HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT RESOURCES
A few decades ago I went through a very intense selection process. After several steps, I was informed of my approval. The person who communicated it gave me a list of documents and said, “You need to deliver these documents to the DPM.” What is DPM? I asked. She replied: The Division of Personnel and Materials. Then I discovered that the same division of the organization took care of the asset labels or tags and people’s badges. It took care of inventories of materials and employee records. People and materials were resources.
The organization evolved and, years later, established a Human Resources Superintendence. The Personnel Administration Division and the Personnel Development Division were under it. I was the first holder of the Personnel Development Division.
The Human Resource expression is not new.
In 1893, John R. Commons, an economist, and professor at Indiana University published the book “The Distribution of Wealth,” in which he cites this expression without elaborating on it.
From 1910 to 1930 the human relations movement, led by Elton Mayo, psychologist and professor at Harvard University, made important contributions to the recognition of work in generation of wealth. In his work “The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization” he discusses the valorization of work as imperative for companies to achieve broader and more sustainable results. But the expression Human Resource was not used by him or other authors until the mid-20th century.
In 1958 E. Wight Bakke, an economist and professor at Yale University, published the text “The Human Resources Function”. In this text, he argues that “The overall work of management is to use resources effectively for an organizational goal. These resources are six in number: money, materials (e.g. facilities, equipment, raw materials), people, ideas, the market, and, in some cases, nature. “
In other words, people, human beings, are resources comparable to money, facilities, and raw materials. It’s amazing how the description he made of managers’ assignments concerning such resources is still the same today, perhaps in most organizations.
The conception of people as resources likely is that it has given rise to the expressions “human capital” and “the best asset of the company are its employees”. And it has led many to see people or work as commodities. And it is curious to note that the use of the Human Resource expression has been disseminated by two economists.
Where did this idea come from?
This conception originates from the understanding of a company or organization as a mechanical system. In the mechanical model, the assemblies are formed by parts that must be meticulously produced, carefully assembled, and constantly adjusted for the assembly to work perfectly. This conception came out of the physical mechanisms and housed all systems, including the human body. In Western medicine, this led to the hyperspecialization of professionals, each one with deep knowledge of one system (respiratory, circulatory, digestive, etc.). And even specialties in certain parts of each system (heart, lungs, stomach, etc.).
Organizations are not mechanical components
Organizations, however, like the human body, are not mechanical systems. They are living systems, in which there is more than anatomy and physiology. In addition to the dynamic between organs and systems, there is interaction with the environments, both physical and social, in which the person lives. All these elements make up the story of the person and the essence of life. The same goes for organizations. People are systems within systems. One of them is the system of work, which interact with everyone else.
We need to change the way we talk about people in the context of organizations
The connotation of the Human Resources expression has evolved from the 19th century to today. There was, in a way, a rescue of the understanding adopted by the human relations movement.
This is what we notice in the dissemination of the expressions EX, Employee Experience. Through it, we try to pass on the idea that employees satisfied with their work environment and with the relationships they have with their leaders and teams are happier and, consequently, more productive. When they are valued, heard, and respected, have the autonomy to take ideas forward, learn also from mistakes, they are more innovative, question things with which they do not agree, and contribute to innovations. And this generates better results for the company. That is, although we talk about valuing people, the idea behind it remains that people are resources. They should only receive different treatment from the other ones.
Jack Welch, GE’s legendary president in the late 20th century, said he needed only three indicators to run the company: employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. With employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction is achieved; customer satisfaction favors cash flow. So everything works.
But things are changing
With the advance of complexity in work relationships, the automation of repetitive activities, the need to master cutting-edge skills — technical and human — and the lack of highly qualified professionals in them, this picture is changing. People choose where, when, and how they prefer to work. So, the employer-employee relationship seems to be exhausted. You have to look for radically different relationship models.
Some traditional organizations, such as law firms and consulting firms, adopt the partners model for some levels of employees, at least for the most ranked. More recently, fintechs and startups in the technology industry have done something similar, especially with profit-sharing schemes. But they are still incipient movements. We need to change the perception of people who are in positions of power and have been trained to command and control.
Radical innovation is to stop considering people as employees and start to relate to them as partners of the enterprise. Partners are not hired, trained, and developed to meet the strategies of others. They participate in the definition of strategies, choose the ways of working and raise questions. This profoundly alters the power structure in organizations. And that’s why a proposal like this is so restricted.
John Naisbitt, one of the futurologists who has most accurately predicted trends, commented that the future of work would be by forming federations of entrepreneurs. He said that in 1985, in the work Megatrends. Looks like we’re getting there.
What about the Human Resources expression?
For an idea to have meaning it must be expressed in words. Thus, to change the perception of reality it is necessary to adopt new nomenclature, new words, and expressions. Human Resources, therefore, is an expression that needs to be abolished so that we can understand that people’s relationships at work are a relationship of partnership between equals, between partners who seek the realization of a common purpose.
People aren’t resources.