I've been lurking on this list for a while, admiring the vast storehouse
of knowledge, experience, and wisdom of the participants. Now I find a
subject where I feel I can make a contribution. As a Human Resource
professional I find this thread quite fascinating and very relevant to the
dialog that is going on about and in Human Resources these days. I work
for a company that is re-inventing its HR function (as opposed to
re-engineering which is so popular these days).
We have had spirited debates about what it really means to be an HR
department, what's our mission, what are our strategic imperatives. In a
nutshell this is what we think our job is: to create the conditions under
which the employees of the company can successfully execute the company's
business strategy.
What I particularly find fascinating about the discussion around Human
Resources as an appropriate title is that I always viewed the title as
indicating that we (the HR dept) were resources to the employees of the
company (the humans) which also included us (some might think HR people
aren't quite human, I'd like to think we are). However, HR professionals
often refer to our customers (the employees) as human resources.
There is an underlying assumption that a collection of individuals
(employees) referred to as Human Resources makes each individual a
"resource". A group has its own life and becomes an entity unto itself,
separate from the collection of individuals that make it up. Just because
someone refers to you with a group name doesn't make you the group, you're
still an individual.
HR departments have tried to affect how a group operates by operating on
the individuals of that group which, in my experiencem, hasn't proven to
work. This is the real challenge for HR departments now, how to address
lots of individual and group needs (employees, departments, executives,
etc) while still addressing the whole group's needs (the company).
There is also the topic of how an HR department can assist an organization
in the process of becoming an LO (a separate thread I think).
Coleen.Wagner@siemensrolm.com
(no current title - the price of re-invention)
Human Resources
Siemens Rolm Communications Inc.
--"Coleen Wagner" <Coleen.R.Wagner@siemensrolm.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>