Most Important Asset
Employees
Boy do I get ticked when I hear this. Consider all the assumptions implicit in the statement:
- an employee's value decreases over time
- every 5 years, they will have to be replaced with newer, better models
- the old ones can be given to charity for a tax write-off
To paraphrase PatrickMcGoohan I am not an asset, I am a free man!
Hey, it could be worse. Here, they call us intangibles. We were so amused, we named the company band "The Intangibles"!
How about having a department of Human Capital?
From the 3 March 1993 DilBert:
- PointyHairedBoss: I've been saying for years that "Employees are our most valuable asset." It turns out that I was wrong. Money is our most valuable asset. Employees are ninth.
- Wally: I'm afraid to ask what came in eighth.
- PointyHairedBoss: Carbon paper.
-- EricJablow
It also implies that employees are property of the company. Ditto resources. Of course, any better term that gets used will get turned into CorporateSpeak and corrupted. --PeteHardie
RefactorMe: Merge with HumanResources