In this article author is showing his concern for an employee who is getting considered not more than a resource. Here author's intention is to help and motivate the organizations to adopt the right work culture.
Before getting into the discussion let us understand the difference between these two terminologies -
Resource - An economic or productive factor required to accomplish an activity. Three major resources are land, labor, and capital; there are more as energy, water etc.
Asset - Anything which is valuable that an entity owns, benefits from, or has use of, in generating income/profit.
The above definitions are very close to each other, but there is a line difference between these two and if an organization understands and digest this little but important difference, there should be no wonder if they starts creating the history in the world.
We all had heard the organization's trendy keywords as 'Resource hiring', 'Resource Mapping', 'Resource Allocation', 'Resource Cut down' etc. for an employee, and let me tell you honestly it sounds very weird to me.
How you feel about this?
Don't you think that you are under valued?
Don't you agree that you are an asset?
I am damn sure that most of you will say 'Yes' for above three questions, as long as you are not a part of the world's best organization and you know what I mean here.
Al right, let me explain the line difference and key advantage of understanding the difference -
As we all agree that water is a resource which we use as per our need and ease, and we know well that water is getting wasted in almost whole world in various ways. So when we know that water is readily available it would not be more than a resource for us, and we never bother about it's misuse.
Now let us consider that you are traveling by a bus for several day's trip and you are allowed to carry only limited water, another constraint is that bus will stop after every 3 hour, I am sure you got my point... now the same water is an asset for you and you will give a huge value to each drop of it as you are buying the same water.
Ah, now let me come to the point - this is universal truth that there are many thousands of people are unemployed across the globe and jobs are limited, it means an employee is readily available, so for sure it would be considered as a resource only, not an asset.
I am damn sure that you have noticed the world's best organizations employees and you might be wondering that they are as important as those organization's top management.
Why so?
Answer is very genuine, since that kind of talent is not readily available, and after lot of exercise and effort these organizations are getting/hiring them, and that's the reason they are getting considered as an asset.
Now I am pretty sure that you understood the difference between these two (resource and asset), and most of the companies are considering their employees as a resource only.
Now let me try to put my view that what could be the advantage if all organizations start considering their employees as an asset -
To answer this, let us take an example of Indian cricket team -
We all know that cricketers are readily available in India as the whole nation is crazy about this game and after IPL (Indian Premier League) platform there is a flood of talents. So in short cricketers should get considered as a resource since there is a huge bench available and Indian cricket team needs just 11 players. But situation is opposite to this, as these 11 players are getting considered as an asset, don't you agree? I am sure you would be ...
What makes the difference here?
Since they are getting considered as an asset, every player is getting the same value and importance as a captain and it creates the difference. I am sure that this is visible to you all, so no more cricket talk here.
What I believe is that, Employees are a company's greatest asset and companies should not just to attract them while hiring and retaining, even companies should value to their employees always and they should ensure that employees are integral part of the companies mission.
If an employee will get an impression that his organization is concerned about him as an integral not just about his deliverables, the employee would be more productive, satisfied and confident. A satisfied employee means satisfied customers and satisfied customers means profits to the organization. I am sure this is what every organizations want while hiring an employee.
Change your approach towards your employee to help him to be more productive, and help yourself to get more profits!