handwork

What is a human resource?

Jason Hanold has a vast experience when it comes to finding real talent. Him and his company Hanold Associates LLC, have found top level candidates for specific human resources positions and other C-level jobs for diverse industries across America. By sharing his experience readers get to have a glimpse in more detail at all the variables managers and business owners, or even future Human Resources Managers, should bear in mind when trying to acquire future and top quality talent for their positions.

The term Human Resources might seem at first somewhat trivial; nevertheless, having a better understanding of what it really means could help companies avoid the mistakes commonly made by most human resources managers when they open job positions. What is “human resources”? Moreover, what is a resource? The most common definition of a resource refers to something that is needed to produce something: materials, money, etc. A human resource, however, is something special: it is a person, or group of people, that matches somehow and are leaned towards another group of people. Human Resources Management is all about people, the human capital, inside a company — also known as employees.

The concept of resource, notwithstanding, entails a problem: they get exhausted. They have a limited lifespan. This is the reason why Human Resources should be conceived rather as Human Capital. Those familiar with the term capital can agree upon the fact that when capital is properly used it grows instead of consuming itself. The simplest example of how the human capital can be developed is by mentioning this ongoing mega trend that has surfaced during the so-called fourth industrial revolution: innovation. It would fair to say that innovation has always been present throughout history and has been also responsible for enabling famous inventors and entrepreneurs as agents of change. If it were not by the constant need to innovate and find new ways of making life much easier it would not be extreme to note that life, as we know it, would be diametrically opposed. Within a company, then, the human capital must be responsible for enabling innovation, but in order for them to be able to do so, they must be given the right tools. Think about the car manufacturers like Mercedes Benz or BMW that have been developing the

Within a company, then, the human capital must be responsible for enabling innovation, but in order for them to be able to do so, they must be given the right tools. Think about the car manufacturers like Mercedes Benz or BMW that have been developing the eco-friendly vehicle: when Ford developed its first prototype, the employees had a different mindset than nowadays car developers. Evolving and adapting the human capital — by investing heavily in them — is how, in this case, innovation is attained and the employees are developed towards the world’s needs.

Today companies have to interact with lots of different products, trends, people, nations, etc.; definitely, things have changed and so must people in order to produce “more change” as a response to the upcoming challenges. Developing people’s skills will allow the company to get through future changes smoothly; during the last decades, there has been a major shift between handwork and knowledge work. Given the fast pace at which information is shared today, knowledge has become the most important tool for coping with these changes. People, by default, mainly think rather than manipulate things, therefore encouraging the human capital to get more specialized, to “know more” about the company, their job, the ongoing trends, the latest technological developments will result in two positive outcomes: employees will fin the way to work more efficient and thusly the company will be more likely to achieve its goals. Employees are always concerned about whether will they get the credit that they deserve, or whether the company will be positively impacted as a consequence of their job, or whether they are performing well, etc. so, by minimizing the rate at which these questions arises, mainly by providing employees with a smooth substrate where they can develop their skills so that they can perform much better than expected is how the “human resource” is properly developed.

It is clear that a company’s ultimate goal is to create profit, but without a strong set of human capital this task becomes gigantic. By identifying people’s special talents and developing them as they work is how a company ends up winning double since having happy, well-versed employees can only result in the achieving of goals and milestones. Thriving is a consequence of knowing what to do before the next change happens, and in order for a company to be able to predict future changes it must have a solid team of highly capable people, willing to go the extra mile for a common goal.

Long gone are the bawdy bootlegging years where profit was how successful companies were identified, albeit this remains to be true, success has moved towards the conception of being a company where employees can developed their skills and careers as they work hand in hand with their superiors and colleagues.