Humans are humans, not mere resources

Human Resource (HR) is it. HR is the most important resource. Human capital counts. Humans are the assets. Human resources are the difference. These are the corporate mantras. These are the bread and butter of analysts. CEOs swear by them. Boards of Directors endorse them.

The Annual reports glorify them. The seminars thrive on them. The chat groups engage endlessly about them. All of this is absolutely needed. All of this is totally relevant. All of this is the need of the hour, the day, the year. But is that all? Is this enough? Is the semantic taking over the romantic? Are humans just a resource?

From slavery to serfdom to staff, human beings have seen many eras of worker management evolution. It was industrialization era that streamlined work. It was workers who rebelled on the concept of “labour is not a commodity” and organized themselves as trade unions to protect their rights.

Grievance handling jobs were created and IR or industrial relations department came into being. These later were also transformed into worker welfare committees where the factory owners would take a social responsibility view and bestow some favours out of patronage and charity.

Scientific management resulted in time and motion studies and resulted in looking at factors that can increase machine and human productivity. This led to the admin and personnel departments.

The emergence of behavioural sciences gave rise to concepts like participative/cumulative decision making under the auspices of the HR era. Even the American Society for Personnel Administration, the largest professional association in the field of human resource management, changed its name to the Society for Human Resource Management in 1990. Thereafter it has become a hot topic of debate and discussion on how it is the most important resource, etc.

Despite all this progress, workers at all levels feel increasingly unhappy on the way they are handled, treated and rewarded. In the latest study by Arbinger institute on 2024 Workplace trends, job satisfaction globally is at an all time low of only 22%.

Job satisfaction is a composite of salary, work/life balance, recognition and meaningful work. This reflects that there is lot more work that needs to go into building up cultures that treat humans as humans and not just resources.

This means that mere work at home models are not sufficient to create work/life balance. And, this means that appreciation and purpose alignment is still suffering from leadership failure on differentiating between human resources and humanity. Let us look at some changes that are mandatory to offset this serious spiral in work stress and worker disenchantment:

1- Humans are not a commodity- Technically calling humans as resources is correct. It means a source of supply or an available means to achieve some end. Technically correct but humanly a misnomer of sorts. The first problem is that when you band it with physical and financial resources, you actually make it inhuman.

Getting a machine or money removed, replaced, upgraded is just an order compliance. These resources have no will of their own.

Humans do. They react to being “fired”. They resent on being “rotated” and much more. The other side is that machine and money is a means to an end. Are human resources a means or an end itself? Is the end to make more money through these resources or the end is to make more money to make humans more comfortable? As long as human resources are subservient to money as an end, they will be used, spent, fixed, as and when it serves the overarching goal of the company.

Solution- The growing inequality in the world and workplaces, the continuous declining productivity needs to be studied by the global HR societies/HR consulting firms in alliance with the academics. This study needs to recommend major changes in the laws, regulations and preferential taxonomy and code of conduct to revive and renew the depletion of what is still known as human resource.

2- Rethinking the Identity- The terminology is a reflection of the mindset. Terminology also induces similar actions. There is a very uncomfortable reference of power and control in the archaic mindset in terms like recruitment, firing etc. The designation title has been changed to human resource manager/ director but its main role is to keep the count and the job fit enough to let the organization run smoothly.

The HR manager’s role becomes the most important in any downtime be it industry disruption or economic depression. The terms like downsizing are now more politely called rightsizing. The purpose is to keep on managing the supply and demand of this resource at the right time with the right as they call it “headcount”.

The Arbinger institute study says 42% managers and 52% non-managerial staff rate low morale and engagement as a major challenge. If half of your resource is disengaged it is a bigger dent on the bottom line than any recession and downturn.

Solution- Start changing the designations and then the jobs. The human resource needs to change to Human associates or something that elevates them above a resource. Similarly the fact that for any human the body, mind, heart and spirit all “count” the name from a CHRO i.e., Chief human resource officer may be renamed as CEO, i.e., Chief Engagement Officer.

3- Redesigning Balance Sheets and Accounting systems-Our financial systems belong to the century-old industrial era that introduced assembly lines and linear planning. Life and work have become anything but linear. However we still obsess over the balance of cash flows and the cost cutting drives to show fatter margins.

The HR fraternity have tried very earnestly to emphasize on human “assets”. There has been a lot of talk about human “capital” management. Unless this change of talk is not translated into change of financial walk, it will quickly fade into a cliché. Consider this paradox- while we call humans our biggest assets/investment, in financial reporting we report them as expense, while machines are reported as assets in balance sheets.

Think of the impact this has on the top decision making. Two requisitions sent to the CEO-One on a million dollar upgradation of the computer system, the other a few hundred thousand dollars upgradation of human skills. Most of the time the human skills will be shot down and the upgradation of the machine one will be accepted as an “investment”.

Solution- The HR community needs to design innovations to reporting. There has to be a pressure group that works with the global financial standards reporting bodies to “upgrade” the financial systems. And, that remains the bigger challenge- the movement to upgrade mindsets, convincing set minds to stop minding the money and machine matters more than human “matters”.

The article was published in Business Recorder