Days ago I received an advertising mail from an information and labor advising magazine, which main claim was “to obtain the best from your employees and to safeguard your rights as an entrepreneur”. Interesting I thought...

Human resources?

Surprisingly, among other subjects that would allow me to obtain the best from my employees, it offered solutions to solve problems as “workers abuse in requesting many permissions” or to end “the abuse of Internet and the email in my company (employees waste hours and hours using the computer for particular aims)”.
So, thank you very much for the information, but with this industrial economy approach, where people were not so important and really treated as "human resources", neither I will obtain the best from my employees and collaborators nor, surely, I will succeed as an entrepreneur in the knowledge economy.

People Management!

If the entrepreneur's job must be to control if her collaborators surf or not the Internet for personal purposes, or if they stay one hour more or less in the office (not working, that it's not the same), that means she is not doing what she should: establishing a vision, defining concrete objectives for each one of her collaborators, giving them tools and motivating and implying them in the achievement of those goals.
And if after achieving the objectives they can solve some particular subject surfing the Internet or take some morning off, well, better for them. They will be happier in our company and more motivated. People are not human resources anymore, at least for companies that want to succeed in the global knowledge economy, where success depends on creative thinking, innovation and new ways of doing things.
Innovation is not only to invent a new technology or a new product. Innovation must be in every single part of our company. And obviously organization and people management is a crucial one.

Reference: innovationthink.com