Seth Godin has a strong piece up today on the mindset shift taking place in the "human resources" functions of large organizations. Seth:
"Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a
forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal
was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a
factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable
marketers or insanely talented strategy people.So, here’s my small suggestion, one that will make some uncomfortable.
Change the department name to Talent."
This change is already taking place. For example, this past fall the Future of Talent conference raised key issues in the areas of how social networking is affecting organizations and the talent within.
In fact, I just applied for a position with Veer (http://www.veer.com) and was contacted and interviewed by a “Talent Scout.” I’m glad to read about some of the motivation behind it, because at first I thought it might just be a cheesy ploy.
Christopher glad to find you through SG — it was strong post inspired to me to blog too –look forward to digging deeper in your blog! michael
Talent
[Professor] Godin did it again as he so persistently does — his take on Talent vis a’ vis Personnel vis a’ vis Lumber is dead on. He appropriately cautions…The reason this [changing the vernacular] makes some people uncomfortable is that
Seth is definitely heading in the right direction with his thoughts on how HR should change. I suggested in a follow-up post that we change the name of HR to People Department. But that wasn’t far enough either. So merging Seth’s thoughts and mine, I suggest we change HR Department to Talented People Department. *chuckle*
And I like the term “Talent Scout” — in my business we actually use “Talent Agent” which is along the same lines.
It always seems that the larger the company, the more an HR department stays on the cutting edge of HR best practices… but lags 5 years behind on just about everything else that has to do with effectively serving its internal customers.
(Which tends to be especially true in the IT recruiting space)
Is Talent really the right name for ALL HR organizations? I’m not sure.
For example, my family’s recent trek to Walt Disney World got me well acquainted with the Cast Members that never stop smiling.
Thanks for heads up on this mindset change.