Is the proportion of women in HR in decline?

XpertHR data suggest that while the HR profession (in the UK at least) remains dominated by women in terms of numbers, the representation of women in HR might have peaked in 2007, and could now be in gradual decline. I'd be interested to know how this squares with your own experience of the HR profession, whether in the UK or in other countries.

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Michael Carty

asked on May 23, 2011

Neil Morrison

Group HR Director, Random House Group

Posted on May 24, 2011

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Michael Carty

Hey Michael, I read the research and the question that came to my mind was this......

I think in previous research you showed that men were more likely to hold more senior roles in HR. Is the change in 2008 onwards due to the downsizing of HR departments mainly impacting more junior roles and therefore females adversely?

My personal experience is that the overall mix seems to be about the same. I don't see significant numbers of men entering the profession, either at entry level or later in their careers.

Michael Carty Replied on May 25, 2011

Hi Neil. Thanks very much indeed for taking the time to respond to this question.
The XpertHR data suggest that the representation of women in HR peaked in 2007, and have shown an overall decline over subsequent years.

Unfortunately, the data quoted here are drawn from salary survey data, which do not include any qualitative measures that might categorically answer your question as to whether the downsizing of HR departments might explain the gradual decline in the representation of women in HR (and also have had an adverse impact on junior roles).

However, I think that this would appear to be the most plausible theory for the changing gender profile of HR, as indicated by our salary survey data. My colleague Mark Crail suggests that it could well be the case that "women have disproportionately lost out in the recession." (http://www.xperthr.co.uk/blogs/employment-intelligence/2011/05/is-the-proport...)
Indeed, data from the latest XpertHR survey of HR roles & responsibilities show that HR departments have been hit hard by the recession and its aftershocks, as the following quotation illustrates (http://www.xperthr.co.uk/article/106943/.aspx#5):

"One respondent organisation in four (24.5%) has seen the number of HR staff decrease in their organisation over the past two years. This is a similar figure to that in 2010 (25%), but the biggest cuts have come in the public sector. Almost four in 10 (38.2%) report a decrease in the number of employees, compared with one in five in both the private sector services and manufacturing and production (22.2% and 22.1% respectively). [...] Redundancies are ongoing, with exactly one in five reporting HR staff numbers changing as part of a general redundancy programme. This proportion is consistent across all three broad sectors."

The XpertHR salary survey data show that women tend to be more heavily concentrated toward the lower echelons of the profession (http://www.xperthr.co.uk/blogs/employment-intelligence/2011/04/the-uk-hr-prof...). It consequently seems highly probable that - as you suggest - the downsizing of HR departments has tended to affect "more junior roles and therefore females adversely."

Michael