Manpower Matters.

We have been seeing this in the news a lot recently, centered around a strike by SMRT bus drivers. Besides the news about the arrests, repatriations and other things, SMRT has been told to "...take greater care with HR matters..." Which is what every good company ought to be doing. What we should be concerned about is how this could have happened to SMRT, which is one of the main players operating the essential public service of transport.

I wonder if this is symptomatic of how we treat other people. Perhaps we ought to stop using terms like "Human Resource" and "Manpower". Perhaps those terms dehumanize people and turn them into soulless commodities. I think changing our terms would be good. I've changed my LinkedIn descriptor to "people developer" instead of "human capital developer". Perhaps you should look around and change some things too.

Because it's not HR that matters. Neither is it Manpower that matters. People matter. That's what matters.

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