Recently there was on LinkedIn and then on Best of HR – Berufebilder.de®.de an exciting discussion on neologisms in Recruiting. The shows: Who to fast throwing around buzzwords dehumanizes his Employees.

human capital
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Employees as insatiable tools?

By Anne Schüller came recently a contribution, which was about the fact that far too many corporate cultures still aim to break the will of their employees.

With sound bites like "You have to break the will of young people when they are new to us", Schüller pointed to a frequent grievance Companys I aufmerksam.

Treacherous word creations

This was followed by an exciting discussion, first on LinkedIn and then later in the blog, about the telltale neologisms of HRIndustry.

This is how Serap Lipinski, HR Manager Dirk Rossmann GmbH commented:
The company's success also depends on good employer branding. If the employer brand is not convincing, the company loses its human capital in the long term and also its own customers and partners.

Word of the year

Immediately stirred Resistance. Thomas Frühwein and Edda Cekinmez, for example, criticized the use of the word “human capital” as ugly and unappreciative.

The Term hadn't been the word of the year for nothing.

The dehumanised employee

Also author Anne Schüller intervened again in the discussion and brought the thing to the point:

“Anyone who calls their employees top performers or calls them human capital dehumanizes them.”

Be careful with fashion terms

So it turns out that you just as Recruiter should be a little more careful with supposedly trendy buzzwords like human capital – and not just because of employer branding:

Too fast, these trend words gain an inhuman component - and that awakens unattractive historical associations.

From Human Resources to Human Relations

But the term Human Resources has bothered me personally for a long time, as it is associated with one another People how to grasp and "breed" a renewable raw material.

Therefore, I would be very pleased if the abbreviation HR would soon no longer stand for Human Resources but for Human Relations, a suggestion that I recently read - in the course of a modern orientation of the Working world. How do you see it?