Rodney Dangerfield cries, "I don't get no respect," and thousands of HR professionals respond, "You're not alone." Well, perhaps if we'd stop screwing around with the language, obfuscating reality, and tell the truth, we'd be more highly regarded than we are.
"Human-resource types may see themselves in a better light than other executives see them. In a study in the journal Human Resource Management, executives at 12 big companies have human-resource departments lower ratings in areas ranging from training to responsiveness than human-resource executives game themselves. Human-resource personnel 'are not delivering where they should,' says Patrick Wright, study co-author and director for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University. Such executives should get business training and take time to study their firm's industry and process..."
But first, maybe they should figure out how come they're personnel in "Human Resources" and now just more human resources. Later, they can find out whether or not they're hyphenated. To continue...
"Human-Resource positions get cut and they might not come back. Those HR workers delivering layoff news at your workplace may face their own job cuts. Bank One Corp. last week (this from Aug. 28, 2001 WSJ) cut 150 HR positions... While some employers might keep a full HR staff around to process layoffs, others cut accordingly. [What's funny about that is that they consider a "full HR staff" to be the usual 1:100 ratio, and Helen Drinan, CEO of SHRM, 'expects the ratio to widen.'.] In some cases, cuts might be permanent...with some companies turning to outsourcing to replace HR functions..."
But my thought this month are entirely on HR. Rather they concern how business in general has minimized direct consequences through the use of euphemisms. This is the last week of 2001, and what did I see on an Internet BBS yesterday but a question as to what we should call employees! First you change personnel to human resources, from something whose function most understood to something which many incumbents don't fully understand. That job description (in Labor Pains and the subscriber's section) could be five times longer if I listed all the responsibilities that various HR people have been "tasked" with. Then, you either changed or accepted the change from being fired or laid off to being "downsized," and you compound this with "rightsized", but never oversized. Realize that a layoff was never the same as a termination. It was an interim move before, hopefully, being called back. But call it downsized, and even the BLS accepted the reality that a layoff was forever.
And to think that there are still HR folk wasting their time coming up with new names for employees. I still like my idea of "yolk mates," but only the then head of SHRM found the humor in that. Whether you call an employee an associate or a partner (without realizing the ramifications of that beaut) or help, when one has been downsized, you have a fired associate whom we'll probably never see again.
Now, English is a marvelous language, complex and simplistic at the same time, expressive in just a few words, perhaps because we have so many homonyms, synonyms, and antonyms. Of course, that is what makes it such a difficult language. It's also a flexible language, but it's that acceptance of new terminology that leads to its weakening. It's difficult enough to figure out what was meant without having to get a new definition which simply obscures an older, simpler one.
Knowing the barriers to comprehension , why did we have to complicate things by inventing HR euphemisms and practicing political correctness. That's a rhetorical question. Deep down we know why. To obfuscate. To lessen the impact of negative news. To make us look better ... although most often only in our own eyes. To lie or just hide the truth, but maybe that too is obfuscation.
Euphemisms have been around for centuries, at least to the first time when there was some sensitivity between two persons. When that ruling individual or government decided that the euphemism should or must replace other perfectly good language I do not know, but it has led to incomprehensible laws (ADA as just one example), projection of other persons' feelings to the point where we send others to "sensitivity training," and lawsuits by minorities and even majorities (e.g., neurotic people) when we step on a few psychological toes (talk about a mixed and terrible metaphore!).
Actually, we can just get along ... if HR and politicians would give us half a chance. But, no, these entities have become the world's hall monitors. We don't need diversity training; we need university training. Perhaps what sets people apart more than anything else is language. It's one thing to use discretion so as not to hurt someone. It's quite another to weaken the actions we take by using euphemisms and being politically correct. And because of political correctness, we've made our own lives so much more difficult. Be polite, use common sense and discretion, but say what you mean few cryin' out loud.
Remember, if you don't start choosing substance over form, when you are downsized and we'll all just be collateral damage of political correctness.
All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2002. E. A. Winning Associates,
Inc.