Growing Trend of HR Certifications in Pakistan
In the South Asian region, the certification industry has significantly matured over the years as the entrance of multiple credible certification issuing institutes helped in improving the acceptance level of certifications in the general public. Employers and recruiters are now focusing more on the inclusion of those employees in their workforce which have any sort of certification. The criteria for recruitment & selection have changed and relevancy of the profile now highly rely on certifications. The certification programs are quite different if we compare it to the traditional degree programs as they are highly focused on key aspects and provides to the point knowledge.
There are multiple benefits of getting a certification in any field, as far as the field of human resources management is concerned there are tons of benefits such as when a person complete the certification program related to the human resources field he/she is more likely to get a promotion, receive increment in salary and may witness a significant increase in career growth. Apart from these benefit, a certified person can easily understand business cycles and able to build skills which are needed for organizational as well as professional growth. Innovative ideas and creative process designs start to build up in the mind and ease the trouble of a person. Certified persons can easily spot trends and gaps in leadership development and suggest ways for improvements. Following are some of the key advantages of certification in the human resources field;
Employee turnover
The high employee turnover is not a good indicator for any company as it hurts the reputation in the market. The cost of the whole recruitment process and training a new employee is twice as much as an existing employee’s salary. The professionals of human resources management have a pretty good idea of how to hire the right people for the job. The Identification of a right candidate in the interview is indeed a skill and very few human resources professionals actually possess it. Also, professionals of human resources management field need to pay attention to employee’s personal needs such as presenting employees with a clear picture of their career path so that they can also understand how their growth is linked with the company performance in order to motivate them towards the job. The most common mistake of the professionals of human resources management is that they only check and see employees when there are troubles in the organization and hardly bother to look for their needs and it is indeed not a healthy sign as it is their duty to focus and pay attention to their employees on a regular basis in order to reduce employee turnover rate of the organization by enquiring their needs and ensure the effective resolution of issues.
Effective Resolution of Conflicts
When there is diversity in the workforce, arising of conflicts is a natural thing as each employee in the organizational workforce is different and possesses a unique personality, their lifestyles, and understanding of work ethics are not similar than the others. While pursuing a certification program, the professionals of human resource management taught about how to handle such conflicts and effectively resolve them in a workplace professionally. The main role of every human resources management department is to avoid the happening of conflicts in the best possible way by initiating steps and in order to do the old and conventional methods do not help, this is why the latest induction of topics and knowledge in the field must be avail by the professionals through a certification program.
Determination of Employee satisfaction Level
Generally, in the organizations, the professionals of human resources department are given the responsibility of determining the level of the organization`s employee satisfaction as by doing that they get the idea of which areas of the organization needs focus and improvements. There are multiple ways to determine the employee satisfaction level such as setting up surveys, focus groups, and the interview strategies. By doing these methods, the professional of human resources easily determines the major causes for employee dissatisfaction and doing that enable the professionals of human resources department to develop strategies to effectively counter these issues and create a solution to motivate employees with creative solutions.
Employee performance improvement
There are different tools and technologies being used throughout the world in organizations to effectively monitor the employee performance, the professionals of human resources field assess their employee’s performance and KPI using a performance management system. By completing a certification program, certified human resources professional can easily understand the employee psyche as it is important for the organizational performance and growth that their workforce is efficient. The professionals of human resources management initiate several skill development programs to increase their workforce performance and skills that in the future help the organization. During the certification programs, the professionals of human resources management also update their knowledge and develop a better understanding of the systems of human resources and the organizational development processes.
Training & Development Needs
The need assessment is generally being done by the organization`s human resources department as they asses the need of their employees and determine what type of skills enhancement and development programs an employee or group of employees need. The identification of organization need for employee efficiency improvement is also important as the performance of employees are linked with the organizational performance and the successful human resources department professionals have a better understanding of when to initiate programs to enhance capabilities of the workforce.
Above mentioned points are related to the advantages of certification programs in the field of human resources management. If we talk specifically about the Pakistani market we can see that there is a significant increase in trend of human resources certifications and the question arises here is that what are the reasons behind the recent growing trend of certifications especially in the field of human resources in Pakistan? Well, there are multiple factors that resulted in the growth of this particular field such as the entrance of highly credible institutes and platforms with a systemized process that ensures transparency and is backed by credible authorities such as the associations of human resources management.
If we closely monitor the recent trend, we can easily notice that people especially professionals in Pakistan now are opting certifications as a first choice in order to keep their skills up to date as through certification programs they get the latest knowledge and update their skill set of the field. The growing competition in the market is also a result of the recent increase in the influx of several human resources management field certifications awarding institutes, they are also helping significantly in bringing the cost of getting a certification down and is one of the major reasons why there is a notable increase in the growth of human resources management certifications trend in Pakistan.
The recruitment & selection process in the current Pakistani market usually demands that a person who is applying for any position should have a certification of any sort. When HR receives thousands of different Resumes, their eyes catch only stand out profiles especially with those which have a certification. If we look at the current pricing charts of the programs being offered in the Pakistani market then we can easily notice that they are quite low as compared to in Europe and North American markets. Investing time in the certification programs enable professionals to keep their knowledge up to date without any trouble.
If we look at the current situation of the HR Certifications market we can easily notice that there is still a huge portion of the market that is somewhat not considering getting a certification due to few common reasons such as the timings and other issues. Online certifications platforms in the field of human resources are not too popular a few years ago and back then there was a common understanding that they require time to settle down and build reputation and it may take several years but things are quite different now as the online certification market is also getting a positive response and they have easily overcome all the hurdles by spreading awareness of their programs through effective marketing.
A few years ago, Pakistani professional of human resources field had only the option of foreign human resources certification providing institutes such as the SHRM and it was only limited to some elites as the cost of getting a certification from SHRM is indeed a costly thing to do. Now, the situation has changed and the monopoly has ended as even the low-income people can also easily get certification in human resources management at a lower cost and easily. In the coming years, it is now expected that a huge portion of Pakistani human resources professional would have a certification to show on their profile and it would definitely improve the industries performance as human resources department is one of the most crucial departments of any organization and changes in this department affect the entire organization.