ARE YOU A TRUE PROFESSIONAL?

A PROFESSIONAL is “any person who earns their living from a specified professional activity. It is inherent in the definition of a profession that a code of ethics governs the activities of each profession. These are beyond the moral obligations of an individual”.

Do you regard yourself as a ‘professional’ and what safeguards do you offer your clients if you fail to deliver what is expected?

Meeting managers are referred to as ‘Professional Conference Organisers’ (PCOs) whether the word ‘professional’ is deserved or not. Individuals (and companies) engaged in the design and implementation of incentive programs are known as ‘Incentive Practitioners’; someone who is qualified or registered to practice a particular occupation.

Both titles infer a high level of competence, service and commitment which is often not the case.

Various bodies like TAFE offer training in meeting management but none offers training for incentive practitioners. Individual companies are often involved in the meetings and incentives industries to train their employees; but the standard is dependent upon the skills and experience of the trainer.

There are a number of organisations that offer recognition of those with the necessary skills to provide the relevant services required by their discipline. In Australia these include the PCO Association and Meetings and Events Australia (MEA) - both focused on the meetings industry. The Incentive Association (IA) which represents the incentive industry in Australia and New Zealand plans to launch an accreditation scheme jointly with one of Australia’s major providers of mainstream and tertiary education.

While individual schemes may be excellent, the main failing is that the end-user knows little or nothing about them! None of these accreditation schemes is mandated by law and there is little or no publicity surrounding them; nor are the implications of not using anyone so qualified, explained.

We entrust our lives and life savings to airline pilots, doctors, nurses, accountants and we rely on the fact that if something goes wrong they will be held accountable by a higher authority. The cost of staging a major event, meeting or conference or designing, managing and rewarding a corporate incentive program can run into many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and yet these are frequently entrusted to operators that have no formal qualifications, or no recourse to a professional body or insurance to protect against losses they cause.

It’s time the meetings and incentives industries got their act together to better protect their clients.