Certification: Is it Worth It?
This article is excerpted from BCP Confidential, a blog written by Nathaniel Forbes in Singapore. Reproduced with permission.
Like the euphemism “sub-prime,” the word “certified” is losing its meaning in Asia as the number and variety of BCM certifications and their purveyors grow like vines in the jungle. Attend a course, get the certificate and poof! You’re certified!
In Asia, for example, you can become certified by BCM Institute as a Business Continuity Certified Professional (BCCP) with no prior BCM experience if you fork out US $840, spend one day in a class and another half day answering fifty questions on a test. You do not have to answer all of them correctly. That’s a fast-track bargain by any standard. The BCMI offers plenty more certifications, too.
Or you can become certified by The International Consortium for Organizational Resilience (ICOR) in Asia as a Certified Crisis Team Leader in three days for US $2,200. Or you can become a Certified Media Spokesperson for US $800 bucks in just nine hours (no examination required). I say, bring on the Exxon Valdez disaster: your spokesman is ready.
Long on ambition but short of time? You can be certified as both a Crisis Management AND Communications Professional (CMCP) in as few as four days. It costs US $3,700, but, hey, you only have to get a ‘C’ grade (75 percent) on the exam. You must also list two years of experience, but doing what?
I haven’t taken any of these courses, and have no reason to think there is anything wrong with the companies, the courses or the instructors. I know many of the individuals professionally. I do not infer that students are wasting their money or time by taking these courses.
But it’s silly and misleading to think of those who take the courses as being “certified” in anything.
Just how meaningless can the word “certified” be? Unrelated to BCM but nevertheless illustrative, in Singapore you can become a Certified Service Professional (CSP) in just five days for only US $430. A government program aimed at improving the interpersonal skills of fast food restaurant workers, retail clerks and hotel receptionists, it is advertised on the sides of public buses here. What can the exam questions be? ‘Fill in the blank: “May I ____ you?”‘ It would make sense if it weren’t so derisive to both service workers and to the concept of certification.
The Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) designation awarded by the American DRI International (DRII) and the Member of the Business Continuity Institute (MBCI) awarded by the British Business Continuity Institute (BCI) are qualitatively different than certifications offered by private companies (BCMI) and associations of trainers (ICOR). Both DRII and the BCI:
- are nationally-chartered non-profit organizations;
- use exam questions developed by panels of professionals, and create different combinations of questions for each exam;
- administer exams on-line and score them by machine (and also require scores of 75 percent to pass);
- require applicants for certification to submit a written application of biblical proportions listing verifiable experience, with references. (My BCI application was three inches thick and took months to complete. I never submitted a DRII application after I passed the test; it was too much work.)
- assign at least two professionals to review each application independently of each other; and
- offer certifications that have been recognized around the world for many years
Certification Inflation
There is an inherent conflict-of-interest in being both teacher and examiner of the same students. How many courses would a company sell if it routinely withheld the certificates from students paying them for courses? Not very many. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine them NOT giving certificates to most of their students. The commercial motivation to attract more students is greater than the educational motivation to uphold academic rigor. For that reason, the BCI and DRII license people and companies to teach their approved BCM curricula, while retaining independent control over the testing, scoring and application processes.
I figure the pass rate for people taking the DRII and BCI exams in Asia has been about 60 percent over the last two years, and I estimate fewer than 200 people have taken those exams in that time. I have no idea what the pass rate is for those taking BCMI or ICOR exams, but I’m sure it’s not lower than that, and I imagine it’s much higher. I guess (I do not know) that more than twice as many people have taken their exams during the same period than have taken the DRII or BCI exams. I’ve never met someone who didn’t pass a BCMI or ICOR exam, but I’ve met lots of people who didn’t pass the BCI and DRII exams. Unhappily, it is the ones who don’t pass who create value in the perceived achievement of those who do.
The growth of companies offering BCM certification in Asia is a lamentable direct consequence of somnambulant marketing by both DRII and the BCI. Both are nearly asleep in Asia, despite having large numbers of members here and despite Asia’s cultural predilection for education and training. Into the void left by DRII and the BCI, Singapore-based BCMI launched a tremendously-effective marketing juggernaut in 2007. A principal from ICOR is in Asia regularly, actively recruiting trainers; few weeks go by that I don’t receive an ICOR email. Principals of both BCMI and ICOR were former leaders at DRII who know BCM, know training and know their competition. And they’re much better marketers.
The multiplicity of affordable (read: “inexpensive”) certifications in Asia is also the result of good, old-fashioned supply-and-demand. The DRII and BCI five-day certification courses cost over US $3,000, not including the cost of the examinations. That’s a large tab for any middle manager, but in India, it’s three months of salary for an IT employee, and in China, it’s a year’s salary. BCMI very astutely created wallet-sized slices of curricula and sells them separately at much lower prices, the same way Apple made it possible to buy just one song instead of the whole CD. And what happened to the market for CDs as a result of iTunes?
The basic difference between the competitors is their motivations: BCMI and ICOR do what they do to make a profit. DRI and BCI do what they do for…prestige? Pride? A higher purpose? The results in the commercial competition seem inevitable to me.
Why get certified?
The main benefit is to you, the individual, of course: you may get paid more than someone who doesn’t have certification. That’s a significant benefit, but only if you have certification and the other guys don’t. If everyone has one, your certificate is just office wallpaper.
I guess that holding a major certification is worth about 10 percent more in salary, but that’s folk wisdom, not fact. The 2006 Asia BCM compensation survey of recruiting company BC Management reported that professionals with certifications got paid more, and that almost 25 percent of those who reported that they got raises attributed them to getting certified. That report didn’t specify which certifications earned more money, but stay tuned for BC Management’s 2008 Asia compensation report, due out in March.
A BCM credential is not the only way–not even the preferred way–for an employer to know that an individual is competent in BCM, however. Whether hiring an employee or a consultant, an employer relies far more on the recommendations of past employers and professional references, focusing specifically on what a person has done, what he or she has accomplished. A certification just helps a candidate clear the first screen of applicants.
Are there benefits to a company, then, of an employee’s certification? Sure, if the certification has credibility. But I can name at least a dozen people in Asia who don’t have certifications who are successfully leading BCM programs at large companies. It seems to me that certification of a company’s BCM program is more valuable to a company than certification of its BCM managers. Organizational certification is, in fact, the focus of the British Standard 25999, the new Singapore Standard 540, and the nascent U.S. Private Sector Preparedness program.
Certification Devaluation
I’m not ready to say that BCM certification for an individual is not valuable–yet. But there’s a sense that those who can (do BCM), do, and that those who can’t, get certifications.
Oh, I can hear an entire industry howling already. Stop. I’m just winding you up. Training is essential, in BCM as in any profession. I hand out certificates of attendance for the courses I teach, too. In Asia, educational credentials are highly valued and their holders highly regarded.
What should “certified” mean?
I think “certified” should mean not only that an individual knows what to do and how to do it, but that he or she has demonstrated that he or she has actually done it in practice.
To read the full article, see Sub-prime BCM certification in Asia.
