- SPHR
- Senior Professional in Human Resources — HRCI's senior, strategy-focused HR credential for those who lead the HR function.
- HRCI
- The HR Certification Institute — the body that creates and administers the SPHR, PHR, aPHR, and related HR credentials.
- SPHR vs PHR
- SPHR is senior/strategic (leads the function, shapes strategy and policy); PHR is operational/tactical (implements programs, day-to-day HR).
- SPHR vs SHRM-SCP
- Different bodies: SPHR is HRCI's five-functional-area exam; SHRM-SCP is SHRM's competency-based exam (the BASK). Not interchangeable.
- How many questions on the SPHR?
- 140 total — 115 scored plus 25 unscored pretest items placed throughout. Answer every question.
- SPHR exam time
- About 2 hours 15 minutes of testing within a roughly 2.5-hour appointment that includes a tutorial and survey.
- SPHR passing score
- A scaled score of 500 or higher on a 100–700 scale; raw score is converted using the modified-Angoff method.
- The 5 SPHR functional areas
- 01 Leadership & Strategy, 02 Workforce Planning & Talent Acquisition, 03 Talent Management, 04 Total Rewards, 05 HR Information Management, Safety & Security.
- SPHR functional-area weights
- Leadership & Strategy 33%, Talent Management 23%, Workforce Planning 17%, Total Rewards 17%, HR Information/Safety/Security 10%.
- Heaviest SPHR functional area
- Leadership & Strategy at 33% (about 46 of 115 scored items).
- SPHR eligibility
- Experience-based: master's + 4 yrs, bachelor's + 5 yrs, or < bachelor's + 7 yrs of professional-level HR experience.
- SPHR validity & recertification
- Valid 3 years; recertify with 60 credit hours (at least 15 Business credits) or retake the exam.
- SPHR delivery
- Through Pearson VUE — at a test center or online with live remote proctoring.
- SPHR item types
- Traditional multiple choice plus multiple response, fill-in-the-blank, drag-and-drop, and scenario items.
- Modified-Angoff method
- A standard-setting method where subject-matter experts set the cut score based on question difficulty, then raw scores are scaled.
- The senior SPHR mindset
- When two answers are both 'correct HR,' choose the more strategic one — aligned to business strategy and leading the function.
- Strategic HR management
- Aligning HR strategy and practices with business strategy so people decisions create competitive advantage; HR as a business partner.
- HR as a business partner
- HR anticipates workforce implications and co-creates plans with executives rather than reacting to requests.
- Mission vs vision vs values
- Mission = why the org exists now; vision = the desired future; values = the principles guiding behavior.
- SWOT analysis
- Maps internal Strengths/Weaknesses against external Opportunities/Threats to inform strategy.
- SWOT: strength
- An internal, favorable factor (e.g., a hard-to-copy internal capability).
- SWOT: weakness
- An internal, unfavorable factor the organization controls.
- SWOT: opportunity
- An external, favorable factor the organization could exploit.
- SWOT: threat
- An external, unfavorable factor that could harm the organization.
- Why pair SWOT factors?
- Pairing strengths to opportunities and weaknesses to threats turns the inventory into actionable strategy.
- PESTLE analysis
- Scans external Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental forces affecting the organization.
- PESTLE: a new immigration visa rule
- Legal — statutes and regulations such as immigration and employment law.
- PESTLE: automation displacing roles
- Technological — advances such as automation and AI that reshape jobs.
- Porter's Five Forces
- Industry competition via rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, buyer power, and supplier power.
- Porter: threat of substitutes
- Alternatives that satisfy the same customer need through a different product.
- Balanced scorecard
- Kaplan & Norton's tool measuring performance across financial, customer, internal-process, and learning-and-growth perspectives.
- Balanced scorecard: HR's perspective
- Learning and growth — tracks human, information, and organizational capital that enables future performance.
- Balanced scorecard: customer perspective
- Measures how the people served perceive the org — e.g., customer satisfaction and retention rates.
- Human capital
- The collective knowledge, skills, and abilities of the workforce, treated as a strategic asset.
- Human capital risk
- Risk to the organization from talent issues — loss of key people, skill gaps, succession failure.
- Business continuity planning
- Preparing the organization to keep critical operations running through disruptions.
- Change management
- The structured approach to moving people and the org from a current to a desired future state while minimizing resistance.
- Lewin's change model
- Three stages: unfreeze (create readiness), change/move (implement), refreeze (anchor the new norm).
- Lewin: unfreezing
- Reduces resistance and builds readiness and motivation to change.
- Kotter's 8-step model
- Create urgency, build a coalition, form a vision, communicate it, empower action, get short-term wins, consolidate, anchor in culture.
- Kotter: empower broad-based action
- Remove barriers — outdated systems or unsupportive structures — that block people from acting on the change.
- ADKAR
- An individual change model: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement.
- Change leadership
- Leading people through change — building urgency, removing barriers, and anchoring change in culture.
- DEI
- Diversity, equity & inclusion — a varied workforce (diversity), fair access/treatment (equity), and a culture where all contribute (inclusion).
- CSR
- Corporate social responsibility — operating ethically and contributing to social, environmental, and economic well-being.
- KPI
- Key performance indicator — a quantifiable measure used to track progress toward a strategic objective.
- Cost per hire
- Total internal + external recruiting costs divided by the number of hires in a period.
- Voluntary vs involuntary turnover
- Tracked separately: voluntary signals retention/engagement issues; involuntary reflects performance-driven exits — different actions.
- HR ROI
- Return on investment of an HR program — net value divided by cost — used to justify HR spending.
- Pay equity analysis
- Reviewing compensation to identify and address unjustified pay differences across protected groups.
- Predictive analytics in HR
- Using historical HR data and models to forecast outcomes like turnover or future hiring needs.
- Business intelligence (BI)
- Tools and processes that turn data into insight for strategic HR and business decisions.
- Stakeholder management
- Building effective relationships with key stakeholders to influence organizational behavior and outcomes.
- HR strategy alignment
- Ensuring HR strategy is consistent across geographic sites and business units.
- Concerted activity (NLRA)
- Employees acting together to improve wages or conditions — protected under the National Labor Relations Act even without a union.
- Title VII
- Bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Civil Rights Act of 1964).
- ADA
- Americans with Disabilities Act — prohibits disability discrimination and requires reasonable accommodation.
- ADEA
- Age Discrimination in Employment Act — protects workers age 40 and older from age discrimination.
- FMLA
- Family and Medical Leave Act — up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for covered family/medical reasons.
- WARN Act
- Requires 60 days' notice of mass layoffs or plant closings for covered employers.
- Strategic vs operational HR
- Strategic sets HR strategy and shapes org strategy; operational runs programs and processes day to day.
- Environmental scanning
- Systematically monitoring external trends (often via PESTLE) to anticipate forces affecting the organization.
- Ethics & anti-corruption in HR strategy
- Building workplace practices that reinforce ethical conduct and prevent corruption as part of culture.
- Workforce planning
- Forecasting future talent demand and supply, identifying gaps, and building strategies to meet organizational needs.
- Talent demand forecast
- Projecting the roles and skills the business strategy will require.
- Internal supply analysis
- Estimating how many current employees remain available after promotions, transfers, retirements, and turnover.
- Gap analysis (workforce)
- Comparing forecasted demand to projected supply to find talent surpluses or shortages.
- Build, buy, or borrow
- Strategies to close a talent gap: develop internally (build), hire (buy), or use contingent workers (borrow).
- Replacement chart
- Lists candidates ready or developing to fill specific key positions if they become vacant.
- Employee value proposition (EVP)
- The distinctive bundle of value, rewards, and experience an employer offers in return for joining and contributing.
- Why segment the EVP?
- Different roles and generations value different rewards, so a segmented EVP resonates more strongly.
- Employer branding
- Shaping the organization's reputation as a place to work to attract and retain the right talent.
- Repairing a damaged employer brand
- Authentically showcase genuine improvements and real current employee experiences — not spin.
- Labor-market analysis
- Studying availability, supply, and salary expectations of talent in the relevant market.
- Job analysis
- Systematically documenting a role's duties, responsibilities, and competencies to drive job descriptions and selection criteria.
- Job description vs job specification
- Description = the duties and responsibilities of the role; specification = the qualifications a person needs to do it.
- Sourcing
- Proactively identifying and attracting potential candidates through channels such as referrals, networks, and partnerships.
- Diverse sourcing
- Partnering with associations, schools, and community organizations that reach underrepresented talent to broaden the pool.
- Candidate assessment (work sample/test)
- Job-related evidence of ability that improves prediction of performance over résumés alone.
- Applicant tracking system (ATS)
- Software that manages requisitions, candidate data, and workflow to improve efficiency, consistency, and reporting.
- Selection validity
- The degree to which a selection method actually predicts job performance.
- Preboarding
- Engaging a new hire between offer acceptance and the start date to keep them prepared and committed.
- Onboarding
- Integrating a new employee starting on day one and continuing through orientation and ramp-up.
- Mergers and acquisitions (HR view)
- Combining organizations; HR retains key talent and integrates cultures, structures, rewards, and policies.
- M&A: top HR priority
- Retain the key talent whose knowledge drove the deal — announcement uncertainty raises flight risk.
- Why M&A deals fail
- Poor cultural integration is a leading cause; aligning cultures is a strategic HR focus.
- Joint venture
- Two organizations forming a shared enterprise; HR aligns people practices across both partners.
- Realistic job preview
- Giving candidates an honest picture of the role to improve fit and reduce early turnover.
- Time to fill
- Days from a requisition opening to an accepted offer — a measure of talent-acquisition speed.
- Quality of hire
- A measure of how well new hires perform and stay, gauging the effectiveness of recruiting.
- Talent pipeline
- A pool of potential candidates cultivated over time to fill future roles quickly.
- Talent management
- Designing programs that develop, engage, and retain a high-performing workforce across the employee lifecycle.
- Succession planning
- Building a ready and developing pipeline of qualified internal talent for critical roles to ensure continuity.
- Succession: which roles?
- All business-critical roles, not just the C-suite, since continuity risk lives in any hard-to-fill position.
- Emergency succession plan
- A predefined plan naming interim coverage and an accelerated process when a key leader departs unexpectedly.
- Nine-box grid
- Plots employees by performance (horizontal) and potential (vertical) to guide development and succession.
- High-potential employee
- Someone with both strong current performance and high potential, prioritized for development and succession.
- Employee engagement
- The emotional commitment and discretionary effort employees invest in the organization and its goals.
- Engagement vs satisfaction
- A satisfied employee is content; an engaged one is committed and energized toward the goals.
- Retention strategy (targeted)
- Match the intervention to the diagnosed driver — e.g., if growth drives exits, build internal mobility and career paths.
- Performance management
- Aligning individual and team goals to organizational success and managing them through feedback, coaching, and evaluation.
- 360-degree feedback
- Multi-rater feedback from manager, peers, direct reports, and self — richer and used mainly for development.
- Halo effect
- A rating error where one strong trait inflates the ratings of all other dimensions.
- Central tendency error
- A rating error where a rater scores everyone near the middle, avoiding high and low ratings.
- Recency bias
- A rating error where recent events dominate, overshadowing the full review period.
- Coaching vs mentoring
- Coaching is performance/goal-focused over a defined period; mentoring is broader and longer-term, sharing experience.
- Leadership development
- Building the leadership bench via coaching, mentoring, performance discussions, and communication skills.
- Career pathing
- Mapping potential advancement and movement so employees see a future and stay engaged.
- Knowledge management
- Capturing, sharing, and retaining organizational knowledge so it isn't lost when people leave.
- Collective bargaining
- Joint negotiation between employees (through their union) and the employer over wages, hours, and conditions.
- Interest-based (integrative) bargaining
- A collaborative approach focusing on underlying interests to create mutual-gains solutions.
- Distributive bargaining
- A win-lose approach over a fixed pie, where one side's gain is the other's loss.
- Collective bargaining agreement (CBA)
- The negotiated contract governing the employment relationship for represented employees.
- Grievance
- A formal complaint alleging the employer breached a specific provision of the CBA.
- Unfair labor practice strike
- Strikers generally cannot be permanently replaced and are typically entitled to reinstatement.
- Economic strike
- A strike over wages/conditions; economic strikers may be permanently replaced (but keep reinstatement preference).
- Exit interview
- A structured conversation when an employee leaves, to surface why and improve retention.
- Offboarding strategy
- Managing departures via exit interviews, layoff strategy, and alumni programs.
- Alumni program
- Keeps former employees connected as a future talent and referral pipeline (boomerang hires).
- Return-to-organization policies
- Policies for parental leave, expatriate return, and returning from sabbaticals or layoffs.
- Mentoring & sponsorship
- Relationships that develop talent; a sponsor actively advocates for the protégé's advancement.
- Flexible work arrangements
- Options like remote, hybrid, or flexible hours used to boost engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
- Training needs analysis
- Identifying gaps between required and current capabilities to design effective development programs.
- Total rewards
- Everything of value an employer offers — compensation, benefits, work-life effectiveness, recognition, and development.
- Total rewards: a distinct reward category
- Development and career opportunities are a standalone reward category alongside compensation, benefits, and recognition.
- Compensation philosophy
- The stated approach to pay, including the market posture of leading, matching, or lagging competitors.
- Lead the market
- Pay above the market to attract and retain top talent (a competitive posture choice).
- Match the market
- Pay at the market median to stay competitive while controlling cost.
- Lag the market
- Pay below market, often offset by other rewards like equity, growth, or culture.
- Pay grade
- A band grouping jobs of similar value with a defined pay range (minimum to maximum).
- Pay range spread
- The width between a grade's minimum and maximum that allows pay to progress within the grade.
- Direct vs indirect compensation
- Direct = cash pay (base, incentives, bonuses); indirect = benefits and non-cash rewards.
- Pay for performance
- Tying pay to results; for executives, link incentive payouts to measurable threshold/target/maximum metrics.
- Aligning incentives to strategy
- When strategy needs collaboration, use team-based or shared goals so rewards reinforce the desired behavior.
- Executive compensation
- Pay packages for senior leaders (base, bonus, long-term equity), often overseen by a board compensation committee.
- Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
- Sets minimum wage, overtime, and the exempt/non-exempt classification of employees.
- Exempt employee
- Meets a duties test and salary basis/level, so is not entitled to overtime under the FLSA.
- Non-exempt employee
- Entitled to at least minimum wage and overtime pay (1.5× over 40 hours per week).
- FLSA: what decides exemption?
- The role's actual duties plus a salary basis/level — not the job title.
- FLSA coverage
- Obligations attach through enterprise coverage (business volume/interstate commerce) or individual coverage.
- Misclassification risk
- If a role loses its qualifying duties, reassess and reclassify as non-exempt, then track hours and pay overtime.
- Computer employee exemption
- May qualify when paid either on a salary basis or at or above a specified hourly rate (unusual among exemptions).
- Engaged to wait
- Waiting time controlled by and for the employer's benefit is compensable under the FLSA.
- ERISA
- Sets minimum standards and fiduciary duties for private retirement and health benefit plans.
- ERISA fiduciary duty
- Act solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries; avoid prohibited self-dealing transactions.
- ERISA prohibited transaction
- A fiduciary using plan assets to benefit a party in interest, such as the employer.
- COBRA
- Lets eligible employees continue group health coverage for a time after a qualifying event, at their own cost.
- COBRA notice failure
- Missing the required election notice can mean statutory penalties and liability for claims that would have been covered.
- Self-funded plan
- The employer pays claims from its own funds and assumes the claims risk.
- Fully insured plan
- The carrier assumes the claims risk in exchange for a premium.
- Defined benefit vs defined contribution
- DB promises a set retirement benefit (pension); DC (e.g., 401(k)) depends on contributions and investment returns.
- Recognition programs
- Monetary and non-monetary rewards, amenities, and service awards that reinforce contribution.
- Equity compensation
- Ownership-based pay (stock options, RSUs) that ties rewards to long-term company value.
- Work-life effectiveness
- A total-rewards category covering flexibility, well-being, leave, and work-life balance.
- Benefits needs assessment
- Evaluating workforce demographics and preferences to design a benefit strategy that attracts and retains.
- HRIS
- Human resource information system — software that stores employee data and automates HR processes.
- HCM suite
- Human capital management suite — an integrated platform unifying recruiting through learning in one system.
- Employee self-service
- HRIS functionality letting employees view and update their own appropriate data.
- Manager self-service (hierarchy visibility)
- Lets a manager see only their direct reports' data based on the reporting structure.
- Least-privilege principle
- Grant each role only the minimum system access needed to do its job, reducing risk.
- Deprovisioning
- Disabling system access promptly as part of offboarding so departing employees can't retain it.
- Data retention schedule
- Keep records per legal requirement, then securely purge once obligations expire to limit risk.
- GDPR cross-border transfer
- Moving EU personal data abroad needs a lawful mechanism — standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision.
- Phishing
- A social-engineering attack using deceptive messages to steal credentials or data; a key HR data-security threat.
- HR digitalization
- Modernizing HR with information systems, workflows, and emerging tech — ESS, gamification, social networking.
- OSHA
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration — sets and enforces workplace-safety standards.
- OSHA: report a fatality
- Within 8 hours of a work-related death.
- OSHA: report hospitalization/amputation/eye loss
- Within 24 hours of a work-related in-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye.
- Bloodborne Pathogens Standard
- OSHA standard requiring exposure control plans, vaccinations, and protections for workers exposed to blood/infectious materials.
- Right to refuse dangerous work
- Employees have a limited right to refuse work posing imminent danger, without retaliation, when conditions are met.
- General Duty Clause
- OSHA requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious harm.
- OSHA 300 log
- The record employers keep of work-related injuries and illnesses.
- Crisis management plan
- Defines a predefined chain of command and decision authority for emergencies like cyberattacks or disasters.
- Business continuity vs crisis management
- Continuity keeps critical operations running; crisis management coordinates the immediate emergency response.
- HIPAA
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — sets privacy and security rules for protected health information.
- When does HIPAA apply to an employer?
- To health information held by or for the employer's group health plan — not ordinary employment records.
- PHI
- Protected health information — individually identifiable health data HIPAA protects from improper use or disclosure.
- HIPAA minimum-necessary standard
- Limit the use, disclosure, and request of PHI to the least amount needed for the intended purpose.
- Access control
- Restricting who can read, edit, or delete records based on role and need.
- Contingency planning
- Preparing alternative actions for foreseeable disruptions to people, data, and operations.
- HR data governance
- Policies and controls ensuring employee data is accurate, secure, and used appropriately.
- Emergency response plan
- Documented procedures for responding to workplace emergencies to protect employee safety.
