by Caryna St. John

Created on: September 27, 2009

As Resource Management Personnel departments have transformed into "human resources" and "human resource management" departments staff members have become one more resource to be managed, alongside equipment and facilities. The human element of human resources, from how fatigue impacts quality of work to the effect of incentives on performance, has been thoroughly studied. However, the "resource" side is often ignored.

The most common human resources are:

1. Raw labor.

There are billions of individuals who have the skills to perform raw labor. Raw labor is the ability to perform physical work, limited only by age, health, and disability. The difference between skilled labor and unskilled labor is the investment in teaching skills to the unskilled. The unskilled labor pool is always larger than the skilled labor pool.

2. Human desire.

Human desire is only limited by what can be imagined, and imagination is a natural human trait unless driven out by negative training or abuse. Ambition is only an extreme form of human desire.

3. Human potential.

Nothing is as common as those who have potential talent and cannot or will not develop it. The number of potential musicians is much greater than the actual number of musicians due to those who could not afford lessons, were not allowed to develop their abilities, or who found it necessary to seek other pursuits. Human patience is also required of those who did have access to training and the time, but chose not to follow through.

The most limited human resources are:

1. Human attention span.

There is an increasing demand on our time and more decisions to be made as the information explosion continues to expand. Yet the amount of time we have to make decisions has not changed. Thus human attention span grows more valuable as the demand for it increases.

2. Effective teachers.

To be an effective teacher, one must:

a. Understand the material to be taught
b. Understand what others do not understand
c. Be able to communicate to others so that they do understand the material
d. Be able to understand whether or not they do completely understand before calling the job done; and
e. Have the patience to fill in the knowledge gaps.

3. Human patience.

We not only want everything, but we want it now. And as the world evolves to better provide information, materials, and entertainment on demand, humans come to expect even faster delivery, reducing the expected wait time and causing frustration when reality does not meet desire. This then reduces the level of patience in the general population, increasing the value of that human resource.

When planning a system upon human resources, it is essential to realize those resources that are by human nature limited and unlimited. Otherwise, we will only design based on strength and skill and ignore the most fundamental limits of patience and developed talent.

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