Sometimes, when I hear people talking about “resources,” I ask if the speaker means people. When I do, the responses fall into three groups.

Some people look a bit blank for a moment, as if coming out of a trance. They realize resources isn’t the term they want. They know that people do work. They’ve fallen into the habit from hearing the term repeated over and over in their organizations.,

Other people respond with a brush off, as if only an idiot would ask such a question.

A third group switch to using the term people.. However, they continue t talk about people as if they were productive factors, not living, breathing people.

That’s a problem.

Resource, Defined:

Let’s look at the definition of the term resource. The first definition is the English language definition. The second puts the definition in a business context.

1. a : a source of supply or support : an available means —usually used in plural
b: a natural source of wealth or revenue —often used in plural
c: a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life
d: computable wealth —usually used in plural
e: a source of information or expertise
(Source: www.mirriam-webster.com)

Economic or productive factor required to accomplish an activity, or as means to undertake an enterprise and achieve desired outcome. Three most basic resources are land, labor, and capital; other resources include energy,  entrepreneurship,  information,  knowhow,  management, and time.
(Source: www.businessdictionary.com)

Characterizing Productive Factors

Now, let’s compare the characteristics of productive factors and some characteristics of people.

Fungible

Productive factors are often fungible. People aren’t. Even when they have the same skills, people aren’t interchangeable. I tried a little thought experiment to see if I could imagine a job where people are fungible. Dishwashers? Are dishwashers fungible? They have no special skills. One dishwasher is pretty much the same as another. On the task level, this may be true. However, if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know that not all dishwashers are the same. The individual characteristics of a dishwasher can change the mood of the kitchen.

Specifiable

Productive factors may be required to have specific skills, and those skills are all that matters. The rest of the person is irrelevant. I once sat on a panel about breaking into tech as a second career. According to one panelist, the employment outlook for these folks was entry level work.

Some of these folks had managed dozens of people and run businesses. Others had taught school. One had designed precision parts. Another had managed inventory and understood queuing. These experiences strike me as super interesting. Further, they are highly relevant to both team and management roles.

Apparently, none of that matters if you are a productive factor.

Utilizable

Productive factors are utilized. However, thinking of people in terms of utilization leads to burn out. The resource-thinker on the panel talked about requiring 90-100% utilization after layoffs. To his consulting firm, that mean 90-100% billable hours, Billable hours were only portion of the hours actually worked.

Oddly, most resource-thinkers realize this about machines, but often forget it about people. Eventually, failure to change the oil in a car has a visible cost. Those costs may be less visible with people. Yet, the cost of sick time is high. The cost of replacing people who leave due to burn out is even higher.

Allocatable

Productive factors can be allocated across many jobs. People in manufacturing recognize set up and switching time. Many people managers seem not to. I’ve seen project managers assign people to five or even ten tasks at a time. They use tiny little slices–15%, 10%, 5%. Plenty tasks that only take an hour or so. But assigning people 5%? That implies micromanagement and inevitably leads to task-switching.

Un-individuated

Productive factors don’t have personalities. People do. People may have similar technical skills. But each brings unique preferences, qualities, style. People bring their own experiences, points of view, ability to solve problems and relate to others. Ignoring individual characteristics ignores the importance of human communication. Work gets done by people who can figure out how to work together.

Productive factors don’t care about autonomy, mastery, or purpose.

Where Resource-thinking Leads

Resource-thinking leads to excessive focus on labor rate. Labor rate is not labor cost. Driving labor rates down often drives labor costs up.

Resource-thinking leads to ignoring that work involves communication, interactions, relationships.

Resource-thinking sucks the soul out of work.

Our thoughts shape our language. But our language also shapes our thoughts.

The zeroth step in creating humane workplaces is to start talking about the people not resources.

BTW, first know use of the term Human Resources was 1961.  So much damage done.

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