Dive Brief:
- Seventy-one percent of HR professionals are female, according to Namely's HR Careers Report. The HR platform for mid-sized companies said its 2018 Workplace Diversity Report revealed women represented 67% of the HR workforce. The company said it used its database of over 1,000 companies and 200,000 employees to glean its demographic insights for the HR profession.
- Almost two-thirds (65%) of HR professionals identified as white. The next highest representations were Asian at 12% and Hispanic at 10%.
- Female HR managers earned an average of $91,981 a year, while their male counterparts reportedly earned $103,644 — a 13% difference, Namely said.
Dive Insight:
Stakeholders have long known that HR has a diversity problem, but efforts to resolve the issue have been sporadic.
General employment diversity took the top spot in LinkedIn's "Global Recruiting Trends 2018" report. It was identified by 78% of the 9,000 talent professionals who participated as "very/extremely important." But while the majority value D&I in hiring, HR professionals may still need to self-reflect while pursuing diversity in the workforce.
Gender exclusivity is often thought of as a problem stemming from a lack of female employees, but diversity issues can necessitate the need for more male workers, too. It's not beneficial when any one gender dominates a profession, research has indicated. Diversity among staff can boost innovation, one report found, and some experts have noted that the creativity sparked by diversity relates to diversity of thought, experience and knowledge as much as it does to gender.
As for pay, HR may need to conduct an audit for its own department, in addition to company-wide efforts. Experts last summer called for employers to start doing pay audits after headlines emerged about companies closing their race and gender pay gaps and others surfaced about companies battling equal pay claims.
