Humans as a resource

Imagine you are in your favourite restaurant celebrating a special occasion. Your favourite dish is served. To your dismay it does not taste as good. One possible reason is the chef being away on holiday. Unlike products, services have persona attached to them. Consumed food is a service prepared by a face - who  made it, how it was done and so on. The mood of the person or time of the day can be  important elements of quality. This variability needs control if not  elimination. This is how the Human Resources Management was born, mainly  driven by services that overtook products in terms of revenue generated. This was seventies though aspects of the variability have been known since early years of the century. May sound  surprising but is evidenced by the fact that the courses offered in the Business Schools did not have HR as an area of studies. It was People Management dealing with administrative functions in the main. If there was any awareness it was limited to debates on the merit of Theory Y over X or the effect of variation of light at the shop floor on the productivity of workers.

Resource, by definition, is something owned by an organization that increases in value over time. Investment in such element, such as a piece of land, can make the organisation richer as the value of investment increases. Can humans be a resource from this perspective? It has been a cost so far. Besides, humans vary in characteristics divided into categories by the collar colour, blue and white. A new category was later added to give some respectability to human workers. Named knowledge workers, they were closer to qualify as resource. But there was a problem. These people were not as loyal to the organization, a prime requirement for being a resource. They had a habit of switching employment on the slightest pretext. To rope them in, the organizations devised schemes in  terms of benefits receivable. This was done by linking part of emoluments  with the period of stay. They would have to stay up to an agreeable exit time or retirement as applicable. In the parlance of Don Corleone, these were offers difficult to 'refuse'. Very few of the collared employees were entitled to such benefits. They were more of chattels, useful but dispensable, cheaper by the dozen.

In this context a friend comes to mind.  He is a graduate of BUET with a PhD in engineering. He migrated to Australia in early eighties. He had to go for a blue-collar job. Today, well in his seventies, he is a valued employee in the organization though most of his peers in other categories of work have retired. Could this mean a reversal of our traditional thoughts on employment? On the other side of the coin there are those, irrespective of the work category, who turn into cost due to lesser performance over the years. Organization would want them to depart without being unpleasant. Organizational euphemism for this practice is  'friendly handshake'. 'Perform or Perish' is the name of the game. Sounds cruel! Then again, an organization is not a charity.

Altogether, these were elements of People Management in the early years until the dawn of seventies. Some of these practices have stayed on despite massive changes in the methods of People Management, now termed as Human Resource Management. One of the contributing factors to the rise of Human Resources was technology that may sound contradictory. Technology is a killer of jobs as we know today. But they did work together in a symbiotic fashion. The man-machine duo led to increase in productivity that had not been seen before. The humans, rather people, were the lesser partners. I remember a situation in the early eighties when we were interested in procuring a just released machine for our work in a project. There were worries, technology being new, of possible disruption due to repair requirement. Yet, the machine, though expensive, was answer to our long-felt need. We bought one extra machine to minimise the impact of possible disruption. 

As businesses grew over time complexities rose in collating the constituent elements from input to processing to output. That required greater human engagement. Computers were in their infancy at the time. Demand for people having skills and ability to perform better rose as newer practices of globalization and deregulation added to such complexity. If an organization did not have people to manage them, they had to be poached. Training and Development as concepts were still in formative years controlled by money available at the coffer.

As volatility in the business world increases due to the adoption of the newer practices, organizational readiness to be able to compete in the future became an imperative. The role of HR got extended across functional areas to the extent of cutting through strong functional silos of the time. There was resentment and HR involvement was seen as usurpation. In spite, HR rose leading to the present-day role as a core function of business. It is now a member of the C-suite.

HR is long-term by design. Developing talent, harnessing corporate culture, and attending to the future needs in terms of corporate readiness are all part of HR. This at times can be difficult. More so when the leadership at the top engages in short-term pursuit as has been seen in the recent past. The solution is a two-way approach. Management must involve HR in strategic issues such as investment and collaboration. And, HR must step back to understand need for deviation from mathematics of optimality. Easier said than done!

chowdhury.igc@gmail.com