Bald Men of HR ~ Strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) Blog

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Bald Men of HR

Screen Shot 2012-10-06 at 19.38.04.png I (obviously) loved this article on bald men, published in the Guardian last week:

“Men with completely bald pates are perceived to be more masculine, dominant, taller and even "about 13%" stronger than those with full heads of hair...

The key is for balding men to shave off what little hair remains, like Bruce Willis, rather than trying Bobby Charlton or looking like a monk. Men with thinning hair were viewed as the least powerful of all, with those displaying typical male-pattern baldness seen as older and less attractive...

I'm not saying that shaving your head makes you successful, but it starts the conversation that you've done something active."

I thought it might be worth a quick check for HR and have had a look through HR Magazine’s list of Most Influentials (2011 as the 2012 pics aren’t up yet). This shows that:

47% of top male global HR thinkers are bald or very nearly bald
35% of top male UK HR thinkers are bald / very nearly bald (including me)
Just 10% of top male UK HR practitioners are bald / VNB (actually just two - Stephen Lehane at Alliance Boots and Stephen Kelly at Logica).

I'm not quite sure what to make of that - something linking baldness with thinking rather than doing perhaps???

But of course, HR people aren’t always that influential – even the most influential ones!

Screen Shot 2012-10-06 at 19.53.21.png

So what about people outside HR – well all three leaders of the UK’s political parties are bald (err, OK, no, not really – but don’t you think they would be more commanding if they were?):

Miliband bald1 Cameron Bald1