Most Important Asset

Employees

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Boy do I get ticked when I hear this. Consider all the assumptions implicit in the statement:

• an employee's value decreases over time
• every 5 years, they will have to be replaced with newer, better models
• the old ones can be given to charity for a tax write-off

To paraphrase PatrickMcGoohan I am not an asset, I am a free man!

Hey, it could be worse. Here, they call us intangibles. We were so amused, we named the company band "The Intangibles"!

How about having a department of Human Capital?

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From the 3 March 1993 DilBert:

PointyHairedBoss: I've been saying for years that "Employees are our most valuable asset." It turns out that I was wrong. Money is our most valuable asset. Employees are ninth.

Wally: I'm afraid to ask what came in eighth.

PointyHairedBoss: Carbon paper.

-- EricJablow

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It also implies that employees are property of the company. Ditto resources. Of course, any better term that gets used will get turned into CorporateSpeak and corrupted. --PeteHardie

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RefactorMe: Merge with HumanResources

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See also PersonnelDepartment, WhyIsDomainKnowledgeNotValued

CategoryEmployment