CIPD's profession for the future project and its implications for the HRD curriculum in UK universities

Purpose: This UFHRD (University Forum for Human Resource Development) honorarium project explores the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) profession for the future project (PFF) and its implications for a new professional standards framework and HRD (human resource development) postgraduate programme provision in UK universities. Drawing on ethical perspectives, we discuss the significance of CIPD’s proposed valued-based principles for HRD practitioners and the updated university curriculum within a practice field and academic discipline.
 Research design: Interviews and questionnaires with academic and practitioner CIPD members, student focus groups, content analysis of CIPD text books and course web sites.
 Findings and recommendations: The CIPD’s mission of ‘championing better work and working lives’ underpinned by values-based principles represents a positive strategy to drive changes in professional standards and to equip HRD practitioners for the future. Within these reforms, there is scope to forefront ethics in CIPD text books and to develop and evaluate ethical awareness, ethical analysis and ethical decision-making on university HRD programmes and in annual CPD reporting. We recommend more explicit debates and visibility about the tensions HRD professionals experience in facilitating commercial and ethical behaviours. We call for greater synergies between the CIPD, university HRD academics (including UFHRD), and HRD practitioners to highlight to a wider community how they support people and their progress for meaningful work and dignity in a context where life-long learning is critical to national competitive advantage and well-being.
 Research limitations: England-centric sample, excludes undergraduate provision and non CIPD member respondents working in organisations.
 Practical and societal benefits: Our findings contribute to debates about professionalisation, HRD scholarship, and the fitness of HRD for the future to improve the quality of work and working lives and ethical behaviours.
 Originality and value: No study has examined links between the CIPD’s strategic repositioning and ethics-based approach to the university curriculum. This report offers a timely contribution to discussions about the contributions of HRD practitioners from an ethical perspective and the rigour and relevance of university HRD programmes.
 Structure: This report contextualises the drivers for the PFF project, outlines the research design and discusses initial findings and recommendations. Finally, it discusses academic and practitioner publication plans arising from this study.