When considering your recertification program design, have you factored in a certificant’s true cost of recertification? The traditional model of a CE-based recertification program is often easy to administer but can end up costing practitioners more than the board may have originally considered. Like an iceberg, organizations may only see what’s above the water.
The True Cost of Recertification: A Practitioner’s Perspective
Certification boards will know the amount of their recertification fees, what about the time and money practitioners invest to meet your recertification requirements? This can be the money spent on required activities, as well as the time and money spent to take and track them. What if they need to miss work? Lost wages may be another hidden cost.
The true cost of recertification = Your recertification fee + the cost of recertification activities + the time spent on those activities.
Consider the following recertification scenario:
| Recertification Requirement | Cost |
| Recertification Fee | $150.00 |
| CE Cost: 35 hours CE x $50.00 per hour | $1750.00 |
| Wages Lost: 35 hours x $50.00 per hour | $1750.00 |
| Application Time: .5 hours + 2.5 hours (10 activities x 15 minutes spent tracking each activity) x $50.00 per hour | $150.00 |
| Total | $3800.00 |
It all adds up. Suddenly, the true cost of recertification starts to look a lot different. Like what lies beneath the surface of an iceberg, this amount might be significantly larger than your recertification fee alone.
Consider: If it costs your practitioners thousands of dollars to recertify, but you only receive the recertification fee, maybe there’s another, better way? Could the costs borne by practitioners for recertification be invested elsewhere, into more efficient solutions?
For example, classes weren’t only offered in person, during regular working hours, but online and asynchronously, would it lower the cost of practitioner wages lost? If you could work with CE providers to have them upload attendance records, would it ease the burden of self-reporting? What if you replaced CE requirements with a low-stakes assessment?
Lower the True Cost of Recertification, Improve the Recertification Experience
With the right system, your program design can evolve to maximize the value of recertification for both your board and your constituents.
What Does the Data Say?
If you are trying to understand (and lower) the true cost of recertification, a great first step is to gather some data. For example, what can your current recertification data tell you about how your certificants approach recertification?
If you conduct a data analysis study, you can determine when in the recertification cycle your certificants pursue CE. For example, is it fairly consistent year over year, or does it cluster towards the end of the cycle?
Once you’ve done data analysis, you can also conduct a market study to determine the hourly cost of CE. In your analysis of the CE offered in the market, distinguish between CE for entry into practice and advanced practice accredited versus non-accredited. Be skeptical of the professional value of “free CE” as it relates to the continuing competency of the profession. Your survey should also gather the extent to which employers sponsor continuing education, either in a paid training budget or through paid training time.
Once you understand your practitioners and their experiences, here are a few ways to reduce the cost of recertification for practitioners while maintaining your program standards and board revenue:
Use Feedback on Submitted CE to Create a Virtuous Cycle
If you can ensure the value and relevance of your accepted CE, you’ll reduce the time and money spent —and wasted — by your certificants. In doing so, you’ll reduce the true cost of their recertification.
Why not invite your learners to help “crowdsource” CE of high quality and appropriate domain alignment? After all, who better to understand the value of a CE offering than your practitioners’ professional peers? You can even use learner feedback to help build a searchable course catalog for pre-approved activities. Then, you’re also helping to reduce the time your certificants spend to find the right CE in the first place.
Pre-Approve Providers and Courses
Pre-approval of continuing education providers and activities streamlines the flow of data within the system, making it easier for your practitioners to fit recertification into their busy lives. For example, what if your approved providers could upload their attendance records into the system? In that case, the system can log CE for your practitioners, saving them precious hours in front of the computer submitting CE.
Explore Alternative Means of Assessing Competency
What if there was a way to evaluate practitioners without a huge interruption to their busy work (and life) schedules? That alone would positively impact the true cost of recertification for your certificants. With the right system, you can offer your constituents more flexibility without compromising rigor. For example:
- Portfolio assessments of work samples
- Low-stakes assessments delivered over the recertification cycle
- Directed journal readings for new evidence-based practices
- Employer verification of relevant domain KSAs
Not all of these options may be right for your community, but the right technology partner can support the ones that are.
Shorten the Recertification Cycle
Another option is to consider a shorter recertification cycle. A shorter cycle can reduce both the recertification fee and the volume of recertification requirements, making the true cost of recertification less intimidating to practitioners. For example, using our fictional recertification program scenario, you could break your existing cycle into thirds. Then, you can charge $50 in lieu of $150 to recertify and require 10 CE credits rather than 35.
Besides, many certificants wait to focus on recertification until the last year of their cycle as it is. It may be more beneficial to their ongoing professional development to require fewer activities completed more often.
Introduce Annual Milestones into your Recertification Cycle
If shortening the recertification cycle is not an option, consider breaking up a longer cycle into regular intervals with milestones. By mandating that certain recertification activity (CE, publishing, attending events, etc.) must happen during specific intervals of the recertification cycle, you make it easier for practitioners. If they know what they need to do and are kept in the loop on deadlines, you empower them to stay on top of their requirements rather than leave them to their own devices to tackle their requirements over the years (and likely procrastinate).
Plus, board revenue also stands to benefit: By introducing annual milestones, you can collect annual payments, even if your certificants never complete their certification applications. Yearly payments are also a natural reminder of other requirements. If they invest annually rather than wait to pay the full fee, they may have even more incentive to stay current with those requirements.
LearningBuilder Makes it Easy to Manage Recertification
The only constant is change. No matter the length of your recertification cycle or the nature of your requirements, a time will come — maybe sooner, or perhaps later — that you will want to update your recertification program requirements. As you consider your program options, factoring in the “true cost of recertification” may offer insight into what changes benefit both your practitioners and the profession.
At Heuristics, our many ongoing client relationships have taught us the value of flexibility. A flexible system is one that you are less likely to outgrow because it can enable your program’s evolution and innovation. We designed our LearningBuilder certification management software to ensure that your technology does not become your constraint to program growth.
Ready to learn more? Schedule a call with us to explore our certification management solutions.
