SHRM Joins With HR Organization to Bolster C-Suite Membership

The Society for Human Resource Management is getting closer to its goal of attracting more executive-level members by partnering with an association for chief human resource officers and other senior executives.

In an announcement July 11, SHRM leaders said that they are forming a partnership with the Human Resource People and Strategy, or HRPS, an organization for senior-level HR executives. The Chicago-based HRPS was founded in 1977 as the Human Resource Planning Society.

"SHRM's global community of over 260,000 HR professionals and resources combined with HRPS's exclusive community of HR executives will bring greater unity within the HR profession," said SHRM President and CEO Henry G. (Hank) Jackson. "As a result, together we will be better positioned to impact the practice of human resource management for business results globally, as well as deliver high-quality programming and services to all HR professionals no matter where they are in their career."

The initiative is in line with SHRM's focus on increasing the number of executive-level members. In a previous interview, Bob Carr, SHRM senior vice president of membership, marketing and external affairs, outlined the association's strategy.

"We've always had senior members from large organizations, but we haven't been as good at engaging them," he said. "SHRM has been a fairly egalitarian organization, but what we're seeing now is that you have different needs depending on where you are in the career spectrum. We're focused less on growing the numbers and more on creating engagement and serving as a point of connection for senior-level executives."

Under the agreement members of both organizations could have dual memberships, according to the announcement. The goal of the partnership is to "create a stronger, higher-impact and unified voice on human capital issues both domestically and globally," to share research and provide information and resources to members of both organizations, the announcement said.

Rita Pyrillis is Workforce’s senior editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Pyrillis on Twitter at @RitaPyrillis.