Feeling resourceful...NOT!!!!

My most hated word in the workplace is NOT f**k, w***er, tosser, b***h or even bad words like the ‘c’ word and I don’t mean Christianity, Catholic or Christmas.  All of these used in context (mainly in the pub after work or moaning about a colleague) are okay at varying levels. :-)

The word I hate the most right now in any workplace is ‘Resource’.

“We don’t have the resource?”

“I need to check my resources schedule.”

The reason I cringe at the usage of such a word is purely because I believe it undervalues the skill an individual brings to an organisation.  If your company describes you and your colleagues as a ‘resource’ then it is probably time to consider a move, career change or at least stand up and say "No!".

Not so long ago we had departments that looked after the staff of an organisation, they were called personnel departments and over the years Americanised/morphed into ‘Human Resources’ or HR.  This was the transition point from a meaningful team member with skills and aptitude to a reference number and a salary ceiling associated to him or her.

If the underlying semantics used in your company is ‘resource’ then you are seen and replaceable, able to be replenished, expendable.  Whilst this to some degree is true it does strongly undervalue how hard some people ‘resources’ are to replace.

I work in the IT industry as a software engineer principally and as well as the technical skills (platform, database and languages) required to write code, you also need to have relevant business knowledge for the domain problem involved.  Thinking you can hire someone off the street that will immediately be up to speed for a large system is foolish (at best) or expensive if you are lucky as these people often come at a premium.

Back to that resource word again.....

Looking at what a resource really is we know these as consumable items like coal, sugar, soy, oil, cocoa, wool, metals (like iron, tin and steel) etc.  Many (if not all) of these are traded on exchanges around the world.  This is a perfectly good use of the word 'resource'.

The last time I looked a lump of coal hasn’t coded a single C# function (some might argue that computer aren't far from completing this), a packet of sugar hasn’t written a parsing algorithm and I am not aware of any metals, precious or otherwise, that have written code to manipulate a physics engine for your endless runner game idea.  Outside of the IT industry I haven't seen soy beans provide suicide counselling or oil build a school.

Type ‘Thesaurus Resource’ into google and there are a host of positive (enabling) words that describe resource (the human kind).  Words like ‘Ability’, ‘Capability’, ’Talent’ really stand out.

Resource is a throwaway word bandied around by project managers (in my case) and normally talentless 6ft 5” middle managers (if my last company was anything to go by).  Whenever I hear it I cringe and I am trying to correct any company culture I come across to use more eloquent and most importantly inclusive terms.  I was in a meeting only recently where we are described as resources.  Not a good feeling I must say.

So..... 

I’m beating the drum wherever I work to eradicate this cancerous word and to have is replaced by ‘Capability, Capacity, Skills, Staffing or _____________’ whenever it is used in the context of a human.

Moan over.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.