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This guide will help you prepare for your video assessment to upgrade to Chartered Member. It’ll also give you an idea of what to expect from the professional discussion.

Before preparing for an Upgrade Assessment, make sure you’ve:

  • Completed the upgrade readiness checker

  • Received confirmation of your eligibility via email

  • Booked your professional discussion slot.

Also, don’t forget to submit your CV or career summary at least seven days before your discussion.

For full details on the process visit our website.

Reasonable adjustments

If you need adjustments to the assessment process, including considerations for recent career breaks due to family leave, please contact our Membership Upgrading team:

How we’ll run your professional discussion

Key information

  • Duration: Approximately 60 minutes.
  • Setting: Choose a quiet, private space that allows you to focus.
  • Confidentiality: Any sensitive information shared is only used to assess your suitability for Chartered Member status.
  • Screen-sharing: Not permitted (this is to ensure a consistent candidate experience).

Important!

We'll assess your workplace examples from the last five years. Please ensure they fall within this timeframe.

What we’ll ask in your professional discussion

Your professional discussion focusses on four key areas. Here are the questions you'll be asked and the examples you need to prepare for a successful outcome.

Question 1: People

Tell us about a time when you’ve led the development and delivery of a new or improved people approach that’s had a medium term impact in your organisation.

We may also ask you about

  • How you understood stakeholders' current and future needs.
  • The wider organisation considerations? (For example, culture, processes, systems and structures.)
  • The evidence you gathered and insight you drew to inform your approach.
  • What people practice knowledge from across the employee lifecycle you drew on to ensure your approach was integrated.
  • Evidence (quantitative and/or qualitative) to show the impact of your approach.

Question 2: Change

How you’ve taken a lead role in planning and implementing medium term (i.e. one year or more) people change?

We may also ask you about

  • How this change contributed to the organisation’s strategy.
  • What you did to deliver and sustain the change. (For example, what change levers did you use? Engaging with stakeholders, process change, creating governance, improving skills, etc.)
  • How you involved and gave a voice to the people impacted by the change.
  • How you considered equality, diversity and inclusion in your approach. 
  • Evidence (quantitative and/or qualitative) to show the impact of the change.

Question 3: Ethics and challenge 

Can you give an example of when you've made a difficult decision in the face of opposition?

We may also ask you about

  • How ethics or values influenced your decision.
  • How you managed opposition to your decision. What evidence you used to hold your position.
  • The outcome. 

Question 4: Your professional development

Give an example of when you’ve built the people capability of others. This could be other people professionals or line managers.  

And, how you connect with other people professionals to inform your thinking, within your organisation and beyond.

We may also ask you about

  • The insight you've gained from other people professionals. And how this has informed your thinking.

 

How to prepare your examples

What we mean by 'people practices'

'People practices' refer to the work you do as part of your people role. This includes the processes and approaches used across the employee lifecycle, as outlined in the Profession Map.

For example:

  • Recruiting people
  • Managing grievances
  • Analysing people data
  • Carrying out a learning needs analysis
  • Creating talent pools
  • Developing people policies.

What we mean by 'impact'

'Impact' refers to the value your work creates for stakeholders - not the output of your work.

It’s not the ‘what’, but the ‘so what’.

For example, an output of your work might be that you've developed a new approach to performance management. But the value created is that managers are now having more focused development discussions, and employees feel the culture is more positive.

You can evidence impact in two ways:

  • Data and metrics that show the measurable value. For example: 
    productivity measures, engagement survey results, absence data.
  • Other evidence that demonstrates change has taken place. For 
    example: feedback from focus groups, skills gaps now being met, senior 
    team regularly reviews performance.

We'd expect most work at Chartered Member level to use metrics as part of measuring impact, but this is dependent on what changes you're delivering. The timescales and scope of the impact we expect to see are:

  • Medium - to long-term value for employees and/or organisations. This means value that is sustained over more than a year. The impact of your work is likely to be both operational and strategic, generated from your wider thinking to change the way things are done. It'll affect other people and business practices and impact a wide range of people across the organisation, including customers and colleagues.

In your professional discussion, you'll need to explain the 'so what' - the impact of your work and provide evidence, such as:

  • Value/benefits created for stakeholders and the scale/scope of this value
  • Feedback from key stakeholder group
  • People, organisation, commercial measures (before and after)
  • Business indicators or data (before and after)
  • Cost savings.

Other information

Terms and conditions

Please refer to the CIPD’s Upgrade terms and conditions.

Support

If you've any questions contact our membership upgrading team on +44(0)20 8612 6238 (09:00 17:30 UK time, Monday to Friday), or email us at memupgrading@cipd.co.uk.