Talk:Human resources
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The term "human capital" is very specifically defined in macro-economics but "human resources" is the thing they used to call "labor".
There is another whole literature of "human capital" that mirrors the literature of "natural capital", right down to the "resources" language.
A quick search on http://www.google.ca/search?q=natural+human+resources+capital&hl=en&meta= reveals the full complexity of all the issues raised in this debate...
This needs citations, and its view that the term is being replaced by "human capital", could be balanced by some quotes from mean old corporate Simon LeGrees saying that creativity and social contributions on the job are bad. ;-) I am sure there are a few left in the world.
It could also use links to the specialist literature which originated the term in the 20th century, e.g. Taylor and Taylorism, "Organization Man", etc. I am more familiar with the "transition literature" that defined the shift to the term "human capital".
The problem with such shifts of terminology is that they take place over generations, so you can find a lot on "human resources" that is basically saying the same stuff as the present "human capital" stuff.
"The Goat in the rug" uses a variant terminology referring to "natural, human and capital resources" which is nonetheless a good introduction - actually a great introduction.
"The Human Resources Benchmarking Association" is an extreme example of the instructional capital rigor that used to characterize the term... I am not sure these benchmarks would be accepted beyond the context of say ISO 9000 series - but it shows an extreme view of "human resources" as totally predictable manageable things.
"What is Natural Capitalism?" lays out the best intro of this 'capital versus resource' issue, and shows how the term "human capital" is now used in this modern global resource vs. ecology/society integrity debate. It's probably as extreme in its own way as the HRBA view... but is just as compatible with "the goat in the rug".
I still want an ISO 9000 link...
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[edit] Improvement Drive
Sysop has been nominated to be improved by Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. Vote for this article to support it.--Fenice 06:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Discuss links here
Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!)
I would like to add a link to http://www.personneltoday.com which contains around 20,000 articles on human resources topics. It is a free website which does not require registration. In fact, having just seen the discussion below, I'll add it anyway. Can't see what the objection might be.
TrainingZone and HRZone added 14/03/2007 both these sites have been cited from for wiki articles. same goes for Personnel Today (I suspect that it wasn't added as the above contribuation was unsigned by someone else --Pandaplodder 14:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Sure I'll doublecheck the links also. BrightonRock101 04:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this article has References mixed in with External links. See WP:Footnotes for how to link the references with the text. Once there's a separate reference section, you might want to consider removing any external links that weren't used to create the article, at least for now. It's difficult to concentrate on developing an article when having to constantly fend off gratuitous external links. Just a suggestion. --SueHay 16:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] New External Link
Hi, I would like to add an external link to Advantec: Advantec, an HRBPO company.
Damon
Hi, I would like to add a link to the Human Resources section of the Employment Law Information Network: http://www.elinfonet.com/fedindex/12
It contains 100s of links to articles relating to legal aspects of Human Resources; the site is entirely free for visitors.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.74.45.30 (talk • contribs).
Thanks.
- To me, the article links look like they all point to articles from law firms trying to attract HR-related business, and in my eyes, that's spam. I'm sure that there is useful information in these articles, but I don't care for the commercial aspect of it. If this is an appropriate place to cast a vote, I would vote no. I would wait for other views, however, since I am only one opinion, and certainly don't "own" this page. (Big brownie points for actually reading the external link discussion section, though!)--Bugwit grunt / scribbles 17:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
- There's no doubt that the articles are written with some marketing aspect in mind, but if that were the inclusion criteria, you would have to remove the link to SHRM. The ELIN articles are written by the top firms in the country and they are all completely free. I think an in-house HR person would find the site very useful. My $.08 (adjusted for inflation). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.74.45.30 (talk • contribs).
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- Feel free to add the link if you like...that's what's nice about Wikipedia, you are free to edit anything you like. I won't make any effort to delete the link, given that your reference to SHRM is correct, and once again due to the fact that you actually read the External Links Discussion. --Bugwit grunt / scribbles 20:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Added link back to the Human Resources section of the Employment Law Information Network; it appears to have been removed without comment after initially proposal with no objection.
The links have been added to various entries do not discuss the subject at all. For example, the linked website has not discuss Human Resources at all except to point to other websites. This type of link spam is totally unacceptable. --Ahsen 01:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It's clear to me that you haven't investigated this website and that your objection is just not well founded. The Employment Law Information Network (ELIN) is a "portal". Its explicit purpose is to collect and categorize links to information that appears elsewhere on the web. All of the articles are written by the nation's top employment lawyers. It certainly makes more sense to link to ELIN than the 100s of sites to which ELIN links. In addition, ELIN -- on its own pages -- provides example HR policies, forms and contracts. Finally, I would also *strongly* urge you to remove your statement that the site is SPAM; it is not true and very, very irresponsible allegation to make in a public forum. I will not add the link back to ELIN today, but invite your response to add any responsible objection that you may want to raise.
- Here is the problem. This website has links to articles that discuss certain specific issues with employment law. The linked articles do not discuss human resources as a subject. The links to sample forms hosted on other sites, are completely irrelevant. By analogy, an article on automobiles should not link to a so-called portal consisting solely of links to articles describing which forms to fill out when transfering the title, what the rules are for obtaining a commercial driver's license, or how to beat a drunken-driving conviction. Please review Wikipedia's spam guidlines for more details. --Ahsen 01:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Ahsen, you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself (and, perhaps, exposing a Wikipedia flaw). You don’t raise a single point that merits removing the links to ELIN.
First, the notion that you can somehow separate employment law from HR is just absurd (and suggests that you don’t have a working knowledge of this field). An HR professional wouldn’t last a day in their department without an understanding of the laws that govern the workplace (it not called employment law for nothing). Even if that were not the case, ELIN contains 100s of articles about non-legal, day to day employee relations issues, from employee discipline to holiday parties.
Second, you’ve again not taken time to review many of the articles, forms and policies that appear directly on ELIN. You’ve also ignored that fact the site doesn’t just provide links to articles, but, as an aggregator, provides users with useful information about what other HR professionals find useful (by ranking popular articles) and what employment lawyers deem important (by listing the topics most often written about by law firms).
Third, Wikipedia’s spam guidelines are explicit and deal with two types of spam: advertisements masquerading as articles and wide-scale external link spamming (and by wide-scale, they mean by spambots). The links I’ve provided to ELIN do not fall into either category and your rote reference to the spam guidelines is just a misguided attempt to make your objection appear credible. I’ve added only a handful of links to ELIN (and all to specific, appropriate sections of the ELIN site) with the intention of providing Wikipedia visitors with the opportunity to explore the discussed topic in greater detail.
As I’ve pointed out to you in your profile page, ELIN is linked to by some of the most highly-regarded legal and HR sites on the web, including the U.S. Department of Labor, Cornell University’s School of Law, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Workindex, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Each of these links was added independently by these institutions. It’s hard to imagine that ELIN is a respected source by these organizations, but somehow link spam for Wikipedia.
Finally, it’s interesting to note that ELIN provides visitors with much of the information that someone would find on the SHRM site. Unlike SHRM, however, you don’t have to pay to view that information through ELIN. The fact that the articles reside on the SHRM server, rather than someone else’s, cannot be a distinction that makes a difference. In both cases, the information is a click away. I’d imagine that most HR professionals care less about where the information resides than what it costs to obtain.
If the link to ELIN counts as spam under your logic, it would dictate removing all of the External Links sections from Wikipedia. I think that would be a mistake, and ask that you place the links back to ELIN, or, at minimum, allow me to do so. Please let me know. Thank you.
- I have read the contents of this site. You are wrong that the site "contains 100s of articles". It is a link aggregator with no content by itself. Furthermore, the pointed-to articles deal with the minutiae of employment law. If one of the linked-to articles happens to be relevant, it should be linked directly. It is not appropriate to draw traffic to this website in the hope that the user may stumble on a relevant article. Weighed against Wikipedia:External_links#Links_to_normally_avoid, it fails points 2, 3, 4, and 5. Furthermore, you seem to suggest that external link spamming must be "wide-scale" to be a problem. This is plainly silly. --Ahsen 04:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Ahsen, now you're just being stubborn. Once again, ELIN is a portal – the point of which is to aggregate links. Employment law, like all areas of the law, is a fluid thing. It’s constantly changing and evolving. No web site, including Wikipedia, is in a position to keep pace with these changes. ELIN uniqueness is its ability to provide visitors with a single, free source for current answers to workplace problems. To say that the articles deal with the “minutiae of employment law” only confirms that you’re neither an HR professional, nor employment lawyer. Why, as a non-practitioner, should you make a decision about the relevance of ELIN for those who actually work in this field? Surely your expertise, whatever it may be, is better put to use in sections of Wikipedia that deal with that specialty.
But, again, for the sake of completeness, your objections are simply not true. ELIN doesn’t violate the External link guidelines, as follows:
Number 2: ELIN is a unique resource (in fact, it’s the only site of its kind). As stated, ELIN provides visitors with the ability to keep current on issues relating to human resources and workplace law. There is simply no other site on the web that provides this kind of service and tens of thousands of HR professionals visit the site each month. The fact that the articles appear on other servers is not a reasonable grounds on which to exclude a site of this type.
Number 3: There is no doubt that the link to ELIN was added, in part, to promote the site. As stated in the Note to item three, however, I placed a request to link to ELIN before including it in the External links section. Any objection to the link was raised at that point and addressed. In contrast, you commandeer the external link section and, without any input or discussion, removed the link.
Number 4: ELIN sells one (and only one) service and no products. The service is provided to only a handful of very large law firms. ELIN doesn’t sell anything to HR professionals.
Number 5: Like virtually every small publisher on the web, ELIN does provide Google ads on its site, but the amount of ads is certainly less than others, including by example, the SHRM site (which is currently and correctly included as an External Link).
At this point, I would ask anyone else (particularly if you’re an HR professional) to weigh in on this topic (if anyone’s actually listening). If that doesn’t happen, I would again ask Ashen to add the link back to ELIN or let me do so. If you still have objections, Ashen, I think it would make sense to move this discussion to my profile page and spare this space for other topics.
- I have made my position and my reasoning quite clear. In the absence of comments by others here, I see no reason to change this view. Linking to this website totally inappropriate. I will continue to act accordingly. --Ahsen 13:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I'll check back and see if anyone posts a different view. I have, however, removed a statement form Noisy's post, which was not true.
Hi, I would like to add a link to the Society for Human Resource Management. SHRM is a non-profit organization for about 210,000 HR professionals.
[edit] The View of Human Resources
I see there is interesting things about Human Resources, but what does it really mean. Does it involve what a human needs? Does it talk about how human resources are found?, Or Does it mean how human resources are used by our society?--Zhang Liao 04:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
- The last proposition is right.--Jeanpol 15:23, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
What the term 'Human Resources' really is is a form of words created by over powerful bosses as a means of insulting the workforce. It places staff at the same level as desks, computers buildings etc. The biggest joke here is when a 'Human Resources Professional' starts lecturing the staff about the need for mutual respect seemingly unaware of the hypocracy of their position. It is a word much loved by IS/IT types who use such insulting phrases as - "I have allocated 4 resources to this project". I hope it's a fad but dread to think what the replacement will be. - Alligin
Hi Alligin. Sure I'm sure that view exists. If it is relevant and you could find sources for it perhaps it could be included:) I think another look at definitions would help this section BrightonRock101 17:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
