuals that have specialized in a particular aspect. He said this move was necessary to make it easier for the general public to separate the true professionals from the quacks.
“One of the cardinal targets of the Standard Of Practice (SOP) that we are establishing is to create specialist practice lines. So when we have the SOPs for Talent Sourcing, we will be able to accredit people with practitioners licenses specifically in that specialist area. Then we would have to publish from time to time, names of those that have been accredited by the institute. We are a membership-led institute, so the accreditation is like a peer-review and assessment. So your professional peers are saying and endorsing that you are competent and have been certified to be a professional in this area. The accredited names would be published, and those who are not certified cannot go out there to present themselves as professionals, ” he said.
Adediran reeled measures that they have put in place to not only cleanse the profession of quackery but to stand out from counterfeiters that have encroached into their professional sphere. “We are also out to tackle the criminals fronting themselves to be recruiters. Because we have heard all kinds of terrible stories of people advertising job vacancies only for them to lure unsuspecting Nigerians in other to extort money from them, and sometimes kidnapping them for ransom. We have heard of some fatal cases and we know that these people are pure criminals. Anytime we become aware of such we would prompt the right security agencies to deal with them. Because those are not just quacks, but criminals.
“When a brand is good there will be attempts at counterfeiting, if the brand is not good nobody would move to counterfeit it. Many of them use different backdoor approaches in their attempt to counterfeit our institute. Some of them even sell followership, but we in CIPM don’t sell fellowship, so we have a standard that we uphold. Some of these fake bodies offer Fellowership for N150, 000 and membership for N90, 000 and so on. We don’t do that in CIPM. Ours is to drive value through people, we want to provide assured HR development. So we would do to deal with them by stepping up our standards and to add real value. We want CIPM to be well ahead in everything. We have the law behind us. But beyond that, we have to truly be the foremost people, and organization management institute that everybody would recognise,” he said.
Also speaking CIPM’s Vice-President, Mrs. Titi Akinsanya, called for more HR practitioners to register with the institute on other to ensure quality standards in the profession. “As members of CIPM, our aim is to uphold ourselves to the highest measure of professional standards wherever we are. So as much as we have more heads of HR departments in organizations whether multi-nationals, local organizations, SMEs at whatever levels as members of our institute, they themselves automatically have an impetus to uphold this profession to its highest standards. So our main aim is to have more members of our institutes in the rightful places in these organizations to enthrone high standards in HR practice”, she said.
