Do your company have People or Resources?

First of all, I would like to make the corporative approach I'll be using to talk about people and resources clear to everyone.

People - Individuals who have feelings, believes, values, preferences, ambitions, passions and a need to be constantly motivated.

Resources - Everything needed to get something done in a project that has a cost and a production rate embedded. Eventually, when human effort is needed, people might be used as resources.

Now that we clearly understand the difference, let's talk about how companies misuse both, people and resources on its workdays.

It is very common to see companies (especially the Brazilian ones) in a rush to hire people to be used as resources in a given project. And worse, most of the times they try to get the most qualified people for the lowest wages. The problem is that this practice entails in dealing with a set of known issues. If you wanna have a strong corporative culture that will grow multidisciplinary, mature and self-managed teams that will boost your company, this is the wrong way. 

You've got to remember that those resources are people. Putting them together in a team expecting productivity and interaction among them just isn't gonna work. Your company must have a desired employee profile to be fulfilled before hiring. You can't just put an inattentive person in a team full of details driven people. What you think will happen? The answer is very simple, both team and person will be frustrated at the very first interaction, and that's your fault! As result, you'll get low-quality deliverables, deadline breaking, high turnover and money loss due to constant training for new employees (if you train them).

Try to hire people that are like-minded to your company's objectives and policies so your teams may have more engagement in their daily tasks having the big picture in mind.

In another hand, even having team like-minded with your company's culture you still can't forget that they're people. They need to be respected, they need to feel safe and motivated. Throwing tons of tasks to be delivered in record time on then just because they've shown their value as a team isn't gonna work either. There is a very sharp line between motivation and limitation and even knowing it is not easy to find out, you must try.

Treat people like people. If your employees are happy, motivated and confident, probably your customers will be too. 

If your company have a resource-centric culture, people that work for you will treat your company as a resource too, that is, it can be replaced at any time.

When your company have a people-centric culture you will see the advantages of it which I can explain in a future article.