One common practice I see in the organizations I work with, is the use of the term “resources” to describe the people who do the work.

I often overhear things like “managing resources”, “assigning resources”, “not enough resources”, and even the “resourcing plan”.

What are we really talking about here? Pencils? Paper? Toner? Oil? These are the kinds of things I picture when I hear the term resources. Things that are used up and/or thrown away when they are used up. Things that are both disposable and replaceable. Except, when I hear this term in organizations, they’re typically referring to people.

So if you’re using a term like “resources” to describe your people and if other things that are referred to as resources are disposable and replaceable, how might you treat your people? In what way does an organization that views their people as disposable “resources” behave? When we erect entire departments around managing our human “resources”, how might that department view its role? As an organization, how much will you invest in training and learning for your disposable and replaceable “resources”?

When I teach Scrum, I often refer to the chicken and the pig joke that is used to describe the different participants in organizations using Scrum. I reference this joke purely for historical value and always emphasize that these are not terms you should be using to refer to each other. After all, calling each other chickens and pigs is no better than being called a “resource”.

In one session, while explaining why you shouldn’t actually use the term chicken or pig, I also mentioned the negative effects of using the term “resource”. When I did, someone in the session gasped and blurted out, “Oh my God! I do that!”. To her, it was a revelation. The reasons not to do it made perfect sense when explained to her, but she was just so used to doing it because that’s what everyone else did. After that, she encouraged everyone in the group to call her on it if she ever used the term. A tough habit to break for sure, but at least she was now aware of the effect it had within the team and the organization.

Later, one of the other people in the session asked, “What do we call them?”. The rest of the attendees gave her a bit of a quizzical look and then someone said “People?”.

Using terms like people, teams, or individual names changes the interaction. It makes you frame the discussion in a different way. It’s not just semantics either, it changes the way you represent people in your organization.

For example, Ronald Baker, author of the fantastic book Pricing on Purpose, introduces the term Human Capital. I’m not sure I’m sold on that term, but at an organizational level, capital seems far more appropriate.

From his book,

Human Capital (HC). This comprises your team members and associates who work either for you or with you. As one industry leader said, this is the capital that leaves in the elevator at night. The important thing to remember about HC is it cannot be owned, only contracted, since it is completely volitional. In fact, more and more, knowledge workers own the mean of your company’s production, and knowledge workers will invest their HC in those organizations that pay a decent return on investment, both economic and psychological. In the final analysis, your people are not assets (they deserve more respect than a copier machine and a computer)-they are not resources to be harvested from the land like timber when you run out. Ultimately, they are volunteers, and it is totally up to them whether or not they get back into the elevator the following morning.

Now imagine if you were to start referring to your “resources” as volunteers? How might that change your organizational behaviour?

In every organization there is knowledge in the heads of the people you hire that can be documented or passed on through training, but there is also tacit knowledge that cannot be easily transferred from person to person. If that volunteer chooses not to get back in the elevator the following morning, that knowledge goes with them.

That seems more than a resource to me.

In the organization I’m currently working with, without any influence from me, they have renamed their Human Resources department “Employee Experience”. I suspect a department focused on employee experience will behave very differently from a department focused on managing human “resources”.

What do you think?

Today’s image by Ha-Wee