Custom «Management Perspective: Workers; Are They Assets or Expenses?» Essay Paper Sample

With time the notion of human capital becomes more and more important not only for the economists but also for separate companies. According to Kaye (2012), nowadays we can observe a rapid growth of the interest of economists in human abilities and the ways of their development. The majority of companies tend to consider the human capital to be one of the most important assets in an organization. One of the ways to invest in the human capital is the support of health and education of each individual. Nowadays, the problem of investment into the human assets and increase in the efficiency of productive power usage is one of the primary tasks for the modern economy.

The notion of human assets may be taken into consideration in the narrow and broad sense. In the narrow sense, one of the forms of human capital is education. It was called human because this form becomes a part of life of a person. It was also named capital because it represents the source for the further satisfaction of needs or income. In the broad sense, human capital is formed by investments that are carried out as the expenses for education and preparation of the working force at different organizations, health maintenance and the search of information about prices and income.

From the point of view of influence on the economic condition of society, the human assets may be divided into consumptive and productive. The consumptive human assets produce a range of services that are consumed directly and thus, are favorable for the society development. It may be the creative or educational activities. The result of this activity is reflected in the provision of customer with such services that cause appearance of the new ways of needs satisfaction or improvement of the existing methods. The productive assets create a range of services, consumption of which is favorable for the social usefulness. In this case, it deals with the scientific and educational activity that has a direct practical application in the production process (creation of the means of production, technologies, productive services and products).

According to the forms of workers` education at the working place, there may be distinguished the special human capital and the general one. The special human capital includes the skills and knowledge that were obtained in the process of special training and are useful for the certain company where they were obtained. On the contrary, the general human assets represent the knowledge that may be demanded in different scopes of human activity.

Any step taken for increase of the working productivity may be called the investment into the human assets. Thus, to the investments into the human capital belong the expenses on the health maintenance, obtainment of general and special education, expenditures connected with the work search, professional training, migration, birth and education of children and the search for economically valuable information on the prices and salaries.

Yuan (2012) states that there also exists the division of the human assets into the material and non-material ones. To the first category belong all the expenses necessary for the physical formation and the development of a person (the expenditures on birth and education of children). To the second category belong the expenses on general and special education, health maintenance and the mobility of working force.

Among all the types of investments into the human assets, the most important ones are the investments into health and education. The general and special education improve the quality and increase the level and storage of the knowledge of a certain person. Thus, they help to increase the volume and quality of human assets. The investments into higher education are favorable for the formation of highly-qualified professionals whose work has the most significant influence on the speed of economic growth of a company.

Nowadays, one of the components of investments into the human capital in the majority of companies is the expenses on productive education. In any educational project, up to 80% of the knowledge is designed for autonomous education. This issue is of particular importance for those specialists who are forced to renew the qualification on a regular basis with the help of autonomous investigation, the usage of independent educational programs, education based on the examples of activity, experiences and opinions of other professionals.

Together with education, one of the most important investments is the support of health maintenance. It causes the decrease in the number of diseases and mortality rates, the increase in the length of human life, and, thus, the time of functioning of the human capital. The condition of health of a certain person is the natural capital, one part of which is inherited, and the other one obtained under the influence of the society and the way of life of an individual. Within the process of life, there take place the reduction of this capital. The investments connected with health maintenance are designed to slower this process.

The role of separate companies in the process of human assets formation cannot be overestimated. Very often, they are the most efficient producers of this capital as they possess the conditions necessary to provide the personnel with the training that corresponds the current requirements of production together with the information on most important directions of educational and training investments. However, such investments are provided until the time they may bring income.

When investing into the human assets, the companies tend to activate the working force productivity, to shorten the loss of working time and to strengthen the competitive ability. There exist the investments into organization of the courses of professional training, expenses on the treatment and disease prevention of the workers, construction of health maintenance centers, etc. Stockley (n.d.) states that the correct human assets management allows avoiding high employee turnover and “burning out”.

The human assets are one of the most valuable resources of the modern society. It is even more important than natural goods. Due to the treatment to a person as the main capital in production, there appears the need for development of the correct evaluation of human assets. The correct evaluation of human capital provides objective evaluation of all the assets of a certain company and society in general.

The paper showed that workers in a certain company are the most important asset. However, the proper management requires constant expenses on education and health maintenance. The modern human resource policy in companies provides the most efficient usage of human capital by a company and makes the workers interested in a certain type of activity. It is important for the companies to invest into healthcare and education of the workers as in the future this policy provides the organization with the higher level of income.