8/4/2019 Why Women Are Better in HR

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Women are people-focussed

The reasons have to do with certain aptitudes that women have-that men have less of-and which are becoming

increasingly relevant in an environment where people are becoming a company's biggest asset. Women are

seen to be more people-focussed, with a special knack for recognising performers and working on their career

advancements. They are good at objectively collecting feedback and offering career counselling.

"The kind of competency HR demands includes understanding people requirements and ensuring employeerecognition. Women are better equipped to gauge these as they are more team-oriented and people-oriented,"

said Indira Bharadwaj, executive director in Ernst & Young.

Nirupama V G, MD of recruitment firm AdAstra, said mentoring, soft skills, counselling, consoling, convincing and

training come easy to women.

Of AdAstra's 153 employees, 113 are women. Executive search firm Leadership Capital has 18 women in its 24-

member staff. The HR departments of TCS, Infosys, Wipro are all dominated by women.

Women have nurturing skills

From just personnel record management, HR today has evolved to a very comprehensive people-management

space, involving nurturing and understanding of people, their work and life stress situations. HR professionals

face the challenge of constantly innovating ways to create a conducive environment at work.

The space offers many niche profiles like recruitment specialists, compensation specialists, organization design

and development specialists, training specialists, on-boarding operation specialists, employee engagement

specialists, and orientation specialists.

Lata Rajan, director in HR service provider MaFoi, said women generally like the gentle, sensitive and flexible

nature of the space.

Why women move to HR

Priya Chetty Rajagopal, VP in executive search firm Stanton Chase International, noted that many women had

recently made conscious career moves to HR from finance, business development or marketing jobs. "HR gives

them more visibility as it makes them part of company communication, policies and the role they play in attractingand retaining people. Also, women feel HR is a more meaningful profession as decisions here impacts lives of

many people."

how could men be a dying breed in HR when women have always been the

dominant players? Well thirty years ago when I got into HR the reverse was true.

70% of the players, and almost ALL the leaders in HR were men. And in many cases

these men had operational backgrounds.