Negative stereotypes surround various functions
By Brian Kreissl
I have written several times about how many people don’t understand the human resources profession, the work HR practitioners do or ultimately who we’re accountable to. There are so many misconceptions and stereotypes about HR that it can be disheartening to hear what people think about our profession.
We’ve all heard the stereotypes: “HR isn’t strategic.” “The best and brightest don’t go into HR.” “HR is too touchy-feely.” “HR doesn’t understand the business.” “HR doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.” “HR is based on pseudoscience.” “HR is just common sense.” “HR is where people go who couldn’t cut it elsewhere.”
While most of those stereotypes are perpetuated by business leaders and people in other functions, rank and file employees often have a different view of HR. They sometimes see us as being in a privileged position and wielding too much power within organizations. Those folks often feel we aren’t to be trusted and act surprised when we don’t act as therapists or social workers or when they find out we need to hear the other side of the story when investigating a complaint.
Much of this relates to people misunderstanding what HR does, what our profession is all about and the breadth of the HR profession’s mandate. Just as many people immediately think of criminal law when they think of lawyers (probably the majority of lawyers never touch criminal cases and the vast majority of legal issues are civil in nature), people immediately think of recruitment when they hear the words “human resources.”
While I’m not knocking recruitment, we all know there’s far more to HR than talent acquisition, and many HR practitioners never do any recruitment at all. But thinking solely of recruitment gives people the impression there isn’t much to the HR profession.
For example, I once came across an online comment from someone questioning why someone would actually want to study HR at the master’s level (implying there isn’t enough to warrant such study). I also responded to a comment at the bottom of one of my earlier posts from someone who was questioning just what HR actually does and who referred to HR as “the least skilled, overpaid profession I can think of.”
My comment provided a long list of many of the things HR is responsible for. Looking back, I probably should have also mentioned that organizational behaviour isn’t HR (although it does relate to HR, OB also relates to general business management and is highly theoretical).
Respecting other professions
While I could have stooped down to that person’s level by calling him a “code monkey” or referring to other IT stereotypes such as the backroom geek who lacks soft skills and can’t communicate effectively with others, I actually like and respect software developers and think they’re pretty smart people. I have enjoyed working with programmers in the past, and find the best ones are able to communicate well with non-technical users, understand business needs, develop creative and artistic solutions, lead projects and keep them on track, create documentation and work with a wide variety of stakeholders.
This example illustrates how just about any profession or vocation has negative stereotypes associated with it. Unless people have actually done those jobs or acquired the necessary qualifications to enter those professions, they often underestimate the breadth and depth of skills and competencies required. They also tend to stereotype the people in those professions.
For example, accountants are often seen as boring, obsessed with penny pinching and lacking an understanding of the bigger picture. Lawyers are seen as greedy, arrogant and unethical. The marketing function is often thought of as being soft, somewhat dishonest and based on hype and spin, and salespeople are perceived by many people to be overly slick and able to get by with little more than the “gift of the gab.”
I do sometimes laugh when people in other functions react exactly the way I predicted they would, and I tend to get annoyed at bureaucratic roadblocks put into place by other departments. However, the truth is there usually are valid reasons for those reactions or requirements.
In most cases, people are just doing their jobs — which we don’t usually have a complete understanding of. People need to assume positive intentions and try to put themselves in other people’s shoes as much as possible — and stop downplaying the importance and complexity of other people’s work.
