this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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My career started in the late 70s, when "Human Resources" was replacing "Personnel Department". I've always thought the term "human resource" was terribly degrading, and I still don't understand how it caught on and never left.
A lot of places also stopped calling their employees “employees” and started calling them “associates”. What’s up with that?
It's a dimn effort to make employees feel part of the gang in a vain effort to keep them from quitting.
They could actually pay them properly and treat them like humans, but it costs money to do so.
Really? I have always considered “associate” to sound like you aren’t a member of the organization. You’re just loosely associated with the organization.
I always figured it's to de-emphasize the fact that you have bosses and owners. Employee implies that clearly, while associate makes it seem more like you're working with colleagues of your own volition. All in the service of making you infinitesimally more pliable.
No it means more like "colleague".
That "associate" thing has been around for decades, and varies by region. In the US it was mostly used for retail employees back in the day, not as much as corporate workers. But it goes in and out of style. When an employer adopts it or drops it, it's probably because some executive is trying to make a "splash".
Personnel department sounds so much neater.
Yes, Personnel has "person" in it rather than "human".
Yeah I hate it, it sounds exactly like the worm-tongued bureaucrat-speak that it is. Orwell wrote about exactly this kind on nonsense in Politics and the English Language and it is as true as ever today.
I'm okay with it being called HR, because it's the more honest term for what it is.
It's now being referred to as Human Capital