This is a new blog so I’d better start with something vanilla and safe…only joking! Let’s start with HR being a horrible, horrible name.

A resource is something that you use up to achieve in an end. This inhuman way of mechanising people started in the industrial revolution and has continued in call centres and sweat shops today.

The term HR is not neutral and it sets up a particular way of viewing human beings and a particular way of treating them. Comparing people with ‘resources’ like staplers and faxes is insulting, and has negative consequences. So what else to call Human Resources? ‘Human Capital’ is similar and also makes me want to puke.

‘Personnel’ makes it sound like the army, People Management is as bad (if an employee gets cancer you don’t ‘manage’ that), and ‘Care Department’ is a bit too fluffy even for me. ‘What Matters’ is apt but perhaps too abstract…how about ‘Hiring, Lying and Firing’? OK, now I’m getting cynical 🙂

How about we just cut the bull and call the people that deal with people the People Department? I see two types of HR departments in the companies I provide business training for – those who help an organisation dehumanise people, and those who are a (sometimes lonely and hard-pressed) voice for people being people and not cogs in a machine.

This for me is the most vital and ethically sound function of HR and I heartily salute all those who do this even when times are tough. Of course it’s not a name on an office that really matters but how much we give a damn about human beings. A name however sets the tone, so perhaps it’s a place to start? Please be a resource and give your views – what do you call the people stuff where you are and what would you like it to be called?

All the best from Brighton,

Mark Walsh

Integration Training business training providers