[LETTERS]Valuing your people

People sometimes forget what is important. Most people simply enjoy the material things money brings in their lives. They put off doing what is important, keep it in the back of their minds.

This problem isn’t just one’s own business. If organizations and companies just chase immediate profit, is this good management? Of course the ultimate aim of companies is to increase profits. But a company’s roots are its human resources.

Amid global growth, technological innovations in the field of computer science have been remarkable recently. Without computers and robots, we wouldn’t have accomplished much. But computers and robots will not replace humans as workers in almost any field we can imagine because machines cannot replicate the human faculty of thought.

Many companies are increasing their spending on network technology as a way to overcome a variety of intra-office communications problems, but many industry specialists emphasize that problems originate with people and not with equipment. Because of this, in an uncertain world, training and education are most important investments. Moreover, augmentation of education and development of the Internet enable people to participate in economic activity and the ability of individuals develop over time.

How can companies keep their organizations from becoming bureaucratic systems? I believe what is needed is fundamental reform: new designs and creative innovations of the sort that the present organizational system, despite all the excellent people and energy put into the present system, doesn’t really encourage.

Of course cash holdings, sales and profits remain the most important measures of business success but in the future, they will not solely guarantee success for companies. In the future, a new concept will replace these conventional measures.

It can be described as a new way of creating organizations. It will have a big effect on innovation within organizations. Companies will escape bureaucracy; that way they will increase their capacity for remaking their organizations.

A living demonstration of this is Brazil’s Semco Company. Employees are allowed to set their own salaries and they choose who their managers should be.

It sets good examples of democratic ways of doing business. The organization treats people with respect, fosters camaraderie and gives them lots of freedom.

Hiring talented people and creating an atmosphere in which they can flourish is crucial to the success of any business. And preventing defections is a key goal for today’s bosses to achieve. This means that people are the most important thing in a company’s development.

As in nature’s ecosystem, diversity is a necessary step in the development of company. If an organization has a lot of standardization, there is no chance for innovation. After all, such organizations will keep repeating the same ways over and over. To successfully avoid this problem, companies need to deliver new technological innovations that increase competition in good faith in their organizations. Without competition, progress will stop. When they invest in their people and respect them, the organization will find the way to innovation and change.

The future shape of a company will be a kind of philharmonic orchestra which constantly works hard to achieve harmony - not an army, which moves to its commander’s orders.

Kim Jun-hyung, business management student, Hanyang University