Humans are not resources, so why do we pretend they are?

If you had a choice to between managing a human or managing a resource which do you think would be the easiest?

Anyone familiar with the task of herding cats will readily appreciate that managing a resource is heaps easier than dealing with human beings, who can be distinctly unplayable, tricky, unpredictable and inconsistent.

In reality, managing humans is akin to herding cats, so why do we pretend otherwise?Credit: iStock

Perhaps therefore the unholy marriage of human and resources is a forlorn attempt by management to think of their humans as resources. Unfortunately, too often that is precisely how people get treated when the HR managers start doing things by the book.

This week I was tasked to review a large organisation’s redundancy practices. I was privy to all the documentation and deliberations that went into “firing people with enthusiasm”. It was all there, the post-hoc attempts to apply metrics to justify arbitrary or biased decisions about whom to keep and whom to boot out.

However, what I found most chilling, but perhaps least surprising, were the prepared “scripts” to be read, depending upon whether the hapless staff member was to be on their way, a candidate for potential redeployment, or being offered the job their boss had until their legs were cut from under them.

A script! Sacking by rote. The managers in this organisation were so useless, so inarticulate, and frankly so inhuman that they didn’t trust themselves to have an authentic conversation with a soon-to-be ex-colleague. Why bother holding the meeting in person at all? Simply get Siri or Alexa to say “off yer go son, and don’t darken our towels again”.

It is too easy to forget that managing people is all about humans, and that all of us occasionally are likely to struggle.

While I was in the midst of this, a good friend who is senior in one of the emergency services told me about an outstanding example of not only management, but true leadership. It started with a sorry tale that would be familiar to many if not all of those who work in emergency roles.

Multiple staff had to attend a scene of such carnage and tragedy that the leader, with decades of experiencing some of the most terrible scenes most of us could imagine, said it was the worst they’d ever seen.

What they did next was not straight out of an HR procedures manual, and did not involve spouting the platitudes of an HR script. Instead, in the days that followed they organised a barbecue for all the staff involved in several locations and made sure they were there in person at each one. They did it to say thank you, and to check in on everyone involved.

For their staff most closely involved, they all had a coffee, before they were sent off as a team on a bushwalk, to allow them to spend time and support one another.

Obviously, there were also all the formal support services and processes put into place to assist the staff deal with the experience. However, these direct, simple, sincere actions – the turning up in person, the acknowledgement of the magnitude of what people had experienced, the provision of time out, and time together – all of these acts were the acts of a human trying to understand, support and show how much they valued the humans they managed.

It is too easy to forget that managing people is all about humans, and that all of us occasionally are likely to struggle, to be confronted or overwhelmed, and that is OK to feel that way.

Provided, of course, the manager does not turn up with a clipboard, a checklist and a script saying “We at Careless Ltd take your [insert name if you can be bothered] mental health very seriously.” Humans are not resources.

Dr Jim Bright, FAPS, is a director at IWCA and is Director of Evidence & Impact at edtech start up BECOME Education. Email to [e-mail]. Follow him on X/Twitter @DrJimBright

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