Standards and Standardisation: The professionalisation of human capital management and development

One of the defining characteristic of a modern economy is standards and standardisation. This has enabled global supply chains and interoperability of disparate systems. Standards are a vital foundation for maintaining trust and improving effectiveness in all aspects of life, and particularly so in the management of people, the source of intangible and tangible organisational value. Yet to date there has been no commonly agreed set of global standards when it comes to Human Resource Management (HRM) and Human Capital Management and Development (HCMD). Standards in HRM and HCMD are recent but these national and internationally agreed standards are a milestone in the maturation of people management as a profession. The session will introduce the development process of HCMD standards and the range of organizational issues being addressed in published standards, now curated in a new book Human Capital Management Standards: A Complete Guide co-edited by Wilson Wong, Valerie Anderson and Heather Bond.