Gaining Recognition as an Official Profession at the National Level: The CIEHF Experience

Abstract

Professional bodies should have an outward-looking role to establish the credentials of the profession they represent as well as their more introspective role of developing their discipline and monitoring the competence of their practitioners. The process followed by the CIEHF to gain official Government recognition of ergonomics is described. The focus in this paper is on the ‘preliminary procedure’ requested by the Privy Council to assess eligibility for petitioning for a Royal Charter. This has been selected as it is regarded as the most informative and instructive part of the whole process for the interest of other professional bodies. The nine questions posed by the Privy Council concerning the uniqueness and value of the scientific discipline and the body’s development and performance are listed and the Institute’s responses are presented. The other parts of the process – the Petition and governance documents are also briefly discussed. The paper concludes with the key issues that may be useful to other bodies.