HR = Talent = People
Seth Godin suggests changing the name of the HR Department to the Talent Department.
Let’s just go all the way and be done with it.
Let’s change the name of the HR Department to the People Department.
The word “talent” is certainly better than “HR” but it’s still not totally personal. It wobbles in the middle of saying, “Yes you’re more than a human resource, but you’re still made up of skills and I still have to treat you at arm’s length.”
Seth writes:
What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)
Talent isn’t really that hard to find. Talented People on the other hand.
So maybe we can get the best of Seth’s world and mine, and change HR Department into Talented People Department. Suddenly, I want to work in that department! And imagine how everyone else feels when they’re approach by the VP of Talented People. Sounds pretty good to me…
Isn’t it ironic that it used to be called “Personnel”? We did away with the personal angle when just going to Human Resources.
Where can I sign up for the Talented People Department????
[…] Of course, since ATS products came to solve the problem of too many resumes they tackled it with a very process-heavy hand. In some ways that makes sense; they attempted to bring order to the chaos. Having spent many years in the project management software world, I know exactly what that’s all about. But ATS vendors created (or exacerbated) another problem — Human Resources is too process-driven, dull and mechanical when really it should be (and in many cases is) about people interacting with people. […]