HR

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, companies used to believed that "HR" stood for Human Relationships. They didn't see their employees as merely a resource that is quantifiable, and measurable, or dispensable, or "anyhow sell them a career proposition and make them work for as long as possible-able".

Then one day, some smart ass HR consultancy firm, in order to make their solutions and business scalable, decided to tell everyone that treating employees as merely as resources and impersonal- is the "in" thing in the market ("everyone's doing it!"). In order to build up their credibility, they named themselves after some quack guy from the USA, who was a friend of a friend who was a PHD, who allowed them to use the name for a price and some fame. And they made their reports rather expensive. And they treated their reports and information with a lot of secrecy and "hush hush" and discouraged further disclosure, even though the information was rather standard, and they just copy and pasted recommendations, and switch inputs to the "to-field" in their emails. And like how the tailor sold the emperor his new clothes, the companies bought it, one by one. In this way, companies started to treat their employees as a resource - Human Resource as opposed to natural or mechanical resource - except for one company.

They renamed their "Human Relationships department" to "HR department", and that was pretty much it. What people from HR did was to sit around with their employees, and replied to their queries, called them to chit chat, arranged gatherings, went drinking with them, entertained them, and went to visit them when they are in hospital, went to pay respects to their parents who just pass away, talked to them, and told them that the organisation valued them, listened to them bitch about their boss, in confidentiality, be their friend, told them that life is never ideal, take it easy, told them to leave the company if they were truly unhappy, remind them the advantages of staying, smsed them gong xi fa cai, and remember their children's birthday, and talked to their bosses if about how they were managed, bring them home when they're drunk from going out drinking together...

All the other companies who switched to Human Resources pointed their fingers at this Human Relationship company and laughed. Haha, they thought, human relationships can never be scalable! And they are so expensive to maintain! Human Resources are so cost efficient! We'll be rich and you can smell my fart!

But the Human Relationship's company never waivered. The management enjoyed having HR to talk to, in times of woe and appreciated their empathy. HR was often one of the reasons for their own retention. Despite not being scalable, everyone in the company was making good money. Being scalable was over-rated.

The companies which adopted the Human Resource approach never doubted their choice. Everyone in the company was making good money. If they had any problems, they talked to their families or friends, if they were unhappy, they either left or suck it and worked harder, nobody went to their parents' wake, and those who did had the look of obligation on their face, but it's okay, they didn't want to see them too, they only liked the "white-gold" (condolence money) they gave. Making friends at work was over-rated, one should keep work and personal relationships distinct.

The bosses of the consultancy firm laughed their way to the bank and back and spent all their money and went bankrupt and haha whatever who cares everyone just left and switched jobs.

...

1000 years later, all the companies collapsed due to the natural course of things. Everyone who ever cared about Human Resources or Human Relationship was dead and turned into dust. The question of which was a better model for your company was asked by nobody.