Human Resources departmental decisions can have a huge impact on the health and happiness of both the individual employee and the workforce as a whole. They handle hiring, delegate benefits to employees, and see that labor laws are upheld. We asked employees to answer the question, “Do you approve of the job HR leaders are doing at your company?”
The information comes from the latest reading of an ongoing study by Comparably. Over 10,000 employees responded to the question.
Just under two-thirds of all employees who responded to the question say they approve of the job their HR leaders are doing. Women were more positive, but to a negligible degree.
When viewed by the ethnicity of the respondent, most responses line up with the overall averages for all workers as seen above. African-American respondents were slightly below averages, but also to a negligible degree.
Unsurprisingly, HR departments themselves are most approving of the decisions of HR leaders, and it goes without saying that workers in that department will have a more nuanced, if not radically more enlightened sense of how those decisions are arrived at and put into action. Executives, also as per usual, are largely supportive. Less customer-facing departments, like IT and Operations, are in general less supportive of the way HR leaders operate, and perhaps are used to more candor in their less public roles.
Younger, entry-level, Gen Z workers are easily the most enthusiastic about their HR leaders. Approval numbers begin to drop right away with the 26-30 group, and continues to generally decline through all the advancing age brackets. This could imply that eitherthe older we get, the more HR decisions affect us, or that general enthusiasm and approval for company policies tends to drop as people continue into their work lives.
The same general pattern we see across age brackets is repeated when we look at advancing education levels. The least educated and youngest approved at about 62%, a number that then drops to 57% for the “some college” bracket. Approval numbers begin to rise again with those who have reached the highest education level.
The biggest gender disparities are in two departments mentioned previously: HR and the Executives. In the C-Suite, 12% more men were approving of HR leadership. In the HR department itself, 9% more women than men felt similarly.
Latest reading as of July 19.
