Female Domination in HR_End Term Project

BUSINESS RESEARCH MANAGEMENT

Analyzing HR as a career option

Submitted to

Dr.Prof. Anil

Submitted by

Prabhu Ganesh

Sejal Bakliwal

Sriram Parameswaran

Raunak Kumar

Tanvi Handa

Table of contents

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

PROBLEM STATEMENT....................................................................................................................................................................... 5

LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................................................................................................... 6

RESEARCH DESIGN................................................................................................................................................................................ 7

INTERPRETATION.................................................................................................................................................................................. 9

FINDINGS................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

SUGGESTIONS........................................................................................................................................................................................ 15

CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 16

REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

REFLECTIONS........................................................................................................................................................................................ 19

INTRODUCTIONHuman Resource Department

This department or support system is responsible for personnel sourcing and hiring, applicant tracking,

skills development and tracking, benefits administration and compliance with associated government

regulations . A human resources department is a critical component of employee well-being in any

business, no matter how small. HR responsibilities include payroll, benefits, hiring, firing, and keeping

up to date with state and federal tax laws.

Human Resources Manager Job Responsibilities:

Maintains and enhances the organization's human resources by planning, implementing, and evaluating

employee relations and human resources policies, programs, and practices.

Human Resources Manager Job Duties:

• Maintains the work structure by updating job requirements and job descriptions for all positions.

• Maintains organization staff by establishing a recruiting, testing, and interviewing program;

Counseling managers on candidate selection; conducting and analyzing exit interviews;

recommending changes.

•Prepares employees for assignments by establishing and conducting orientation and training

programs.

• Maintains a pay plan by conducting periodic pay surveys; scheduling and conducting job

evaluations; preparing pay budgets; monitoring and scheduling individual pay actions;

recommending, planning, and implementing pay structure revisions.

• Ensures planning, monitoring, and appraisal of employee work results by training managers to coach

and discipline employees; scheduling management conferences with employees; hearing and

resolving employee grievances; counseling employees and supervisors.

• Maintains employee benefits programs and informs employees of benefits by studying and assessing

benefit needs and trends; recommending benefit programs to management; directing the processing

of benefit claims; obtaining and evaluating benefit contract bids; awarding benefit contracts;

designing and conducting educational programs on benefit programs.

• Ensures legal compliance by monitoring and implementing applicable human resource federal and

state requirements; conducting investigations; maintaining records; representing the organization at

hearings.

• Maintains management guidelines by preparing, updating, and recommending human resource

policies and procedures.

• Maintains historical human resource records by designing a filing and retrieval system; keeping

past and current records.

• Maintains professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops; reviewing

professional publications; establishing personal networks; participating in professional societies.

• Completes human resource operational requirements by scheduling and assigning employees;

following up on work results.

• Maintains human resource staff by recruiting, selecting, orienting, and training employees.

• Maintains human resource staff job results by counseling and disciplining employees; planning,

monitoring, and appraising job results.

• Contributes to team effort by accomplishing related results as needed.

MOTIVATION

In the HR lecture, our professor asked our class how many of us would like to pursue a specialization

in HR and more girls showed their interest towards the same. When it came down to choosing a topic

for BRM, this discussion came to our mind. We brainstormed around this idea and after due course we

finalized our topic as above. In order to complete the literature review, we read up on several articles

which helped us formulate our sub objectives. These sub objectives ultimately helped us form the main

objective of our research study.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

OBJECTIVE

• To analyze why more and more women are choosing HR over any other profession

SUB OBJECTIVE

• To analyze the reason why men try not choosing the HR field

• To study the reasons behind female domination in the HR field.

HOW EACH OBJECTIVE WAS ADDRESSED

In order to throw some light on the objectives and sub objectives, we decided to refer to secondary data

apart from using a questionnaire. We read up on various articles and journals that reasoned on the lines

of why HR appeals to women, why men believe HR doesn’t let them measure success and the mindset

of people towards the HR profession. Our questionnaire was specifically designed in order to help us

understand the mindset of young professionals and how they decide on their specialization.

EXPLAINATION OF OPERATIONAL WORDS

Each objective was specifically addressed and data for each one of them was collected and analyzed

before coming to a final conclusion.

What Are The Roles And Functions Of The Human Resource Department?

The Human Resource Department deals with management of people within the organisation. There are

a number of responsibilities that come with this title.

First of all, the Department is responsible for hiring members of staff; this will involve attracting

employees, keeping them in their positions and ensuring that they perform to expectation.

Besides, the Human Resource Department also clarifies and sets day to day goals for the organisation.

It is responsible for organisation of people in the entire Company and plans for future ventures and

objectives involving people in the Company.

LITERATURE REVIEW

On a broad, generic level, it has often been said that the skills and qualities required to be a successful

Human Resources professional lend themselves more to those of the female skillset. Organisational

abilities, an eye for detail, empathy, non-confrontational negotiation skills, listening and an overall

desire to help have been cited as aspects of the profession that are cited as more feminine traits.

Old perception

Historically, HR seems to have traced its lineage to as far back as the late 19th century and the role of

welfare workers. All welfare workers were women, and it was their role to ensure that the women and

girls in the workforce were taken care of. As more women entered industry during the two world wars,

the welfare worker’s role was expanded to include recruitment and training.

Having examined the roots of the profession and found them to be predominantly female, it starts to

become possible to see how HR has maintained its status as a female-oriented industry. This is not to

suggest that men aren’t, or cannot be, successful in HR, but more that women have historically claimed

the industry as their own.

A modern issue of perception

Even if the HR industry has sprung from a female dominated lineage, what has stopped men from

entering the profession now that we inhabit a more modern age? A large part of the answer to this

question lies in the commercial perception that HR is almost exclusively for women.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Type of Research Design

Conclusive Research Design -> Descriptive Research -> Cross Sectional Design

Conclusive Research

Conclusive research is don’t in order to analyse the facts, figures and data collected and to draw a

conclusion out of it.

Descriptive research

The major purpose os descriptive research is to describe characteristics of objects, people, groups,

organisations,or environments. It tries to “paint a picture” of a given situation by addressing who,

what, when, where, and how questions.

Cross sectional Research

Cross sectional study requires the data to be collected at a single point of time.

The reason we have chosen this type of research design is because we are testing a hypothesis which is

“To study the reasons behind female domination in the HR field”. The data that we need is quantitative

and clearly defined. The analysis of this data will help us in coming to a conclusion.

Descriptive Research design uses secondary data (quantitative) and surveys which supports our

research. At the same time the primary data we collect will be done just once and hence it is also a

cross sectional design.

Type of data to be used

Primary data

We will be using primary data. We plan to use an online survey tool to collect first hand information

on our topic. We shall be making a questionnaire which will help us in understanding people’s views

on certain aspects of HR. The questions will revolve around topics like

1) Male female ratio.

2) What people think of HR as a profession?

Secondary data

We will be using data available online, research papers, journals that are available in the IMT Library.

This will help us in understanding the perspective that people have of HR in the market currently. It

will also allow us to compare the information we have collected from what has been earlier published.

INTERPRETATION

We conducted a survey on the choices of students between the age group of 20-35 pursuing a post

graduate professional course. Through this survey we intended to find out the perspective and

preference of the students. This helped us get an insight and even clearer understanding of our

objective.

%0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Career Preference

Female Male

Figure 1

Our survey initially segregated the candidates into two broad categories. After gauging whether the

candidate is a male or a female we then inferred our data. As you can see in Figure 1 , the females who

prefer to take Human Resources as a specialization further in there career is way higher than the males

who wish to do the same. Females have a higher tendency to lean towards making a career in Human

Resources.

10.00%

10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%70.00%80.00%90.00%

100.00%

44.44%

72%

89%

50% 50%

Female Respondents

Do you think role of a HR personnel is stressful?

Do you feel a HR job is challenging?

Do you think a HR manager is paid adequately?

Do you feel that a HR job would give you a good level of job satisfaction?

Do you think career growth can be measured in HR?

Figure 2

As you can see these were the various questions asked to the candidates. This graph shows the female

perspective of HR as a career choice. It tells us whether women think of HR as a challenging enough

job or not. There are around 44% women from our sample of 50 who think HR is a very stressful job.

Similarly if you follow the graph it is believed my 89 % that HR is not a very well paid job. This in

turn is a constraint and may result in people not applying for HR jobs. When questioned on the level of

satisfaction in HR 50% of the women believe that HR is not a very rewarding job neither is it very

measurable.

10%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90% 83%

61%56%

39%44%

6%

Attributes(females)

job satisfaction Pay scale career growth

challenging role work timings desk job

Figure 3

This bar graph basically talks about six basic characteristics that are considered by Females while they

are choosing a specialization and then eventually a job. Namely-Job Satisfaction, Pay Scale, Career

Growth, Challenging Role, Work Timings, Desk Job.

As opposed to what a lot of people believe women these days very rarely consider a desk job to be a

factor for a career choice(6%).the career growth, pay and job satisfaction play a major role in helping

women decide what job they would like to do .The work hours obviously make a difference as well.

%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

29%

65%

53%

76%

59%

Male Respondents

Do you think role of a HR personnel is stressful?

Do you feel a HR job is challenging?

Do you think a HR manager is paid adequately?

Do you feel that a HR job would give you a good level of job satisfaction?

Do you think career growth can be measured in HR?

Figure 4

This graph gives us an insight into what men thought about HR as a Career choice. Men have a

tendency to think that HR does not really give a job satisfaction (76%).As far as the pay is concerned

the general consensus amongst men was they may or may not be paid well. It depends on the

aspirations (53%). Many men believed that HR is definitely a challenging job (65%) but may not be

that stressful (29%). Although 59% of the men do think that career growth can definitely be measured

in HR.

%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%71%

59% 59%

47%

29%

12%

Attributes(Male)

job satisfaction Pay scale career growth

challenging role work timings desk job

Figure 5

This graph talks about what the men of the sample think will drive them to choose a particular career.

The maximum numbers (71%) think that job satisfaction is one of the greatest driving force for the job.

Career growth and pay scale matter to them equally (59%). Very few men think that they would want a

desk job .The work timings are not a major factor to men.

FINDINGS

In US as well as Europe, HR is totally dominated by women. In US the number is close to 70%; 71%

of HR managers according to the Forbes List of the Top 10 Best-Paying Jobs for Women in 2011 and

69% of HR professionals based on a study by HRxAnalysts.

Women’s domination of HR has even extended to the CHRO ranks, despite the persistent belief that

men still occupy the vast majority of the top jobs. 67% of all VP’s of HR posts are now held by

women.

In Europe the picture is pretty much the same. In UK, 72% of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and

Development’s (CIPD) members are women. Here in Denmark the picture is the same – just above

70% of people employed in HR are female.

What may surprise some is that the proportion of women in HR has been rising over the last 10-15

years. In UK in 1997 the proportion was 63.8% and then steadily rose to 79,3% in 2007 since when it

has been flat. The same is true both  in Denmark where the rise was notable between 2000-2008 as

well as in US.

Numbers and statistics can sometimes be deceptive. But not in this case. Personally, when I speak to

groups of HR people or meet with HR as a consultant, I will mostly meet with a woman.  John Sumser

said in 2011 following a large study, that “HR is a 47 year old white woman” in US. From my own

experience I certainly see what the numbers are telling me.

And this picture is unlikely to change. Looking at universities across the Western World, most of the

graduates in HR focused classes are primarily female. Here in Copenhagen, the HRM line at the

Copenhagen Business School has 18 men and 132 women attending from what I am told. Also looking

at the leadership pipeline, it is most likely that HR will continue to be dominated by women. In UK,

86% of entry level people in HR are female.

The only thing I can see that might change this picture is if HR become more data-orientated, more

technology-based, more evidence-based, more financial orientated and yes, more of a science. I was at

a Workforce Analytics conference in London earlier this year and most of the participants were men. I

am making a lot of assumptions here, but perhaps something like WA will change things?

Some point towards genetics and biology which – goes the argument – lends itself to the female nature

of caring and developing people. They argue that HR is simply more suited for women.

Others point towards a long term trend in HR away from the hard core industrial relations (macho male

dominated) to the more developmental psychological HRM which is more feminine in its approach.

SUGGESTIONS

1. HR is dominated by women. The profession has its roots in the welfare secretaries of the early

1900s, whose primary role was to ensure safety of the mill workers. Those positions were

completely occupied by women and eventually evolved to caretaker, benefits and party-

planning roles.

2. HR today is different. Whether you love or hate your HR team, it can’t be a women-only

game anymore. It’s gender, position, role and industry agnostic. Your business cannot be

successful unless you can develop and manage talent—the crux of HR.

3. The idea of measuring the value of a company through talent isn’t new—McKinsey wrote

about the metric of “profit per employee” in 2007. And the best venture capitalists know that

valuation has to include both an assessment of the management team and the talent pool.

4. Why does every manager have to understand HR? Because we all do it every day. Take a

marketing manager. He may not touch finance or operations every single day. But he does

touch HR. Not just every day, but multiple times a day.

5. The relationships you develop with your talent, and the choices you make every day on

how to engage and develop them, are directly correlated to bottom-line performance.

6. Call it people management, human capital, HR or whatever you want. Whatever it is, it’s not

touchy feel-y or emotional. It’s a pure, balance sheet, analyst-watching, performance-driving

business necessity.

CONCLUSION

To work in HR it is important to have good people and communication skills and the ability to

empathise with others. Caring about people is certainly an element of the job. But as many successful

HR feel, these skills are not the preserve of women. You certainly need good people skills to work in

HR. You need to be interested in people’s concerns and help them through work issues. But it is also a

pragmatic, business-focused job. As in most jobs, you need a mix of skills and attributes, combined

with a good sense of what an organisation needs to support its business objectives and promote a good

working culture. These things are not gender-related in any way.

The other gender issue that concerns Worman is the question of why although women dominate the

profession as a whole, men dominate the more senior roles. As with other professions, HR is male-

dominated at the higher end. Although there are more senior women than previously, we need a more

even gender distribution throughout.

The imbalance at top-end HR can be partly attributed to men coming into HR from other disciplines to

take up senior roles, rather than male HR professionals being promoted over female HR professionals

as both sexes progress up the career ladder from within the profession.

As with other professions, female pay also lags behind what their male counterparts earn. According to

research by XpertHR and the Chartered Management Institute, the average salary for a male HR

manager is currently £7,847 more than that of a female manager. The report also found that women in

HR face a projected 107-year wait until their take home pay is equal to that of male colleagues. This

makes HR the sector with the longest wait until the pay gap equalises.

But not everyone thinks that the top jobs are dominated by men or that salary discrepancies are

endemic. Chisnell says that while there is a gender issue in HR, she does not think it is so much of a

problem at senior level. “In my experience, and at the companies I have worked for, there is quite an

even split at senior level. I have always had strong, high-achieving, senior female HR bosses who are

great role models, so it has never really been an issue for me.”

REFERENCES

      Why are there so many women in HR? | Personnel Today. 2015. Why are there so many women in HR? | Personnel Today. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/why-are-there-so-many-women-in-hr/. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      James A. Landrith, Author at The Good Men Project. 2015. James A. Landrith, Author at The Good Men Project. [ONLINE] Available at: http://goodmenproject.com/author/james-a-landrith/. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      What is human resource management (HRM)? definition and meaning. 2015. What is human resource management (HRM)? definition and meaning. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/human-resource-management-HRM.html. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      Roles And Functions Of The Human Resource Department - Young HR Manager. 2015. Roles And Functions Of The Human Resource Department - Young HR Manager. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.younghrmanager.com/roles-and-functions-of-the-human-resource-department. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      Human Resources - Small Business Encyclopedia. 2015. Human Resources - Small Business Encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/human-resources. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      Is HR really a woman's world? | Personnel Today. 2015. Is HR really a woman's world? | Personnel Today. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/is-hr-really-a-womans-world/. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

      . 2015. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/07/11/why-human-resources-isnt-just-for-women-anymore/. [Accessed 07 May 2015].

REFLECTIONS

Reflection – Prabhu Ganesh

A business research can revolve around issues related to political, social, economic, business

process improvements, market study on people, product or anything. As far as the data is

reliable, quantifiable or valid, the research can provide incredible solutions or identify unusual

occurrence of events. So, when it came to identify such a realistic and measurable issue with

real-time data, we arrived at a topic of choosing HR as a career with lot of brain storming

involved. The sole reason behind choosing the topic was because of number of students who

were interested to enroll in HR in our batch. The number was not just meagre but varied on a

huge scale when compared to other departments. There were so many questions. Why the

people turnover is less? Is there a general discrimination when it comes to choosing HR? Does

women choose HR more than men? All these questions put together formed the objective. The

objective needs to be unbiased, not conclusive, comprehensive yet not too much in detail. Before

framing the objective we did some research on some articles which suggested some reasons such

as role challenges, work timings, work pressure, job motivation are some factors which made

women interested in choosing HR and men not doing so. We wanted to study this fact suggested

by these articles by doing a primary research on our batch. Thus, we came up with an objective -

“To analyze why more and more women are choosing HR over any other profession”. To find

data in detail, we had some sub objectives too. “To analyze the reason why men try not to choose

the HR field”; “To study the reasons behind female domination in the HR field.”

These sub objectives helped to put this research in two perspectives – Does men really ignore HR

field? Are women really comfortable in choosing HR?

The result was a exploratory research study where we used questionnaire as primary reseach

data tool to collect the preferences from our batch students of 80. We ensured that the

questionnaires are not biased to our topic with questions inclined towards our favourable result

– women choose HR over men.

So we structured our questionnaire collecting data on gender, their area of specializations and

some common reasons on which people choose HR over other specializations. There are some

job factors which people see in job. They are job satisfaction, pay scale, career growth, work

timings, challenging role, desk job. The responses vary with one person to another based on their

perception.

For data analysis, we observed two combinations – male’s responses for these questions and

female’s responses for these questions. These combinations are used to study their preference

and understand the variance in the data obtained.

Being a qualitative data, we used comparative analysis using bar graphs and arrive at a

conclusion.

It was observed that 20% of the females opted for HR and a meagre 9% men opted for HR

despite the fact that HR is booming in the middle-east.

Also, in another comparative analysis between men and women in their responses on deciding

attributes on choosing HR, 89% of the women thought the HR is a well paid job compared to %

by men.

Only 50% of women said no when asked whether HR job gives a good level job satisfaction.

Surprisingly, 76% of men said no when it comes to job satisfaction. This clearly indicated that job

satisfaction becomes major factor in deciding HR by women and men.

Also, 39% of women have opted for challenging role when it comes to job compared to men who

scored 47% more than women.

Hence, with this small study, there are two major factors evident –

Men prefer challenging roles than women

Job satisfaction matters a lot to men compared to women

This business research has taught me, how to frame a research with focus on objective. Also,

choosing valid data seemed so important which ultimately helped me to analyze the data without

hassle. The importance of unbiased questions in framing questionnaire to get correct result

which ultimately helps us meeting the objectives. I also learnt the importance of primary data

over secondary which helped us do the ground study. Being a research project, it also taught me

on data analysis part. Using a right data research tool is also important which gives in depth

results.

I would like to thank Dr. Prof. Anil for giving such a wonderful opportunity to work on such a real

time topic to learn more about a good research. I’m also glad that this was applicable in other

fields such as stock price analysis, market research for which this structured business research

laid the foundation.

Submitted by:

Prabhu Ganesh

Roll No. 14043

Section B

REFLECTION

There are a lot of things that I, as an individual, have learnt, not only from the subject, but also through

this research project. This is the most appropriate way of learning the various aspects of the subject as

a whole. It has helped me to apply what I have learnt in the course practically.

First and the foremost, identifying a problem or picking up a topic to research. Since we were working

in groups, there were a lot of clash of opinions. Also there were a lot of things that had to be kept in

mind while deciding on a topic, like whether it interests us or no, or will we be able to conduct a

research on that topic on our (student) level. Soon we came to a conclusion- HUMAN RESOURCE

DEPARTMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS.

This topic seemed very interesting and it came to my mind during my very first human resource

management lecture in college. After a brief introduction about the subject, objective of the course and

the scope in this field, our professor asked a simple question – “Who all would like to take up HR in

future?” And to my surprise only a handful of students raised their hand. I noticed something strange

amongst those students, they were all girls. Then it struck me that the companies where I have interned

previously have all had mostly females working in the Human Resource Department. That’s when I

thought that this could be an interesting thing to do research on. But this was not it; we then had to

frame an objective and sub-objectives. This required a thorough research on the topic; going through

various published or unpublished reports and a lot of brainstorming. We looked at it through various

different aspects like the various practices in the department, to diversity in workforce, and finally to

women working in HR department. However, utmost care had to be taken to phrase the hypothesis –

no using strong words (we initially used “why men SHY away from HR jobs”), keeping it unbiased,

also it shouldn’t hurt anybody. Our final objective was “to study why more women prefer working in

the HR field”.

My next hurdle was determining a research design. There are various kinds of different research

design, for example Exploratory Research if it has never been studied or researched upon before;

Descriptive if one has to study the facts or characteristics of group or individual; and so on and so

forth. After having read about the various research designs, conclusive research design seemed the

most appropriate to our study. Under conclusive design, ours was descriptive, cross-sectional. After so

much of reading I learnt the trick behind it, all I had to look for was what exactly are we looking at,

what are we trying to study or find out, does it require taking different samples every time or studying

the same sample period over period.

Once this was done, we faced a lot of problems identifying variables, since ours was a subjective

study, which required understanding the mindset of the people. A lot of interpretations were required;

they weren’t as easily observable like the people taking HR, number of females/males etc. There were

a lot of variables that were hidden and we couldn’t ignore (confounding variables). Apart from

studying the reasons behind female domination in the HR field, we also had to look upon the

characteristics or job profile of an HR manager.

We decided to use primary as well as secondary data. We used a questionnaire to collect the primary

data. This was my favorite part in the entire research. I learnt to use Google forms. While designing the

questionnaire the most important thing to keep in mind was not to have irrelevant questions, avoiding

misleading questions and double-barreled questions, using simple language. We also realized

analyzing open-ended questions were not easy so we tried to avoid them.

Since our research was on a small scale, our sample consisted of mostly students. Once we got the

responses, we started analyzing it. I learnt the various techniques and methods of analyzing the data

and to further interpret it.

Though compiling the data looked easy, but it wasn’t.

Lesson learnt: be organized from the start.

There is a format that needs to be followed. Lastly I would say apart from the research related learning,

I also learnt a lot of basic things like how to work in teams, being organized and how to write a report.

I would like to thank Professor Anil to give us an opportunity to work on a real-time research.

SUBMITTED BY:

Sejal Bakliwal

Roll No. 14056

Section B

Reflection

The research project that our group has been working on is “If HR is a female dominated profession?”

So, for this topic we as a group thought of the objective and sub objectives. Designing the hypothesis

and objective was not easy, as it would stay with us throughout the research. Working in a group is

very different and not at all easy. There is a flood of ideas in the group, so narrowing on a particular

objective means convincing everybody in the team. Our objective was to study the domination of

women in the field of HR. And our sub-objective was to understand the rationale of the employers

when they hire human resource manager, and why is there female domination in that field. Even while

framing the objective and the sub-objectives, we had to make sure that it does not hurt the sentiments

of the reader, we had to choose our words very carefully.

This was the first time I worked in a professional business research topic. Earlier I have worked on

Finance and accounts projects. But they are very different from doing a business research. There are

various kinds of research designs that that project needs to follow. Ours was a descriptive and cross-

sectional research design. It was descriptive as we had to study about the various characteristics of the

job of a Human Resource Manager; it was cross-sectional as the data was to be collected only once.

It was very interesting and gave us a lot of idea on how to do a research project professionally under

the guidance of prof. Anil C. The fun part for me was to design the questionnaire. It is not as easy as it

sounds. Every question needs to have a link with the previous question and at the same time be in

correlation with the research topic. The language of questions had to be simple. The survey should add

input or should help achieve our objective. After this comes identification of variables which was not

at all an easy task. There are many types of variables like extraneous, confounding etc. A few of them

were hidden and couldn’t be directly observed. Since it was more of a qualitative study, it was even

more difficult. Our next step was to select the sample, collect the data and work on it. We had to

choose our sample very carefully, given the time and resource constraints. Our sample was restricted to

students. Once the data was collected, the next step was to analyze the date. I also learnt the various

techniques to analyze the data.

After all that it is very critical to put them in proper format. There are so many things that needs to be

added other than the basic data in order to complete our research project. In our topic we had to figure

out if HR department is really dominated by women or not? The research gave us some amazing

conclusions which we had not even thought of. To our surprise, it showed us that these departments are

actually not dominated by women anymore. In fact, the higher positions are occupied by the men.

One main learning was that it is very important to frame your hypothesis properly and identify what

kind of research is it (Causal, Exploratory, etc.)? Because these factors determine as to how to go

about with your research. It forms the base of the entire research. Also the kind of data to be used,

secondary or primary is also very important. Depending on this we selected our tools in order to collect

the data. It was a good learning experience.

Submitted by:

Sriram Parameswaran

Roll No. 14063

Section B

Reflection-Raunak Kumar

I have learnt a lot about research, research methodologies and various other research jargons. For

someone who has never studied or come across this course before, the first thing I learned was how to

do a literature review. It gave me an insight into reading, studying and analyzing journal articles and

reports. It taught me about the different types of research designs while the only one I knew was a

hypothesis research design. Even though I had done a research in my undergrad project it was never so

detailed or exhaustive.

We as a group had done an intensive discussion on what could possibly be our research topic. We then

came to a common consensus that the position of women in HR is what we want to conduct a research

on. We even wanted to study about men and their whole take on HR as a career.

This research project has helped me to get a better understanding of a structured way of approaching a

research topic. After the literature review we worked on a form / survey for collection of primary data

on our topic. We discussed and evaluated various questions. We chose few career driving attributes

and compared them individually to males and females. We even linked these attributes to HR

independently.

After conducting this research I know I will be able to take a topic and formulate a report on it. We

even used SPSS tool to evaluate and study our data. It was a little complicated but we understood the

basics and implemented it as much as we could.

To summarize it, this subject has helped me understand the importance of research and the right way to

do so. It has also been an important stepping stone for my internship as the consultation line of work

will require me to be good at the same. Hopefully whatever I have learnt will come good for me during

the next three months.

Reflection – Tanvi Handa

Business research Management was a new subject for me. As a student of commerce I have never done

any purely research based courses let alone projects. While doing this project there were a few things

in particular that not only caught my interest but it is something that I take back with me from this

course:

1. What is research?

2. Working in teams.

3. Picking a research topic.

4. Discussing and re-discussing and then eliminating the idea altogether

So these very basic things apart this topic gave me a very good insight into how people think. While

going through the numerous articles I found out that HR is not only a looked down upon career choice

but its slowly becoming an “easy” job. Other than the class discussion that led us to choose this topic

maybe the feminist in me wanted to work on something on these lines.

Through this research project I even learnt how to use the tool of SPSS. This was taught in class by

Anil Sir. At first it seemed like excel and seemed a very general thing but when we converted our own

raw data in the sheet to SPSS format we realized it needs a lot more thinking. Looking at videos online

helped and gave more in depth information about the same.

Researching in general seemed very boring but luckily we had to choose our own topic so I was very

glad we chose something that interests me. The research started with us reading up on articles over the

internet. I went through secondary data on what the perception has been and how it has changed over

the years. This helped us confirm that we want to work on this topic. On further instructions we were

told to come up with objectives and structure is haphazard all over the place topic. We came up with

objectives and sub objectives with the help of various data used in the study.

After the basics we made a simple survey on the topic. With this I learn how the whole process of

floating a survey online works. I also understood that once the data can be collected our own study on

that data is very crucial. It finally forms the base of our research. We had been working on this project

from the very start of this semester. Meetings about the topic went on till late night

This project has been very different and interesting to work on. We finally understood the mindset of

people and in general on reading secondary data also about how the perception of HR has changed

over the years. This has led me to believe that HR is not a women centric field. In fact an article I read

clearly stated that men are the ones who end up taking the senior positions at Hr. Even though initially

some articles said that women had more qualities to be successful in HR that false belief is not there

anymore. It is as gender neutral and mind challenging as any other field. In fact it is one aspect that

every manager needs to know about.

Another thing that was new in this research project was seeing the different and innovative topics that

people came up with ranging from effect of social media on life or even the censorship board in UAE.

There were various topics touched upon. Almost all of us have filled in surveys and gained more

insight on how to go about with a basic research!