Some HR leaders just haven’t been feeling the SHRM.

SHRM made waves last year when the organization announced that it was shifting its diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, by dropping “equity” and instead focusing solely on “I&D."

The move at the time caused a stir in the HR community: Many criticized the move, with several practitioners vowing to let their certifications or SHRM membership lapse. More than 700 people signed a petition denouncing SHRM’s decision and calling on HR professionals to divest from the organization. Others contributed to a resource listing SHRM alternatives spanning conferences, peer networking groups, and knowledge resources.

One year later, tensions are still running high, with SHRM standing by its decision and many people pros telling HR Brew they remain disappointed.

Breakup. Several sources, who pledged to ditch their memberships or certifications, confirmed that they followed through with their promises.

“I’m not going to keep it up to date,” Anessa Fike, CEO of Fike and Co., a fractional HR consulting firm, said of her certification, which hasn’t expired yet. “I won’t be giving them any more money in any way…I completely took my certification off my LinkedIn, it used to be in my title.”

Angela Howard, CEO and founder of Call for Culture and co-creator of the petition denouncing SHRM, held a certification for nearly 10 years, but said the change in DEI “just shows that SHRM continues to be kind of this outdated source for what we’re looking to do to progress HR.”

“After they announced that, I let my certifications lapse, and have been pretty vocal about asking employers to rethink [requiring] that certification,” she said.

For others who haven’t cancelled, or never attained, a membership or certification, they still said their relationship with SHRM has changed. Michelle Prudente, who joined the HR field in 2021 after a career switch, was about to pursue a SHRM certification but changed her mind after the announcement.

“I took a big step back. Honestly, for me, I didn’t feel great about associating myself with SHRM at that point in time,” Prudente said, though noting she is “not discrediting by any means, anybody who has a membership, had a membership, has a certification, or is currently pursuing one.”

It’s unclear how many HR pros have cancelled their certifications. As of May, SHRM had around 148,000 active certification holders, and recertification rates ranged between 75% and 80%, spokesperson Anne Sparaco shared for previous HR Brew reporting. By comparison, in December 2023, SHRM reported 135,000 total certified.

One source, who is a SHRM volunteer leader and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their position and because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about SHRM, said the move also took local groups by surprise, as the national organization did not proactively communicate the change with its chapters. When their term ends, they said they will evaluate whether to stay engaged with the organization or not.

“I feel like because…my job is to support the chapters around the state, I need to [stay affiliated], but I’ve been highly disappointed with SHRM since this announcement,” they said. “And I have given them opportunities to recover from this bad approach to a decision. They haven’t taken the opportunity to really recover from it.”

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