Self-Reporting Is Easy

Continuing your professional HR journey can seem challenging, regardless of whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting your journey. In many cases traditional degree programs don’t keep pace with innovations in the workforce.

Certification programs, conferences and continuing education events can allow you to gain skills and remain current in the workforce. Ultimately those skills will help you advance your career as well.

HRCI lets you self-report those events or programs to maintain your credentials. “A certification helps to cement your credibility and establish you as an industry thought leader, and can open doors to important and lucrative speaking and leadership opportunities,” Dawid Wiacek, a certified professional career coach, said earlier this year.

As you hit the road for conferences or continuing education events to maintain your HRCI credentials, here are some steps to track and submit your hard-earned recertification credits:

• Most HRCI pre-approved programs/events tend to receive General HR credits. When reporting, remember to use the HRCI pre-approval code given to you by the organizer.
• Whether or not a conference provides you with an HRCI pre-approved code, you need to self-report specified credits for Business, Global or California programs. Record these as individual sessions under the “Continuing Education (Instructor-Led)” category of your HRCI recertification plan.
• When self-reporting, you should upload certificate or letter of attendance, registration form, course syllabus, unofficial transcript, grade report or other course materials/syllabi for each program entered.

For example, if you’re attending an HR conference, like ATD, you must self-report directly to HRCI to receive credits for that event or educational content.

In addition to being HR-related, your qualifying recertification activities must be at least one hour  in length and tie to the corresponding HRCI Exam Content Outline.

To calculate the number of recertification credit hours for each activity:

• Count only the educational time spent. Don’t include registration, meals, breaks, pre-work, homework or other non-educational parts of the activity.

• Calculate recertification credit hours to the nearest quarter hour. For example, if a one-day workshop includes five hours and 20 minutes of actual educational time, you should round the number of recertification credit hours to 5.25.

At a conference, you earn one recertification credit hour for every hour of concurrent session time, excluding meals and breaks. For example, a 75-minute session equals 1.25 recertification credit hours.

You also earn credit for general sessions if the speech lasts at least one hour and is HR-related. Activities during a meal don’t count toward recertification credit.

For more information on how to calculate your credits, see this guide.