My career started in the late 70s, when “Human Resources” was replacing “Personnel Department”. I’ve always thought the term “human resource” was terribly degrading, and I still don’t understand how it caught on and never left.
A lot of places also stopped calling their employees “employees” and started calling them “associates”. What’s up with that?
It’s a dimn effort to make employees feel part of the gang in a vain effort to keep them from quitting.
They could actually pay them properly and treat them like humans, but it costs money to do so.
Really? I have always considered “associate” to sound like you aren’t a member of the organization. You’re just loosely associated with the organization.
I always figured it’s to de-emphasize the fact that you have bosses and owners. Employee implies that clearly, while associate makes it seem more like you’re working with colleagues of your own volition. All in the service of making you infinitesimally more pliable.
No it means more like “colleague”.
That “associate” thing has been around for decades, and varies by region. In the US it was mostly used for retail employees back in the day, not as much as corporate workers. But it goes in and out of style. When an employer adopts it or drops it, it’s probably because some executive is trying to make a “splash”.
I’m okay with it being called HR, because it’s the more honest term for what it is.
It’s now being referred to as Human Capital
Yeah I hate it, it sounds exactly like the worm-tongued bureaucrat-speak that it is. Orwell wrote about exactly this kind on nonsense in Politics and the English Language and it is as true as ever today.
Personnel department sounds so much neater.
Yes, Personnel has “person” in it rather than “human”.
This is literally the distillation of all corporate thought.
Someone left and the role wasn’t filled and the work kept still getting done? I guess 3 people can do those 4 people’s jobs.
Something worked well but it doesn’t fit with the corporate culture? No it didnt
My last place used to do position budgeting based on previous year’s pay hours. Which may sound good on paper for stable departments but…
2016: 4 people in the position who worked fulltime throughout the year. Their budget for 2017 is 4.0
2017: 1 employee left in July. But due to bureaucracy it took 6 months to even try to get the position posted. Calculated pay hours for the year were 3.5 so that’s the employee budget for 2018.
2018: 3 employees still in the position doing the workload of 4. In February the position finally gets to the employment board but since their budget is 3.5 they’re only approved to post a part-time position. Takes 4 months to get it posted, applicants and interviews. By August the position is finally filled with a part-time worker. One of the original 3 is finally sick of the BS and leaves in October. Calculated pay hours is 2.95 for the year and so budgeted 3.0 for 2019.
2019: Current budget is 3.0, they try to get approval to backfill the employee who left in October but current staffing is 2.5, they won’t allow 2 PT employees so they’re able to negotiate converting the PT to FT, which becomes effective in April. Calculating payroll throughout the year with the status change, the budget going into 2020 is 2.8 which means they’ll never get back to 4 employees.
This is a VERY realistic scenario which lead to once easy going departments becoming staffed with burned out, bitter employees.
Not all corporate thought. Some corporations actually listen, even if it’s not cool to say on lemmy. I for one don’t hate my job, the company is coll and my boss is actually nice. Same with my previous company, I still hang out with my old boss from time to time.
It comes down to assuming that just because two things have the same unit and “magnitude” they must be equal/fungible. Some things are. People are not. Days are often not. But this sort of oversimplification is everywhere in corporate thought. People being paid tons of money to assume you get the same output from an experienced employee and one who just finished training.
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Corporate thought also simultaneously believes the reverse:
Things aren’t getting done? The team that went from 11 members to 3 while their incoming work rate tripled must not be working hard enough. We should consider outsourcing.
“But… we gave the team AI so they can go faster! Why is everything turning into shit?”
Some executives are so fucking dense.
That’s because you rise through the ranks through nepotism or by being a sycophant. It is very rarely due to critical thinking skills, intelligence, or mastery of the industry.
Also the Peter principle
That is basically the opposite of the peter principle. The peter principle is that you are promoted based on actual skills in your current role, until you reach a role where you do not have the necessary skills
Edit: Misread, I didn’t see “also”
Clearly the team just needs to prompt better. Time to invest in AI training!
oh! oh! time for a reorg!?
Well not really, because that’s like saying women “simultaneously” like to flaunt their bodies and hate having men stare at them. Different women and different managers think differently.
Corporate culture is patriarchal. If it doesn’t put everyone into a hierarchy where they’re forced to subjugate themselves then that can’t work because that’s against the emotional reason the bosses got the job in the first place.
It’s because people don’t know how to draw boundaries, and perhaps will get replaced with the sheep that says yes to everything. (?)
Fake and gay
This is the kind of motherfucker i want to see publicity executed and their corpse strung up with the words “don’t be an asshole” written on them.
