Pen-Elayne on the Web

Resources Without Humans

I'd like to recommend a brilliant entry by Emma riffing on a Financial Times article she read about why managers don't seem to understand more about how happy employees are more productive. According to Emma,

I would blame the pervasive managerial fallacy that places the worker on the debit side of the ledger. And you can pinpoint exactly when it happens in any workplace: when the personnel department becomes "Human Resources".

"Human Resources" places the worker in the same context as raw materials or office supplies. It allows management to indulge in "organizational transformation," through "redesigning of the human resources system," by "implementing organization development interventions" to "strengthen organizational relationships" with the goal of "improving effectiveness and productivity".(*)

I dare you to find the human being in that maze.

Her footnote translates the gobbledygook as follows:

(*)This means "we are going to downsize the staff by 20%, shove the work onto those who are left while cutting their benefits--and don't even think about a raise!. Human Resources idiots will hold a series of mandatory brown-bag lunch meetings (out of the goodness of our hearts we will provide sodas) to tell you how wonderful this will be to our bottom line. At the end of the quarter we will show a .5% rise in our stock and management will be voted million dollar raises by their buddies on the Board of Trustees, and next year we start all over again."

By the way, did I mention that I'm actively seeking a new job? E-mail me for my resume if you or someone you know in the NYC area would like to hire a damn good executive secretary.