When I began working for companies as a young man, I applied at the Employment Office and pay came from the Paymaster. Later when I taught at the Army's The Adjutant General's School, I taught Personnel Management and another department taught Personnel Administration. Some years after this a friend wrote that his title had been upgraded in a national firm from Vice President for Personnel to Vice President for Human Resources. I felt each increment in this evolution sounded good, because the words were coming closer to the real point. Instead of corporations thus becoming more human conscious and sensitive, however, it was largely PR about HR. The typical corporate human resources department has ended up serving the corporation against its human resources, the employees. The Corporate Curmudgeon Dale Dauten calls them "corporate cops."

In a syndicated column, Dauten quotes a letter he received from a man searching for a job: "I'm finding HR to be untruthful, many actually lying to me. I had an interview and was assured at its conclusion by the HR manager that they would be getting in touch with me within two weeks. After three weeks, I contacted him and was told the interview process was taking longer than expected and that I'd hear something in another two weeks. Three weeks after that, I called and was told that the position had been put on hold indefinitely for budgetary reasons. The following week I received a letter from the HR manager's office, stating the position had been filled several weeks earlier."

I am familiar with a college professor in Illinois who was told one day by his dean to start looking for a teaching position elsewhere because he was no longer welcome in this college. Two days later, as he reached the fifth anniversary of teaching in this particular college, he received a typed letter that was obviously a form congratulating him on having reached his fifth anniversary with the college and how the dean was looking forward to many more years of working together.

A college administrator was interviewed for the position of dean of an Indiana college, given a contract to sign, but it was withdrawn by the vice president for business without explanation. Six months later he received a letter from human resources thanking him for applying for the position of assistant to the registrar and informing him he was non-selected.

When a new instructor in the local community college inquired of its human resources office about the meaning of a contradiction in a statement of faculty policy, he was told: "Just read the manual: that's what it's there for."

In this same school, the new director of human resources addressed the faculty for the first time. She began: "I am here to protect the College." Inasmuch as she was talking to faculty, she clearly meant to say she was protecting the college from the faculty. Then she went down a long list of things for which any of them could be fired. She really meant it. By the way, she has since been promoted to Vice President for Human Resources.

Employees truly are an institution's or corporation's most valuable resource. People are infinitely more critical to the success of an organization than funding, materiel, equipment, or technology. This is true of corporate executives, middle management, and entry level workers. People are what makes an organization work. A company with rich non-human resources but an indifferent work force will fail, but one with a committed and motivated work force can beat out the competition every time.

The job of human resources is to respect the humanity and personhood of the company's personnel and develop this resource to maximum productivity for the company and maximum fulfillment of its employees. When it focuses on protecting the company against its personnel, it erects walls that prevent human development and robs the company of its most valuable resource. If the company fails to make itself actually vulnerable to its employees, they will never become an actual resource.

Dr. Wallace Alcorn’s commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.