Human Capital

There are two words I want to remove from the business lexicon: Human Capital.

This is a sweeping phrase meant to generally categorize the people of a company into a more quantifiable “asset.”

This phrase has been around for decades, and Big 4 consulting firms still have entire business lines named “Human Capital Consulting.” Even as someone who worked in such a firm in that particular business line, it never felt right to me. The work we were doing was emotional, human, and interpersonal. Guiding people through major change while helping them work through their fears and uncertainties.

As we take stock of the state of business in Q2 of 2024, times are still tough. High levels of burnout are still being reported. More and more talented people are leaving corporations because they’re tired of the inflexibility of our current workforce paradigm. Companies are suddenly changing tactics from aggressive acquisition to upskilling their current teams.

I find it both funny and ironic that companies are scrambling, when the signposts have been there for years, evolving into giant blinking billboards during Covid: people are sick of working to live. They want more choice. They want more freedom and pleasure in their lives.

They want to stop being considered “human capital,” and want to be treated like humans.

I once had to work inside a chicken hatchery for a week, and I remember thinking that whoever designed the machinery must have done it with an acceptable death rate percentage in mind, knowing that 10% of the chicks would not be able to withstand the rough first hours after their hatching as they were put through chutes, handled, and batched.

I think organizations design their internal systems often thinking the same way - there is an acceptable amount of humans who will find the system insufferable, but most will be able to weather it.

That’s where organizations are wrong. Stress and burnout and disengagement happen because of our humanness, and when our humanness is ignored in favor of bottom lines and ROI, we feel undervalued, anxious, and uncertain. Eventually, we burn out. Or leave. Or both. This is why the fractional and gig economy is booming – people want the work, but not the bullshit.

If we want the humans in the organization to be resilient, we need to actually build a system that supports HUMANS.