Copies from Linked In Discussions

Q:

HcM - Human commodity Management!

Yes.You read it right. And it is intended to be provocative.

It may be a new concept to the congregation here that truly and genuinely believes HCM stands for Human Capital Management. But there is a whole old world out there that is full of managements and corporates that believe:

a) people are commodities that can be easily moved/traded/dispensed with within or between departments or out of the company
b) investing in their welfare or enrichment is a cost with no tangible ROI and hence a wasteful expenditure
c) branding (read building equity) poses threat as it makes one grow bigger than their boots

So hypothetically, if you were to consult for such companies and help them transition from HcM to HCM, what would you do?

Or alternatively, what is your experience? Did you ever come across such ones? DO you believe that such mind-set exists?

Feast on! :)

Answer:

I think we are at the tipping point of a paradigm shift. This is the age of training and transformation of human beings on all the fronts ... Professional as well as personal. More training literature is being generated today than ever before, more corporate trainers are on their itineraries than ever before. Of course there would be some people from old (or well medieval ;-) schools of thought who believe that it is a waste of money and time- training the employees, however I personally would never like to work for such a company.

I would like to work for a company that treats me as a family member, and just like a family member I would like to serve them with commitment (Growing from a baby to a father!!). And yes... A family member needs training and care. I have all the reasons to believe that there would a great percentage of people who would be thinking like me.

Let us overthrow the old school of thought and give rise to an era of corporate trainers with a soft heart. People with abundance mentality... Businesses built on ethical principles...built on the principles for caring for people... If buinesses don't treat their people well, they can rest assured that the employees won't treat their clients well. They would just have a financial involvement with the company instead of a moral involvement. Businesses are all about caring for people... and ***Caring begins at Home***

Yes! an organization must be caring but with the caveat that the employee must not be a *confirmed* "Asshole". Sorry about using that word but Marcus Buckingham has made it a more polite technically defined word in his Management Classic- "The No Asshole Rule" for describing certain kinds of employees.

Thanks Arun for this thread :-) (and giving me the pleasure of writing my thoughts)