Three studies explore how HR professionals use their time, how the profession is regarded, and even how boring it is.
Taking a day off this week for Memorial Day has allowed us a bit of time to reflect on HR as a profession. We’re helped in this by three surveys we’ve found that view HR from novel perspectives: These include how HR professionals spend their time, how they’re ranked in terms of standing (read status and money) against other professionals and, … we kid you not … how boring a career HR is.
What You Do Each Day:
Did you ever wonder whether other human resources pros are spending their days on the same issues that you do, and whether the same concerns are foremost in their minds? Answers to these questions come from a study of 1,400 HR professionals by the British magazine, Personnel Today.
The key survey question asked was on what activity the professionals spent most of their time on the job. Below are the activities cited and the percentage of respondents who named each a top element of their workday.
The magazine also asked which of these activities was most important from a strategic perspective.
Change management was the overwhelming choice, supported by 80 percent of respondents. Performance management and developing policy/procedure followed, both supported by about half the respondents. Bringing up the rear as strategic issues: handling discipline and grievances and occupational health, each with about 10 percent support.
Status
Meanwhile, Money Magazine, working with a compensation web site, put together a ranking of what they called “the best jobs in America.” The ranking was based on stress levels, pay, growth opportunity, the chance to be creative, and other factors.
Out of hundreds of jobs, HR manager ranked rather well … number 4, right behind software engineer, college professor, and financial adviser. And it finished ahead of such jobs as pharmacist and psychologist (so if your parents were pushing you into one of those fields, you now have an answer for them).
The survey also looked at average pay for these “best jobs.” HR manager came in at $73.5K. Highest on the list: financial manager at an average of $122.5K.
Boredom
Perhaps one reason HR is a good job is that, according to Personnel Today, it’s not a boring job. The magazine surveyed more than 2,000 college grads, asking them how the career choices they’d made turned out in terms of the job being interesting… or not. Respondents ranged in age from 21 to 45.
HR turned out to be number 11 on a list of 15, with an average “boredom index” of 6.6 out of 10, where 10 was stultifying.
That score was reserved, it turned out, for administrative and secretarial workers. Manufacturing and sales followed them at 8.1 and 7.8, respectively. But HR also beat out engineering, banking, law, and even the supposedly thrilling world of working for the media. (Don’t get us started on that one.)
What beat out HR as being interesting? Hospitality/travel, health care, and teaching. Oh, and one more.
At 6.3, accounting was considered more interesting than HR. So now you know that next time you feel bored, you can head down the hall to finance and join the excitement there.
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