Introduction
Human thinking, physical input and strategy have always been at the middle of human survival and development. Without such input, it’s difficult to fathom how development would have come by. However, since human beings have always been there, it has always been easy to dismiss their input as something which is easily replaceable through other people.
With skills development and competition gaining center stage however, many companies now realize that human capital is far more superior that the monetary and the machinery investment that people make in businesses. This is because without an efficient human capital, then the machinery and monetary capital invested in a business cannot bear much fruit.
Importance of individuals
For business entities or organizations to exist, Stockley (2) notes that there has to be people to run them. Such include the organization/business owners, leaders, shareholders, employees, members and directors among others. Individuals come up with strategies of how business has to be run and hence the success or failure of the same largely depends on them.
In the contemporary world, plain human capital is no longer enough to ensure that a business or an organization performs to its best. Faced with increasing competition and changes in the working environment, organizations have had to ensure they hire the best talent, train and equip them with the necessary skills and also motivate them well in order to ensure that the employees are retained in the company.
In addition to the contribution that individuals make to an organization or a business establishment, Family Business Battleground (7) notes that “the collective attitudes, skills and abilities of people” make a significant contribution to productivity in the work place. This means that even where groups are credited for good performances, the individuals who constitute the groups are responsible for the group outcomes.
Even in the environment where technology is being adopted to improve performance and competitiveness in specific business fields, it is apparent that technological knowledge can easily be aped from one market player to the other. With human knowledge and skills which are better than the competitor’s, an organization is able to retain the competitive edge for longer.
On a more self-assessing note, one realizes that technological development which is being touted as the solution to most of the challenges experienced in businesses today would not be possible were it not for the individual innovators and researchers who turned ideas conceptualized in their minds into tangible technological equipment, which are being used today.
Even in a world where artificial intelligence is predicted as a possible substitute to human intelligence in the future, Ahmed (10) notes that it can only be used to augment the knowledge possessed by people rather than replace it.
This is because beside the skills and knowledge required to work in a specific environment, individuals also rely on their intuition and common sense in decision making, something that the artificial intelligence enable devices such as robots do not possess. Human input in technology has however led to the creation of artificial intelligence, which in turn has led to more efficiency and speed in the modern work place.
Conclusion
Most of the advances made in human development are courtesy of individual human input. As such, the individual remains a fundamental figure and the most important capital resource in the society to date.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Asif. “Replacing Humans with Machines: The Insurance Industry has begun to Leverage Artificial Intelligence to Cut Costs and Improve Efficiency. But Technology Will Never Completely Supplant Human Reasoning”. The Free Library by Farlex. 2002. Web.
Family Business Battleground. The importance of human Capital in Business. 2009. Web.
Stockley, Derek. Human Capital Concept- Definition and Explanation. 2005. Web.