Unispace

Laggi Diamandi

HR Standards Champion

Let's be honest for a moment. HR professionals, including me, love reminding everyone else about compliance, professional standards and the importance of ongoing learning. We coach, mentor and sometimes even nag our colleagues about keeping their training and professional knowledge up to date. Yet, here's the uncomfortable truth, we're often the ones neglecting our own growth and accountability.

Think about this, architects, lawyers and accountant are mandated to maintain their professional registration and knowledge through continuous professional development (CPD). Each of these professions and others, acknowledges a crucial fact, staying current isn't optional, it's essential. Yet in HR, we’re oddly passive about our own standards.

Why is this happening? Perhaps it’s because HR isn't regulated in the same stringent way as other professions. Or maybe because there's a misguided assumption that once we've mastered the basics, we're good for life. But let's be blunt, HR is evolving faster now than ever before. The past few years alone have transformed our field dramatically, with new legislation, AI-driven processes, remote, hybrid, and office working complexities and increasingly nuanced cultural shifts in the workplace.

Yet many HR professionals are still approaching these seismic shifts armed only with knowledge from past training sessions or in the worst case, outdated experiences. Imagine your doctor relying solely on medical knowledge from a decade ago. Would you feel confident under their care? Of course not. So why do we accept this complacency in HR?

“Here's the uncomfortable truth, we're often the ones neglecting our own growth and accountability”

Here's where accountability comes in. We’re quick to enforce compliance with mandatory training on our teams, be it health and safety, cybersecurity, or equality and diversity, but who’s enforcing mandatory updates in employment law, psychological safety, or the latest people management theories on us? The answer, sadly, is usually no one. And as a profession, we must admit, we've let this slide.

It's time we changed this.

Imagine an HR profession that holds itself accountable with the same rigor as architects or accountants. Imagine the credibility we would gain if every HR professional committed to annual updates and assessments in critical areas of expertise. Not just informal webinars or conferences (though those are valuable), but structured, measured learning that genuinely tests our ongoing competence.

We must advocate for structured continuing education frameworks within our industry. This raises our professional standards and significantly enhances our positions as true strategic partners.

To be clear, this isn't about HR professionals being inadequate. It's about us recognising our critical role in organisational health and success. We are entrusted with shaping workplace culture, ensuring compliance and supporting employee growth and wellbeing. With that trust comes a profound responsibility to remain at the cutting edge of our profession.

In short, if we want a seat at the table and not just as observers but as active, respected voices, then we must hold ourselves accountable first. Let's champion the same commitment to ongoing learning and professional accountability we demand from others. Let’s mandate an annual professional competency assessment, or least start with CPD, like other professions.

After all, HR mustn’t just enforce standards, we must exemplify them.