What HR needs to know to better support their Asian workers

Discrimination against Asian Americans is still a problem in the modern workplace.

But experts like Jane Hyun, a global leadership strategist and founder of professional training and coaching firm Hyun & Associates, work with employers to create better diverse workplaces.

In her forthcoming book, Leadership Toolkit for Asians: The Definitive Resource Guide for Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, out April 30, Hyun shares how Asian and Asian American workers can ascend into leadership positions without sacrificing their cultural identities.

Drawing from her own experience working in HR, Hyun told HR Brew how people pros can be better leaders for Asian workers.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you hope an HR pro would learn from your book?

I would hope that HR professionals who pick up this book would learn some insights about the Asian community and the Asian members of their workforce, and their particular perspectives that they may not have known before.

I don’t know if the average person really fully understands our experience, and that experience…is very broad and diverse, and there’s no one experience. The book was hard to write because of that, because it’s not monolithic. There’s no one way that an Asian American looks and sounds. But there are some things that we share. There are some certain things that we share that need to be better understood by our companies and organizations, and so I think that could be like, for example, some of the challenges we encounter with the model minority myth.

What are some other challenges Asians and Asian Americans face that an HR leader should know about?

There’s a lot of Asian Americans in the workforce that are raised in very deeply ingrained values with their countries of origin, because they either have parents who grew up in Asia, or they grew up in Asia…I was doing some consulting with a company where they did a survey of their Asian leaders who were involved with their [employee resource groups], and about 60% of them were born and raised in Asia, either came [to the US] as child or teenager…So, there’s a good amount of folks who are of Asian descent in the workforce, who still hold on to a lot of Asian values, and even people who were born here hold on to some of the Asian values…That piece of understanding [that] once you move to this country, I don’t think we’re necessarily trying to create people who just adopted the American culture and leave everything behind.

Are there experiences from your HR roles you bring into the book?

I’ve worked both in recruiting and generalist functions where I was doing HR business partner work…One of the things that I was struck with was when I used to go to these recruiting presentations on campuses, and other sources, I would notice that I was often the only Asian representing a company on these campuses. And, in the audience, I would see a good third or more of the audience who are of Asian descent and there was a sense of connection I felt with them. I think there was a sense of connection they felt with me. They were comfortable speaking to me.

Those are some of the early moments when I realized that this conversation around helping organizations be more sensitive and attuned to the different people that are in your workforce, but also your future workforce, is going to be really important and that we need to understand the cultural experience of these people, because they may not look and sound like you. And, they may be trying to figure out how to lead in the workplace where the leadership models are not necessarily looking like them or sounding like them, and struggling with that concept.