Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the reference box provided at the end of this section. Word count: Approximately 400 words

Adopting the definition in Thomas and Norris (2021), a professional is a person involved in an activity/work which demand a specific education qualification, capacity development, skills and knowledge. For example, Doctors who are professionals apply medical knowledge and skills for managing people and workplace initiatives for earning living. Further, they operate under a body managing their conduct and attitudes which is evidenced by their embrace of ethics.

People Professional

To define the people professional, the CIPD HR Professional Map (CIPD, 2023) which is a benchmark of people practice professionals is applicable. It identify their practice as being guided by core behaviours, professional values, core and specialist knowledge. The people professionals are actively engaged in demonstrating ethics, working with mutual respect for all, providing high-level standard, integrity, assuming responsibilities, inclusive working and trust-based practiced. Further, in professional values category, this entail principles-led, evidence-based and outcomes driven.

Also, in Fitzgerald (2020), people professionals are also guided by principles and belief in change. This is by relying with evidence for making decisions as opposed to reliance of anecdotes and wisdom. This is with people professionals appreciating on business (core knowledge) and people practice (specialist knowledge). The identified types of knowledge are essential for individuals and organisation development (see figure 1 summary);

Figure 1: Summary of the CIPD Profession Map

Source: (CIPD, 2023)

For the professional behaviours, these include;

Ethical practice– People professionals are tasked with the responsibility of embracing ethics in their active operations. Ethics ensure that the organisations are operating within diff3rent principles and the embrace of values governing organisation practice and business conduct amongst the management and the employees. This is through pursuing appropriate professional standards.

Valuing people– People professionals are mandated with a responsibility of balancing their priority, compassionate and fair-based support of all people working in the same business environment (CIPD, 2023).  Valued people are in a position of providing more input since they feel high respect, listened to and valued by the rest.

For activities, these are;

L&D– People professionals are tasked with a role of implementing skills gap analysis I organisation and for designing L&D strategies to empower staff for possessing particular knowledge, skills and performance increase. This is implemented to offer relevant training courses, online learning, mentorship and development activities (CIPD, 2019).

Organisation Design– This is noted in CIPD (2023) as core factor leading to the success of an organisation operations. The people professionals are tasked with a role to influence their practices and shape their results as core area in being a successful practitioner.

Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the reference box provided at the end of this section. Word count: Approximately 300 words