A BRIEF HISTORY OF HRCI

By Bill Leonard
HR Magazine

While what is now known as the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) began certifying HR professionals in 1976, it truly got its start in September of 1973, when the board of directors of what was then called the American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA) voted to approve the creation of a professional accreditation program for human resource managers.


The steps toward building a national certification program for HR professionals began more than 50 years ago, as personnel managers worked to create a national association for their profession. In the fall of 1948, as organizational meetings for ASPA were being held, Herbert Heneman, Jr., Ph.D., published the article, "Qualifying the Professional Industrial Relations Worker," which focused on the need for certifying personnel professionals. Heneman, a professor of industrial relations at the University of Minnesota, wrote that the keys to starting a certification program were:

• A code of ethics.
• An objective measure of technical competence.

In 1948, the debate had just begun on the professional nature of HR management and how to measure skill levels in the profession. The debate centered on three key questions:

• What body of knowledge must personnel professionals know?
• Who defines that body of knowledge?
• How do you objectively measure it?

It would take more than 25 years for these questions to be answered.

Small Steps Toward Certification

In 1967, ASPA and the School of Industrial Relations at Cornell University cosponsored a three-day conference to discuss definitions of the HR profession and its common body of knowledge. Some conference participants saw the Cornell conference as an important stepping stone toward establishing a certification program.

A follow-up meeting was held a year later in New York City. It focused on a recent study by Cornell University on HR management as a profession. The discussion focused on professionalism within a corporate framework rather than the traditional individual concept. The participants agreed that while HR managers could borrow concepts from established professions such as medicine, law and education to help define professionalism, they would also have to adapt and modify the concept.

The meeting's attendees agreed that the following five characteristics defined a profession:

1. A profession must be full-time.
2. Schools and curricula must be aimed specifically at teaching the basic ideas of the profession, and there must be a defined common body of knowledge.
3. A profession must have a national professional association.
4. A profession must have a certification program.
5. A profession must have a code of ethics.

"We met all the criteria except the defined body of knowledge and the certification program. To really be considered a profession, ASPA had to establish a certification program," said Drew Young, one of the participants in the meetings, who later served as the president of ASPA.

The Body of Knowledge

Early in the 1970s, the ASPA board of directors began serious discussions about creating a national certification program, but the board shied away from using the term "certification." The program could only test people on their level of knowledge, but there was a fear that people might equate "certification" with competency.

In 1972, the board established the ASPA Task Force on Accreditation and named Gordon R. Scott, vice president of personnel for Fisher Scientific Co. of Pittsburgh, to head the task force. Under Scott's leadership, the task force completed its study in less than a year and recommended that ASPA support an accreditation program. At its annual fall meeting in September 1973. the ASPA board endorsed the task force's recommendation, and the ASPA Accreditation Program was born.

The group faced the formidable task of building a national program from scratch. The job required a remarkable amount of dedication, hard work and stamina. By June 1975, the accreditation task force dissolved and the ASPA Accreditation Institute (AAI) was incorporated. One of its first steps was to create six functional standards committees. These committees were essential in defining the body of knowledge within the following functional areas:

• Employment, placement and personnel planning.
• Training and development.
• Compensation and benefits.
• Health, safety and security.
• Employee and labor relations.
• Personnel research.

The personnel research committee eventually was dropped from the committees, and management practices was added. Each committee developed a separate exam designed specifically for its functional area. The idea was that the exams would fill the needs of both generalists and specialists.

A Mixed Bag

To add to the confusion of separate exams, the new Institute devised two levels of designations for both generalists and specialists. The senior-level designations were the Accredited Personnel Diplomate (specialist) and the Accredited Executive in Personnel (generalist). The basic-level categories were the Accredited Personnel Specialist and the Accredited Personnel Manger.

By the end of 1975, AAI was ready to start accrediting human resource professionals. Test exemptions, however, had become a controversial issue for the AAI board. They wanted to attract senior-level HR managers, but they also knew that senior-level managers wouldn't sit for exams.

The board hammered out standards for test exemptions and asked HR professionals to submit their resumes and credentials. Any professional who met the standards would receive accreditation.

"The exemptions served two purposes," said Young. "First, we received support and recognition from top-level HR managers. Secondly, we needed the money that applications for exemptions would bring in. We automatically invested the money into bonds, and that's really what kept the program afloat for the first couple of years."

The Institute also received a grant of "seed money" from the ASPA Foundation, which would eventually be repaid in huge dividends for the Foundation.

The first person to apply for accreditation was Herbert Heneman, Jr. His application was approved, and on Feb. 18, 1976, Heneman became the first human resource professional to be accredited by the Institute. During 1976, AAI received more than 2,500 applications for exemptions, and approximately 2,100 HR professionals were accredited through the process.

The first accreditation exams were given on April 24, 1976. Concern over the professional quality of the exams caused the training and development exam to be canceled. Only four people had registered, and they were rescheduled to take the exam later that year. This minor incident illustrated the dedication of the Institute's board to quality and professional integrity.

Building a Reputation

The Institute was off to a good start, but within a couple of years the road had become a little bumpy.

"We fully expected the tough times though," Young said. "A professor from Michigan State University did a study on credentialing programs. His study showed that these programs all had similar patterns: They would start off great guns and then fade. Then after several years, they would rebound and eventually take off. Certification programs that had the support of the national association were the ones that survived and had the most success."
In July 1979, AAI was renamed the Personnel Accreditation Institute (PAI). Confusion over the roles of ASPA and the ASPA Institute was the primary reason for the name change. That same year, PAI offered the first comprehensive generalist exam for HR professionals, which signaled the ultimate direction of the certification program. Also that year, the Institute began its first codification study. The study involved contacting more than 1,000 HR experts and asking them to identify and catalog information that HR professionals should know–thereby updating the profession's body of knowledge. Codification studies were repeated in 1988, 1993 and 1997.

The Generalist's Choice

After several years of accrediting HR professionals, the Institute noticed that more than 80 percent of certification applicants requested the generalist exam. So in 1988, PAI decided to discontinue certifying specialists. It also eliminated the confusing four-category system by creating only two certification designations: Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and the Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).

In 1989, in conjunction with ASPA changing its name to the Society for Human Resource Management, PAI made its final name change -- to the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI), better reflecting the critical role the organization played in the HR community.

The certification program for HR professionals has finally taken hold. Since February 1976, more than 53,000 HR professionals have been certified. During the first few years, the numbers of applicants for the certification exams was in the hundreds rather than the thousands, and by the end of 1978, only 753 people had taken the accreditation exam. By contrast, in 2001, there are more than 48,000 HR professionals with the PHR or SPHR designation. And, in 2001, more than 24,000 applied for one of the examinations-an unrivaled symbol of professional achievement.