Human Resources should really be named Employer Resources as it exists to protect the company from liability for their employees.
I'd vote for the old terminology: Personnel Department.
In any organization, a resource can vary from things such as land, chemicals, machines, humans, books, etc.
The term Human Resources seems accurate to a refer to a group of people that deal with the humans in the organization.
I do not see why “resources” is seen as having a negative connotation in this context. Of course, just like a family can mistreat a resourceful family member, so can any organization mistreat a human resource.
Not that accurate, in my view: a resource is something that's a positive thing to be exploited.
"Human resources" in most companies are not there primarily to exploit the employee to their full potential/productivity/burnout level. They're there to protect the company from the employees!
Beyond this they’re also often key players in recruitment marketing, employer branding, hiring and selection, understanding the broader employment market to ensure pay and benefits are inline with desired industry norms, health and wellbeing, and the list goes on.
None of this is ever perfect and, of course, we can all think of companies where it’s been highly dysfunctional.
But, nonetheless, claiming all they do is protect the company from employees is still too reductive.
> But, nonetheless, claiming all they do is protect the company from employees is still too reductive.
I didn't claim that that is all they do; I'm claiming that that is their primary purpose.
Employees are human resources.
The point of that quip is that Human Resources does not focus on the humans as nouns, meaning as humans.
Human technology, human race, human rights, human error, human nature, human history, human power. Always an adjective.
I still cant think of a common noun usage, let alone an alternative noun reading for human resources. People don't say "hello human".
It is weird to see comments talking about "HR" as some euphemism or double speak. Maybe I'm the outlier, but I don't understand any other meaning besides managing the resource that is humans.
That covers lots of things- managing the liability, procurement, retention, firing, of the workforce.
Do people really think "HR" is the resource?
A con almost on par with the term “global warming” and “climate change.”