Our ongoing "If I could change one thing about HR.." series continues today with a very fine offering from Gareth Jones.
As well as his roles as leader at The StopGap Group/Courtenay HR, Gareth is also a co-founder of the excellent ConnectingHR events, which provide an ongoing case study in how social media can be successfully used to enable meaningful debate about HR issues and to create a strong community of like-minded HR professionals. The debut ConnectingHR unconference is due to take place in London next month, and looks set to be a great event.
For any readers of Employment Intelligence that would like to hear more of what Gareth has to say, his Inside My Head... blog comes highly recommended.
Gareth Jones: If I could change one thing about HR...
What's in a name?
Everything it seems. For me at least anyway. And that's the one thing I would change about HR, or 'Human Resources' if I could. The name. I've grown to loath it over the years. But it wasn't always the case...
When I had my first job - Personnel Officer - back in the late 80s the debate over the new name was well under way and I was the first to wear my new 'HR Officer' badge (which came with a promotion ironically!) with honour. I too waxed lyrical about the importance of the difference, distancing myself from the crusty 'has beens' who continued to hang onto the 'Personnel' moniker.
And despite our penchant for reinvention, 'boardroom bingo' acronyms and buzzwords, the 'Human Resource' tag remains. Which is, in my opinion, a real shame.
You see, I am not a 'resource'. 'Resources' are what I can pop down to Rymans and buy. Resources are those natural, relatively innate and largely non-living substances that we are intent on digging out of the ground or extracting from our surroundings in order to support our abuse of the planet. 'Resources' was the name of a department we had at University that housed photocopiers, paper cutters and fax machines.
No, I am not a resource. I'm not even a Human one. I am a person. I am me.
And this is one of the areas where organisations have got it wrong, trying to manage and treat its lifeblood like a resource. Like a bag of sugar. Or a flow of raw materials. Like it comes in neat, uniform packages or boxes or can be organised and shipped like a container of orange juice. Classing people as 'Human Resources' is trying to make science out of art. It's just not appropriate nor is it beneficial or effective.
So to the million-dollar question: What should it be instead? Good question. "Head of mopping up other peoples crap" perhaps. Or "Chief taking the blame officer". No wait, how about "VP of Why am I not taken seriously by the board". I jest of course.
What I do know is that we are talking about people and if we have to have a separate function (a separate debate and blog post too!) to 'look after' people like you and me, it should be way more relevant and be the most important influence in the business.
Because without people, you have no business. Forget technology, product innovation or new service lines. When you boil it all down, people are your only point of difference. And somewhere along the line, classing us all as 'human resources' hasn't helped.
So over to you fellow blog readers. Any suggestions for a new, more appropriate, more 'in touch' moniker?! Answers on a postcard please!
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Comments (9)
Agree with what you have written here Gareth, and to be honest I thought about writing a similar post, I just couldn't think of a good way to capture it, and you've done so nicely!
It's not dissimilar to our Operations team. They were called 'resourcing managers' but we're moving to call them 'casting managers'. I don't know if I like that either to be honest, but it's a step in the right direction.
But I've been giving this some thought in general over recent weeks since these posts started and I'm just stuck. I mean anything like 'People Management Team' (PMT?!), or 'Employee Relations' (ER!) is just lame and quite frankly devoid of any inspiration on my part.
Out of curiosity, how did the change from 'Personnel' to 'HR' happen?
Posted by Sukh Pabial | September 10, 2010 8:29 AM
Posted on September 10, 2010 08:29
I've been called lots of things.......perhaps Merchant of Doom is the best fitting (no, make that Chief Merchant of Doom).
I'm surprised you managed to avoid the nauseating "Business Partner" term too.....
Great post Mr. J.
Posted by TheHRD | September 10, 2010 8:48 AM
Posted on September 10, 2010 08:48
Hi Sukh - thanks for you comments! "Casting Managers" - has a Disney type ring to it as they call their teams 'cast members'! You work for Disney or something similar?
It's funny that in our arena, we constantly strive for a new name dont we? for as long as i remember, my sales, marketing and finance counterparts have always had the same titles - no angst!
Re the shift from personnel to HR - it was, if i remember driven by two things:
1) The desire to create an all encompassing name that would rope in Training especially - The training and personnel institutes merged to form the IPD back then.
2) The need to find something that would increase our status/value/position at board level! Ha ha, that old chestnut. And we are STILL going on about that - 25 years later!
Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers
G
Posted by Gareth Jones | September 10, 2010 9:08 AM
Posted on September 10, 2010 09:08
Hi Theo! (@TheHRD)
I was going to mention the BP title but hmmm well yes. Nuff said!
CMD - sounds too close to CJD - human mad cow desease. Any coincidence?!
Thanks for the comments!
Gareth
Posted by Gareth Jones | September 10, 2010 9:13 AM
Posted on September 10, 2010 09:13
Gareth,
The change you desire is not the name. Re-branding doesn't fundementally change what lies within.
Snickers are still Marathon's
Cif is still Jiff
Starburst is still Opal Fruits
And HR will be HR regardless of what you call it until the attitude to people in the workplace changes. I agree with you that all are individuals and 'One size fits all' policy dehumanises us, but lets not mess around with the name. Let us instead tackle the issue that you really highlighted, peoples attitude to other people in the workplace. Drive that change and HR will be a name to be proud of.
Matt.
Posted by Matthew Scott | September 10, 2010 11:37 AM
Posted on September 10, 2010 11:37
Hi Matt
Yes well, this is a series on 'one thing to change about HR' not all the things id like to change about organisations!
As you suggest, changing the name makes no difference; it didn't last time did it? And wont this time even if we come up with a new one - my request was a bit tongue in cheek and not to be taken so seriously!
The key, as you highlighted from my post is to tackle the 'peoples attitude to other people in the workplace' and this has absolutely nothing to do with HR. HR will waste a lot of time pushing against a closed door in most organisations.
Sure they can influence by exampling other organisations or implementing projects themselves (If they can get away with it) but our fundamental approach to leadership and to people need to change. And to do that, you need to change the leadership.
We need to let go of our hierarchical, centuries old management styles, diffuse the ticking time bomb that is the current 'talent matrix' and instead, open up the potential of the people around us that many organisations and leaders take for granted, day in day out, largely in the pursuit of 'shareholder/stakeholder value' whatever that means!
Until you change some of the fundamentals like ownership structure, exec reward systems etc nothing will change in many of these businesses.
Changing the name of HR will not do that, agreed. But recognising we work with people, with each other and not a box of snickers bars might just be a micro step in the right direction.
Nice comment, thanks for stopping by!
Cheers
G
Posted by Gareth Jones | September 10, 2010 12:33 PM
Posted on September 10, 2010 12:33
I raised this issue on my Twitter account only two days ago:
Does 'human resources' cf 'personnel' = more than semantics? Is it personnel without the person? Are we more than simply another resource?
Like Sukh, one wonders where these changes come from... For what it's worth, I agree with Matt - the key is to make the reality match the rhetoric (to coin a phrase from the mediation field).
Posted by Paul Latreille | September 10, 2010 1:02 PM
Posted on September 10, 2010 13:02
"We need to let go of our hierarchical, centuries old management styles, diffuse the ticking time bomb that is the current 'talent matrix' and instead, open up the potential of the people around us that many organisations and leaders take for granted, day in day out, largely in the pursuit of 'shareholder/stakeholder value' whatever that means!"
Everyone stand-up and give Gareth a standing ovation for this paragraph!
[Not too bothered what we call the profession if we start to tackle what we do and how we do it - although the term 'Human Capital' does make me feel sick]
Posted by Glyn Lumley | September 10, 2010 1:57 PM
Posted on September 10, 2010 13:57
Thanks for a great read Gareth. I like your alternative names, even though they were in jest. :)
Posted by Jen Turi | September 10, 2010 4:53 PM
Posted on September 10, 2010 16:53