Think of the person

The classic economics trade-off is between labor and capital.  The more investment in automation, infrastructure, technology and capital goods the organization makes, the less labor needed.

Indeed, we have seen this played out in business, from the steelmakers and the automakers to software companies and even trash haulers (one-person garbage trucks).

Taking people out of the equation can reduce costs and increase productivity, of course.  That's a big reason why technology is so important to organizations. Done right, it's an answer to competing with economies where labor rates are drastically lower.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that people are viewed as a commodity, something to have less of in an ideal circumstance.  This can "cheapen" interactions with employees and lead to short-term thinking when making the myriad of decisions that surround hiring, training and managing people.  It can be highly demotivational for employees.

We contend that instead of thinking in terms of employees or "the workforce" or labor or even management, organizational leaders would be better served by thinking of the people in the organization as individual persons.  The strategic idea is to maximize the benefit that the individual person as a significant investment for the organization brings to the organization.  Rather then seeing employees as pawns on a chess board or, worse, disposable warriors in an action movie, view and treat them as persons with names, talents, aspirations, families and potential.

Ultimately, no organization can be independent of the people within it.  Its success or failure depends on the actions of the people within it.  The trade-off between labor and capital is a useful economic concept, but blindly using it as the driver to crudely carve up organizations and to reduce persons to "the half that must go" and to commoditize the remainder is wrong headed.