If you called for a conference for all human resources (HR) practitioners, more than 70 percent of the attendees would likely be women compared to men. The Institute of Human Resources Management of Kenya membership also comprises more women than men.
The HR management practice has been predominantly women, but can men make peerless HR professionals?
Recently, I attended a fruitful convention for men in HR. We scrutinised vibrant topics like thriving in turbulent times, men in HR driving workforce agility for productivity, strategic talent champions, men in HR elevating performance and retention, empowering connections, men in HR fostering productivity and engagement, navigating change and men in HR as catalysts for productivity, empowering connections.
The success of the three-day convention means that the cultural barriers are being shattered through continuous evolutions and benchmarking. The slogan of the convention was to transcend the apex.
The men in HR convention was geared toward knowledge sharing, networking opportunities and skills development.
Can men become exceptional HR practitioners and philosophers? What does it entail to become a remarkable and transformative HR? connoisseur? We can look at the success of HR from two prisms. The technical aspects like employee resourcing, learning and development, labour law, HR analytics, industrial relations, compensation and rewards, separation, wellness and other subsets.
The other skillsets are called soft skills, which comprise communication skills, conflict resolution, negotiation, adaptability, problem-solving, time management and confidentiality, among others.
What are the stereotypes that face men in HR?
One of the longest-standing biases that has to be broken through training, mentoring and coaching is that of imagining that men aren’t great communicators.
The other lie that is often perpetuated is that men lack emotional intelligence. For example, would men understand the need for menstrual leave? There is nothing that can’t be understood without coaching and mentoring.
What is needed is the availability of learning resources for mind shifts. Most categorise men as people who struggle with expressing their emotions and therefore might create a barrier for others in expressing them. This in turn might lead to inadequate management of employee concerns.
It is also assumed that men don’t take their wellness seriously and therefore might downgrade related issues. There is a raging debate in certain masculine fraternities about whether men should go for therapy.
Resistance to change is also attributed to men in HR. Resistance to change is gender-neutral. It can be dealt with through understanding why people resist change and how to overcome the resistance.
There is a categorisation that men in HR aren’t good at employee engagement because it requires a lot of soft skills and men don’t score good marks.
People are the most critical resource of any organisation. HR experts know people’s capabilities. Listen to the certified ones because it will save you a lot of heartache.
How can men in the practice elevate the HR brand? How can men transcend the simplistic views about HR? How can men in HR become the harbingers of positive transformation?
Besides other preconceptions about men in HR there are also other sets of prejudices against the entire practice which include saying that HRs are paper pushers, rule enforcers, trigger happy in firing, lacking in empathy, secret keepers, conflict avoidance, bureaucratic, ineffective problem solvers, resistance to change and lacking in business acumen.
What can men in HR undertake to cure these common pigeonholes? The practitioners can immerse themselves in diversity and inclusion leadership, strategic talent management, data-driven decision-making, leadership development, employee engagement, employee well-being, positive transformation management, effective communication, compliance and legal expertise, innovative HR practices, conflict resolution and mediation, continuous professional development, employee relations, brand ambassadorship, community engagement, ethical practices, mentorship and coaching.
