Thinking Out Loud: The Human Assets

Hello there and thank you so much for clicking, opening and trying to see what did I draft over here - hopefully it would be interesting enough to entice you to share your thoughts on the same topic or other similar.

So why talk about human resources or assets? In each time of "turbulence" the role of the CFO comes strongly into the picture. Any decision has to be checked by them, the CFO becomes the epi-center of every board, executive or managerial meeting. The voice of the CEO becomes a bit dimmer as organizations drive delicately through cash-flow & profit protection and cost control. Now we might think that the CEO becomes the second most powerful vote in any decision, however it s not the case. Observing reputed brands and organizations it is clearly obvious that the "Human Resources" function is now competing with the power of the CEO's vote. Some of my digital colleagues might reject this while cheering for the CIO position, yet considering what is happening on the ground, the CIO remains an execution role limited by budget and often taken lightly (thus explaining the growth in successful cyberattacks), while on the other hand HR is gaining more importance as they should reflect the voice of the employees and translate the management direction to them as well while keeping them motivated.

And motivation is actually the turning point which brought back HR to the front line during the past 24 months. In tough times, regardless if big or small, businesses will rely on two major factors: Customers (loyalty of existing and attracting new) and employees' tolerance, passion, endurance and motivation to give more while not feeling at total ease.

The first pillar is labeled as Customer Experience (CX): a group of tactics and tools that serves keeping customers happy and new ones coming. The second pillar is labeled as Employee Experience (EX). EX in general should have the same budget, the same structure, the same tools to support the E as organizations tend to support the C. Perfect balance is never achieved, but the closer we get to a healthy CX added to a healthy EX, any company would be able to sustain the roughest and grow beyond its "mission and vision". Having reached to this point, the question becomes do you think your EX is supported as well as your CX? Maybe all C-levels are involved in CX projects, yet do you have the same count for EX? Some of you, yet few of you, would answer yes and I am lucky to have you in my network as I learn from what you are doing, but most would say "not really" and thus the need to Think Out Loud and try to re-imagine HR by asking some questions, doing some comparisons and giving ourselves some food for thoughts.

Human Resources, two words one is "human" and the other is a more financial term "resources". Not to tap into the human side of the topic as it might be very subjective, I ll force my thoughts to decipher employees as "resources" or "assets" for a company.

Let us start by examining the life of an asset inside a company and compare it to a human asset or a human resource. By default an asset is usually procured. The procurement is based on a business need that is presented (hopefully) as a business case with clear ROI. The procurement request is processed and approved and so we go into the asset selection process. The procurement department, after getting the approval from the finance department, starts interviewing vendors and getting the best offer and then discusses contracts with legal until we reach to happy ending where the assets are onboarded. For the sake of the example, we will consider this as a procurement of new "laptops". First things first, laptops are registered, refreshed with the company's labels and security and most importantly provided "asset tagging" and "maintenance" before it is put in use. Take a moment and read the last sentence again, done? Now add to it, every employee who is handed the asset will sign on a document mentioning the clear state of that asset and (in many cases) agreeing on Terms & Conditions which will protect the asset from misuse or "data breach". As the asset is put in use, this asset remains part of the company's value. Thus audit are made to ensure that the assets are working properly, we tend as well to depreciate these assets over time so we know when to dispose of them or to upgrade as it must be up-to-speed with the latest business requirements. During their lifespan assets could be rotated (old laptops serving interns) and then properly managed until fully depreciated and disposed off. Just a tiny pause here to ask an obvious question, which is more important the human asset or the technology asset? and let us stay please on this comparison as I am not ambitious to try to compare our human resources to more valuable assets, laptops will do the job.

So now what happens to onboard a human resource? practically the same. (let us get our analogy reading caps on) A business case should be there, an approval should be given, finance should allocate the budget and then head hunting starts. Interviews, filtering and we have a new joiner.

The laptop warranty is the insurance, the salary is the electric bill or the internet connection or licenses or the accessories which we invest in so that this asset keeps on giving up to the expectations. However I never witnessed a resource manager signing on a commitment to protect and properly & purposefully use every resource assigned to them. I have rarely seen clear service contracts for human assets with clear SLAs and deliverable to serve as holistic checks towards these resources so that they wont "heat up" or "dim" or "have a battery problem". Our laptops practically have weekly patches, regular upgrades and updates, new software components added to serve more needs - taking things proportionally between the upgrade stack and the current software stack - most of us are at blame of not investing the same - not even in one digit percentage - in ourselves and our team. Do we run audits to protect or our audits are more to control? Do we assess each asset properly and re-assign it as it is best fit so it could serve its purpose, provide better ROI and benefit the whole ecosystem? Do we hold an asset valuation and depreciation form stating the value of our resources as they join (in terms of passion, motivation, knowledge, ambition, etc..) and track it along the way in order to adjust?

Stating a fact here but no matter how cliché it is, it must be stated: If well managed, our work family would be the only asset to our business that gains value with time instead of getting depreciated. If not, we will keep on witnessing an accelerated depreciation of these assets and well, how competitive could a business be in todays' world if running on "windows vista"?

It takes heavy focus from finance, procurement, management, operations, legal, internal audit and many other efforts to manage assets as they are core part of the business value. The same, or the mindset and will to provide the same, should be given to our employees and customers in a balanced way in order to sustain a simple healthy business formula: CX + EX = ROI (again, as customer experience is on the trend am not too worried about it yet the same analogy could be applied to drive customer acquisition and loyalty programs).

Providing the best to our teams might be one of the most challenging assignments to do, yet again when there s a will there s a way and if we promise our business ecosystem the best we should do the same towards our team and strive to deliver. Workforce happiness is overrated and so are complex problems. Every complex formula, even Einstein's' relativity started with the basics and that was the purpose of the analogy. If they are called resources and assets, let us apply the same logic to it with the same volume of focus & efforts and see how it goes. Maybe the mentioned points have missed or poorly approached some topics, yet it is always good to think out loud as it often triggers new approaches, strategies, ideas among us and who hopefully some of our laptops could get a new SSD drive with a bung of extra RAM, a new SW stack so it could unleash a new potential of productivity and creativity.

As always, I tend not to re-read and correct what has been typed so excuse the errors and if there were many of them that is ok; as there is an amazing new lesson which I learnt lately from a great director while addressing their full team: "connect, engage, express yourself, don't be shy to share and most importantly don't think too much of yourself".

Last but not least, I really hope that you could invest in yourself some time to "think out loud" on any topic and sharing it as it is.