From Human Resources to Talent Management

Seth Godin (marketing guru) speaks about the (bad) image of the "HR" department (which would be better to use "Talents", instead of "HR"). Well, AIESEC already did that some time ago. Read the article: Marketing HR.

Just a little part of it:

Understand that in days of yore, factories consisted of people and machines. The goal was to use more machines, fewer people, and to design processes so that the people were interchangeable, low cost and easily replaced. The more leverage the factory-owner had, the better. Hence Personnel or the even more cruel term: HR. It views people as a natural resource, like lumber.

Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable marketers or insanely talented strategy people.