How is HR Certification Reshaping the World of Work? With Dr. Amy Dufrane and Andre Allen

Who is HRCI?

We begin with an overview of HRCI and its various programs. For those who are not familiar with it, the HR Certification Institute is an entity that has been around for 45 years. They began as a certifier of HR professionals with the flagship PHR and SPHR certifications. But HRCI now offers a great deal more, with a portfolio of global offerings in over 250 countries including learning programs, global certification programs, and specialized programs aimed at helping non-HR folks break into HR.

Beyond this, HRCI serves businesses by helping them ensure their HR professionals and business leaders are prepared to be leaders who have a huge impact. HRCI also runs the Human Resource Standards Institute, HRSI, which certifies organizations themselves vs. a set of global standards that define HR excellence.

The Importance of Assessment

Please don’t be fooled into thinking that HRCI is a stale organization that is teaching people how to be administrators and rule enforcers. Amy and Andre are here to inform you that HRCI and its certifications and programming are directly on trend with the current times.

A big focus of our conversation centers on what HRCI is best known for, their certification business. It is important to note that HRCI is really in the assessment business. They rely on best practices for assessment development and validation to ensure their exams are reliable, valid, and fair.

Andre who has a deep background in testing and assessment relates,

“it's completely aligned, right? Because at the end of the day, you, no matter what way you put it, you're either measuring somebody for recruitment, measuring somebody for a credential, measuring someone for promotion, but it's all measurement”.

HRCI’s use of subject matter experts and experienced psychometricians mean their tests can be trusted to tell the truth and ensures that certifications are a trustworthy measure of knowledge and expertise.

Paying Attention to Key HR Trends

The most fascinating part of our discussion centers around Amy and Andre’s take on the major trends that are driving the world of work today and how they related to HR certification.

First and foremost, certification is on trend with the movement happening right now to replace heavily biased and exclusionary signals of job success, such as resumes and academic credentials, with more accessible and fair indicators. HRCI’s certification programs are a great example of pathways for nontraditional individuals and those looking to take new career directions as a way of getting their foot in the door.

Amy explains:

“We're seeing that the trends in college attendance are going down for a litany of reasons. We're seeing more and more people see the value of certification as a way to say, ‘I know what I'm doing, and employers are recognizing that I know what I'm doing.’ And so, for us, we see the value of certification continues to be elevated. Here's how I differentiate myself. Here's what you can have confidence in that I am bringing to the table, and I know this stuff. So, not only is it a certification and a higher ed trend, but it's an HR trend because employers are now recognizing even more so the importance of certification because it's real-time applied factual way for people to demonstrate that they know what they're talking about.”

Beyond this Andre speaks to how the top trends in people, and their potential such leader and manager effectiveness, and recruiting, as well as the future of work as are tied to certifications.

For instance, according to Andre:

“You have got a lot of people now that are either rewiring, heard a lot of not so good news because of the economy and employers are trying to figure out how to get more, not just out of their frontline employers, but the employees, but the leadership. How do I retool, recalibrate that leadership to be more effective across many more areas.“

Certification and the work HRCI is doing also provides a way to highlight critical thinking skills and apply them on the job.

Amy notes:

“I was A C H R O. I know that my day was different every day because of we're dealing with, people have brought different backgrounds, different experiences, and so we've got to handle every situation in a different way and use that critical thinking capability and application thereof. “

And these critical thinking skills are helping HR become part of the business at the highest levels. Amy notes that:

“CHROs are counseling CEOs on business moves. And so how we're integrating that into our more strategic exams to ensure that the senior level individuals are thinking in that way and are applying and critically thinking in that way because CEOs are relying on HR professionals in those business decisions.”

Increased Certification, Increased Engagement

Another way that certification is not the same as other assessment programs is in the business results it can generate. HRCI has found that their exams are a differentiator for organizations.

For instance, HRCI’s research with large publicly traded organizations has found that that those who have more than five individuals that are certified on their team are seeing better stock performance, better engagement and higher Glassdoor readings.

Amy says: “That's what we all aspire. We aspire to be better ourselves and we want to help our companies to be better. So those are, I think, very significant markers for the difference that being certified means by HRCI versus not being certified or by another organization.”

Business results are a trend that will never go out of style – marking another trend that HRCI is directly in touch with.

People in This Episode

Catch Dr. Amy Dufrane and Andre Allen on LinkedIn and at HRCI.

Read the Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to Science 4-Hire with your host, Dr. Charles Hander. Hiring is hard. Pre-hire talent assessments can help you ease the pain. Whether you don't know where to start or you just want to stay on top of the trends, Science 4-Hire provides 30 minutes of enlightenment on best practices and news from the front lines of the employment testing universe. So, get ready to learn as Dr. Charles Handler and his all-star guests blend old-school knowledge with new wave technology to educate and inform you about all things talent assessment.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of Science 4-Hire. I am your host, Dr. Charles Handler, and I am really happy to have two awesome guests today that really represent a very different part of the world than we often work with but are extremely relevant and we're looking forward to hearing from them. So, I have Amy Dufrane and Andre Allen from the HRCI. And so why don't we go ahead and have you all introduce yourselves and then we'll get into really interesting discussion today about what assessment means for you all. So go ahead.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Super. Thanks Charles. It's great to be here. My name is Dr. Amy Dufrane, S.P.H.R. I am the CEO for HRCI, and have many years of experienced in the classroom as a student, as a professor, but also as a learner, a lifelong learner who spends a lot of time really digging into one of my favorite topics, which is people and the way that we work and how to make us more efficient and effective, the way that we work and how to work better and smarter. So, I'm excited to be here today to talk about my favorite topics.

Dr. Charles Handler:

Cool, Andre?

Andre Allen: 

Yeah, well Charles, thanks for having me. My name is Andre Allen currently the board chairman at HRCI. I'm just appointed to that position. I also run an organization called Fifth Theory, which is an assessment company. I am very passionate about assessment because my own personal journey assessment was one of the tools that was used to really give me an opportunity to highlight skill and ability. So, I'm very much an advocate of the proper use of assessment and I believe assessment when used properly can help open doors for people and not be used as a barrier or something to prevent opportunity, which is the way it's portrayed a lot in the media today. So very big proponent of assessment.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Cool. Well, I think you all came to the right place. <laugh>, help our audience understand what it means for you all. So, I think that there's probably a good number of folks who are not familiar with what HRCI is and what you all do. So, to frame everything up, I would love for you all to provide just kind of the overview about your organization.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Super well, HRCI or HR Certification Institute as it's known to some HR that's sort of synonymous with both. We've been around for 45 years. We began as a certifier of HR professionals with our flagship

certifications, the P H R and S P H R, and we grew that certification base over the years of our existence. We now have a way for people to, who are looking to break into HR to get certified. So, the A P H R, which is for individuals that are really looking for how do I learn more about HR? What does it mean really the foundational, that knowledge piece. So, we developed the A P H R certification and along the lines of a professional journey for HR professionals. Then naturally they could move into the P H R, which is for individuals that have between three and five years plus experience.

It's foundational, there's some knowledge, but there's also some application of that knowledge. And then we've got our S P H R certification, which our is our strategic level certification, which is for individuals that are practicing at a much more strategic level, is an exam that is competency based and scenario and application based of the best way to look at certain situations from an HR perspective. All those certifications are for individuals that are practicing human resources. In the United States, we found that there were individuals that were taking those assessments, certifications outside the United States that were not successful because in the United States, there's this alphabet soup of US laws that are embedded into the A P H R, the P R and S P H R. You've got to know those things. So, we had individuals outside the US who took those certifications and were not successful because they didn't understand F M L A, A D A, F L S A, all those laws and the applications thereof.

And so, we created a suite of certifications for individuals that are practicing outside the United States. So, we have the I series, the A P H R I, P H R I, and S P H R I. We have translated those certifications for individuals at some of the exams are translated into Spanish and Arabic. And we have seen those certifications grow. We had them for more than a decade. We've seen that growth in various pockets around the world, which we're thrilled about. For example, this morning, I just got word that we have an individual group of folks in Vietnam who we certified, and I'm thrilled about. We had more than 50 people who were successful in passing their certification. And what this means is that it makes HR better, which is what our mission is at HRCI. Yeah. In addition to those certifications, we have the G P H R, which are for individuals that are practicing cross border HR, and we have a certification for individuals that are practicing HR in California.

So, we have that for not only people that are in California practicing, but if you have employees in California, which is a really unique place because the laws that happen there and things that happen in California typically bleed into the rest of the United States and the way of forward-looking HR and employee practices. And so those things sort of carry forward to the rest of the country. So that's where we really began our journey as being a certification provider. We then morphed into offering learning to individuals who are practicing human resources, but also business leaders looking to enhance their skills and capabilities in learning. And so, we have more than 250 courses. We've got certificate programs, which are smaller bite size chunk learning that people can dig deep into a specific area and enhance. And so, this learning, we've been offering this for about three years.

We've seen a lot of success, and we're continuing to build out those programs. We just launched at the end of 2022, a learning for individuals who are really trying to in either break into being a C H R O or a are a new C H R O who are looking to enhance their skills and competencies. So, we've kind of evolved

the learning component. And a few years ago, we became the secretariat for TC two 60, which is the International Standards Organization or ISO TC two 60. We became the secretariat of that body, which means that we are bringing together HR professionals from around the globe to develop standards for the HR profession. This is an amazing opportunity for us to really drive and impact standards and HR professionals. The first standard that we launched under our leadership was diversity and inclusion. We've seen the human capital reporting standard; the S E C has in the United States.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is really profiling the work of TC two 60 under 3 0 4 14 human capital reporting as a way for shareholders to say, what am I buying from a human capital perspective? What does that look like? So really excited that, and we launched our Human Resource Standards Institute, HRSI. And we are certifying organizations against those standards. So, this is a really diversification of the offerings that we have at HRCI. And I am thrilled at the progress that we have made over our 45 years of existence. We're kind of in a new space, so I could talk for hours and hours about HRCI. I'm sure you can feel my passion and energy for it. So, I'll let Andre talk for <laugh> for a few minutes. Yeah,

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Well, you don't sound like you have very much going on, so, got it. You have a lot of free time and it's really interesting to me just how global it is. People work in organizations all over the globe and now businesses becoming, and all the context that we do business within is becoming so truly global that it's really cool to see you all being right there to help support that. It's pretty cool. So yeah, Andre, what are your thoughts?

Andre Allen: 

Well, my role is really to support Amy and the team as they execute on what is a very, very aggressive and future stepping plan. What I love the most about it is that the institute I'm very grateful and even flatter that the institute invited me for an opportunity to be part of this journey. But as an assessment professional, I get to see how the sausage is made in terms of compliance, in terms of reliability, validity legal, defensibility, all those things, Charles, we go back and forth about in the assessment community. So, I get to see both of those things and I get to see them come together in the greatest sort of combination of measurement and science with business in terms of both certifying individuals and organizations against very great standards using very great methodology. And what I love about the most is that it can be very academic, but the community loves it. <laugh>, right? People love to have their badges; they love to have their letters. Organizations are signing up to display the credential that they're very sensitive about D E I and this reporting. So yeah, it's very good for me to see how all this science really marries and creates business opportunities and makes business better.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Cool. And I had the light bulb go off for me when I was prepping for this and thinking, wait a minute, certification is assessment.

Andre Allen:

Absolutely

Dr. Charles Handler: 

You all assessment business. It's the same exact principles that we would do for a pre-hire assessment,

for learning assessment for developmental assessment. The foundational nuts and bolts of good measurement are so critical, and you all have such a good opportunity to say, here's the body of knowledge that someone needs to know. We're very, very familiar and confident in that. So now let's build some tools to help measure how well people can know that and can apply that. And I was telling Andre in our time before the call or I told you both actually many years ago, I taught the prep course for those tests, two young HR professionals who were moving up. And so, I got to see that body of knowledge because I'm an IO psychologist and I know a lot of things about people and work, but it expanded my vision, and it really made me understand that what we do with TESS in business is just a subset of a lot of other important things that come together. And I think HR has probably become way more strategic than it was 20 years ago and way more technology right, than it was right

Dr. Amy Dufrane:

Years ago.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Absolutely. So, I want to talk about your assessment and some of the process there. But before that, I'd like to hear, since you all have your finger on the pulse, I believe in what's going on out there. If you had to think of two or three kinds of hot trends in HR for the coming year, what are the things that we will see a lot of or take notice of or will somehow work their way into our conscience about new and different directions or amplifications of existing directions? I know that could be a whole podcast, but I <laugh> while I have you both here, <laugh>,

Dr. Amy Dufrane:

A

Dr. Charles Handler:

Couple of quick hits here.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

That's right. When you talk about trends, I feel like we're seeing the amplification of trends happen so fast, so much faster than they've ever happened before. And it's hard to pinpoint just three because I think there are just so many. But I'll start with the first area around. We're seeing more and more people see the value of certification as a way to, I think Andre pinpointed it beautifully when he talked about how do I differentiate myself as whatever professional that I am? And if I don't have the resources to go to higher education because it is very expensive, how do I make sure that I know what I'm doing, and employers are recognizing that I know what I'm doing? And so, for us, we see the value of certification continue to be elevated. There was a Wall Street Journal article about this, about how certifications are becoming more valuable.

We're seeing that the trends in college attendance is going down for a litany of reasons. I'm a proponent of higher education because that's kind of where I began to formulate things for me personally. But there, it's very, very expensive as everyone listening to your podcast is 100% realizing. And so, there's a whole realignment that needs to be happen with higher ed. But in the meantime, people are saying, I need to continue to invest in myself. And I think certification is one of those wonderful ways to do that. That's it's an HR trend. Not only is it a certification and a higher ed trend, but it's an HR trend because employers are now recognizing even more so the importance of certification because it's real-time applied factual way for people to demonstrate that they know what they're talking about. And that's where I think it's, from a hiring perspective, it's a fantastic way for HR to be able to look at somebody and say, hey, they really know what they're talking about because they're certified by an organization that is, we have all of our, and program is entirely accredited by peers.

Our certifications are developed by subject matter experts. It's not by R C I. It's by our subject matter experts that are helping us to ensure that what we are testing on is what HR people need to know right now. This is not the HR of 20 years ago. I think to that point, we're also seeing a trend. We saw the trend downward of unionization. We're seeing unions come back into play. So, I think HR needs to understand more about unions. And we are the only certifying body who focuses on unions. That's a part of our, it a small part, but it's important to know how unionization started, what does it look like and what are some steps that you can take to ensure that you are union free? Not saying unions are bad, but how can you make sure that you're providing the opportunities to listen to employees, et cetera.

And then finally, I think what's on everybody's mind right now, and I think Andre and I spent some time together with some of our colleagues on the board and we were talking a lot about artificial intelligence as many people are, right? I mean, it's on every news channel right now, chat, G B T, what's the impact of that? What does this look like from a human capital perspective? What does this mean to our employees of today and tomorrow? And I think there are all sorts of implications to artificial intelligence. So those are just some of the trends that I think that we're thinking about and that we're seeing at HRCI and the implications for human resources. And Andre, you may have some as well in the space that you're in as well.

Andre Allen: 

Oh, absolutely. And it's completely aligned, right? Because at the end of the day, you, no matter what way you put it, you're either measuring somebody for recruitment, measuring somebody for a credential, measuring someone for promotion, but it's all measurement. Gartner published recently, their sort of top five human capital priorities, things that HR people are focusing on. There were three that really jumped out at me. So, one was like leader and manager effectiveness, recruiting, and then the future of work. All of those things involve some level of measurement or understanding. And especially the piece of future of work that you talked about with ai, employers are both scared and concerned, not just on what AI can do, but they also don't want to be the last adopter. So, it's in a weird gray space right now in terms of at what point does that become more real and am I going to be the pioneer that gets the bad side of that, right?  

Yeah. So, it's a very, very interesting time. So, HR professionals are being challenged to help their employers understand, well, how far down that rabbit hole do we go <laugh> right now? How much do we embrace now? How can it be used as a tool without affecting my people negatively recruiting, once again, finding good people in this environment of very fluid definition of what a job is. And this is, yes, when you look at that and how fluid it is, credentialing sort of rises to the top because a person wants to take their backpack of everything that they've done from employer to employer, work there for a period of time, and then have some balance of life. So, it's a challenge for HR professionals and then sort of that leader and manager effectiveness component. You have got a lot of people now that are either rewiring, heard a lot of not so good news because of the economy and employers are trying to figure out how to get more, not just out of their frontline employers, but the employees, but the leadership. How do I retool, recalibrate that leadership to be more effective across many more areas. So once again, you'll have people in expansion of credentials and a loosening of responsibilities as a result. So that's kind of where we're looking and that's kind of driving how we develop along our product path and how I advise Amy when we're talking through board things.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Yeah. Very cool. Well, one of the things I've seen pretty consistently, because we also talk about the experience. Someone has taken an assessment and when it comes to hiring, there's a brand that goes with that and kind of an attention span. But people, there's really good research out there about how candidates feel about tests, and people really want to be able to show their skills. They want to be able to say, that's right. Here's how I differentiate myself. Here's what you can have confidence in that I am bringing to the table, and I know this stuff. So, give me a chance to show you that. So, your program and assessments really, I think give that opportunity and the badge. I mean, it's something that I've always, or for the last little while, really, not always, but thought about. And I always think of scouting. I mean, you get these badges in scouting and they show that you've been able to mask something, and you proudly wear those.  

Yeah, I expected 10 years ago more of those merit badges being kind of transferable across. I think they are in that, if you think about a technology that's reading a resume or something and sees H R C, I mean, excuse me, S P H R P H R, it can treat that like a badge because it knows what that means and then can filter that into things. So, I think that's pretty cool. I also had the thought, of course, we're not going to do this, but I wonder if chat G T P could pass the p r exam on its own <laugh> starting.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Good question. Probably not. I hope

Dr. Charles Handler: 

GTP pass this job interview like a person, but then I read the fine print is yeah, but we manipulated all these things to make sure it can. Yeah. So, it's not just that. That's right. It's kind of the flavor of the year or whatever as we enter into this year. But it'll be interesting to see because as you all talked about ai, I mean, we can't talk about this stuff without mentioning it, but I've also seen a little bit of cooling. If you go to HR Tech or you really read articles, it's not as much about just AI now as it is. What are the different things it's being used to do and how are those working for us or against us? And in the testing world, some of these applications, I think, and I work with enterprise companies and there's a lot of risk aversion and more so than there is the FOMO of how are we, how going to live without doing this?

Or are we going to be the last people? It's really about innovative, creative, but sound programs that you can put together. AI is a piece of that. Maybe it's not assessment piece of that. So I'm curious, and you may or may not know this, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you think about the things you've added to the test or curriculum in the past couple of years that HR people really need to know, because I taught this thing were, I taught this thing 20 years ago, and there's probably half the stuff on there isn't on in the specific sense. I mean, I'm sure there is a lot of things that are immutable about what we do, but if you had to think about things that have so much of an impact that they're making it into your curriculum and testing, any thoughts on that?

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Well, so I think there's a couple things. First is human resources itself has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. We've seen CEOs who were HR leaders who are now leading big organizations, Mary Barra being one of them, many others that are out there. And so, leadership is becoming an even more it's stronger than it's ever been before. It's a piece of it that is, that's imperative for HR folks that we've integrated into the curriculum to ensure that HR folks are SEAL feeling and seeing that this is imperative. I need to know this. The other is the competency of critical thinking. So, you can call your attorney and find out how to, if you're having an employee relation situation and you're trying to figure out what to do, call your attorney for help. But do you really need to do that every time? Right? 

No. The answer is no. Use your critical thinking, use the application of the knowledge that you have to really think about the situation that you have. HR I is faced with different situations every single day. Never in hr. You never see have the same day as you did yesterday. I was A C H R O. I know that my day was different every day because we're dealing with, people have brought different backgrounds, different experiences, and so we've got to handle every situation in a different way and use that critical thinking capability and application thereof. So, we're really ensuring that that is part of our exam, which is not regurgitation of information, but how do you really think about this? What are the things that I'm taking in my background and applying as I'm answering the question on the exam? And that's what we're hearing from HR professionals that are helping us to develop the exams.

So, they're using that competency more and more and more. And HR is really being relied on by the C- suite to bring their experiences and to apply that from a business perspective, know the business, but also the most important resource is people. So how do you make sure that you are coming at these situations from a people perspective and using that, your skills and competencies to help the business make the best decisions. And CHROs are counseling CEOs on business moves. And so how we're integrating that into our more strategic exams to ensure that the senior level individuals are thinking in that way and are applying and critically thinking in that way because CEOs are relying on HR professionals in those business decisions.

Andre Allen: 

And now I'll just add 2 cents onto the end of that. So just to provide two insights from, I'm an HR adjacent person. So, my pedigree is not in HR per se, but the transition of HRCI being into a learning into an organization, it's more open, more friendly to the non-HR professional that's looking to gain HR competency. Cause you think about it nowadays, that supervisor, that manager that's your first sponsor, that's your virtual. Mm-hmm. Earn point to the employee. Each of those roles needs to be equipped with certain competencies in order to support HR and doing its job. So don't want to coin a phrase, but everybody has a little HR, everybody has a little HR responsibility. So, I found even in my preparation for the G P A HR exam, one helped confirm skill I'd gained over the year just being a manager. Two, it expanded my view in terms of the things that I need to be keeping at the forefront of my mind as I manage employees. So very, very much an expansion.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Individual differences are a big thing about what we look at because everybody is different and that's the exciting and fun thing, but predicting what people will do and being able to make sure people are in optimal situations can be tricky sometimes. So, tell us a little bit about the tests themselves and who makes those for you. Do you have or do you contract that stuff out? I'm curious.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Yeah, so our subject matter experts are the content contributors, and we work with a partner to publish with the psychometrics and the backend of building the exams to ensure that they're reliable, they're valid, they're defensible, and they are keeping in the mechanics of what our good exam process looks like. So, we have a robust team behind us to ensure that we are I, we work with Pearson to help us. So, anybody who's picked up any kind of educational textbook, that name is very familiar to them. So, they're a powerhouse in this and they are a partner to us in ensuring that we are continuing to develop that. And we have, we're delivering the exam through the Pearson testing centers. We are also delivering the exams remotely because we know that there are folks that can't get to testing centers, even though there's a certain circumference by which we're ensuring that people can get to the test. Sometimes it's just easier to do it online, and that means that somebody's watching you. It's a remote proctored exam. There's a lot of vigilance about the protection of the testing process itself. So just like the GMAT, the GRE, the LSAT, P and P, all of those certifications are delivered in this very same way. This is a high stakes exam because it's a meaningful exam, it really means something.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Yeah, there's a lot we can learn from the world of high stakes testing that gets applied to employment testing. And the further you get away from those truths, the less comfortable you can be with what assessments are doing. I think the biggest difference being that in a lot of employment assessments, you're not getting at objective things that are related to one body of knowledge or you're trying to gauge somebody's openness or in emotional intelligence or whatever. Things that are a little bit less below less surface level. But I would say too that the format, if I could choose one way to test people, it would be an applied kind of work sample or scenario-based thing where you're just asking someone to apply what they know. So, it's good to hear that you all have that thread kind of going through what you're doing. Have you ever done any work where you've taken kind of scores on the tests and then looked at how well people have done in their jobs or how they've been promoted, looking at trends like we do, again, with employment testing to see that this thing really is predictive of valued outcomes?

That's interesting.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

That's right. So, we have done that. We've done a value of certification, some research there, and we've looked at it from the individual perspective and we've looked at it from the organizational perspective. So, from an individual perspective, we know that people that are certified make more money. So, people are always just jazzed to hear about that. So, get certified and I'm more valuable to the company, the company's going to pay me more. The supervisor, we've talked to supervisors in a quantitative way and supervisors say people that are certified are more productive in their jobs, they're more satisfied in their jobs and they're better HR leaders to my organization. So those are all really good markers that we see of individuals in the value that they bring. We also know anecdotally, by scanning a litany of job sites that vast majority, more than two-thirds of organizations with HR positions are looking for individuals or preferring that individuals have P H R S P H R, and we're seeing A P H R of course, which is one of our newer certifications, kind of be picked up in that.

So, I'll transition to the organizational side. We've done research on the organizational side to look at that value. We know that organizations that have more than five individuals that are certified on their team, these are larger organizations that are publicly traded. We know that those individuals are seeing better stock performance, better engagement as opposed to their Glassdoor readings. So, we had to look at things that were publicly available. So, people aren't going to tell us, open up their kimono and tell us all these certain things. So, we had to do some anecdotal research. We had a third party that did this. So, we're seeing that stock performance be better, the employee engagement be better, and the Glassdoor ratings better. So, we feel like those are really good markers for the value of our certification. And what we're delivering to HR professionals is that not only individually do they benefit, their supervisors see it, but their organizations perform better and they're much better at what they do. That's what we all aspire to. We aspire to be better ourselves and we want to help our companies to be better. So those are, I think, very significant markers for the difference that being certified means by HRCI versus not being certified or by another organization.

Dr. Charles Handler:
Yeah, I think it's another big parallel when I think about why am I doing what I do to help people find meaning in their work, and in doing so organizations be more profitable. It's a very symbiotic thing. So, you're, again, there's kind of these universal truths to the world of assessment that you all are living that I think really support what you're doing. Of course, that's going to be my perspective, which <laugh> pretty much looking that way, Ella, try to be pretty open to the broader context. So that's really cool. There's a lot of stuff I didn't know about this, even though I had touchpoints with it. And I think our audience will really understand maybe more the value of this. And I know you all have training as well, so there's probably going to be some really good opportunities to keep oneself fresh. There's not a lot of HR training, and if you haven't had that curriculum, even in your course of studies, if you did work in higher or go through higher education there's always the opportunity to do that asynchronously. So, I want to wind us down a little bit here. I want y'all to let everyone know how they can find and follow you and what they would need to do maybe to get started in our last couple of minutes here.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Super. So, our website is www.hrci.org. I encourage everybody to go there. At the very bottom of our website is a way to put in your personal information so you'll get a newsletter from us on a regular basis. One of the things that I didn't mention is that we've got several webinar series that happen every week that are talking about the late breaking things that are going on in hr. In fact, this week we have four different webinars that are being held. We have thousands of people that attend. These are free webinars. We're doing this to continue to elevate not only HR professionals but business professionals. Because if you are in business, you must know HR period must underscore. You've got to have that knowledge. Everybody needs to have it. So that's a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water and figure out a little bit more about hr.

If you're interested in learning about our certifications, they're all there. Our learning center is there. We have some great courses that are very cost effective and are very high quality built by HR professionals for HR and business professionals. Because again, if you're faced with a challenge that you don't know what to deal with, we've got learning for you. So, I encourage you to come and learn more about that. You can go on to hrsi.org to learn more about how to get your certification, your organization certified using the D N I or Human Capital Metrics and D N I is diversity and inclusion for those that don't know what that acronym means. But this is a great way to highlight your organization and the efforts that you've made following best practices and diversity and inclusion. So, it's a great way to, those are ways that you can reach out to us. And Andre, I know they can reach out to Fifth Theory, so I don't want to steal your thunder on how they can reach out to you.

Andre Allen: 

Oh, absolutely. So, I encourage everybody to follow us both on the social, so Amy Dufrane and Andre Allen. You can find us both on LinkedIn, my company's Fifth Theory, which you can find on fifth theory.com. And you can also find me on the HRCI website. I believe my profile may be going up soon.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

You are there. I'm there. You're

Andre Allen: 

Profile. Yeah. But yeah, definitely reach out to us in terms of both certification, understanding assessment, how assessment can be impactful to your organization, whether it's for recruiting or improving your employee's performance. Even as you look at your organization and say, wow, I really want to make a statement about D E I and how we feel. I very much am behind that movement and believe it's a differentiator for companies that choose to embrace it. So definitely reach out to us on the socials. And once again, I can be reached at fifththeory.com.

Dr. Charles Handler: 

Very cool. And I'll tell you that probably got some great stuff for recruiting and talent acquisition. And even if you're an IO psychologist like me and you really want to make sure you have a good contextual understanding of what HR is, because sometimes we can get so narrowly focused on the test itself and its characteristics, it's all the things that go along with it. So that's right. In those situations, I think there's always an opportunity to keep learning about the things that we are on ancillary or may seem ancillary to what we do and expand our mind. So great that you all are here for us as a resource. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're both busy, and we'll look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.

Dr. Amy Dufrane: 

Super. Thanks

Andre Allen: 

Charles. Thanks Charles.

Dr. Charles Handler:

Yeah. Science 4-Hire is brought to you by Sova Assessment Recruiting Software powered by science. Sova's Unified Talent Assessment Platform combines leading-edge science with smart, flexible technology to make hiring smarter and easier. Visit sovaassessment.com to find out how your organization can provide an exceptional candidate experience while building a diverse, high performing and future ready workforce.