Employees as volunteers, not assets
- Christian Fev Cendaña
- May 13
- 2 min read
AS audit season ends, there is no more dreadful email for managers than a resignation letter.
After “investing” in people via training and mentoring, on top of compensation, only for them to leave, it is normal to feel a letdown. Is there still another way of looking at this normal process of employees quitting to hasten acceptance?
Popular organizational literature views employees as “assets,” whose definition includes “control.” But if control is absent, is the notion that the “company’s employees are its greatest asset” still hold true?
Take for example, an accounting firm company where much of balance sheet items are comprised of office equipment. Let’s say its assets total P2.5 million and its revenue around P25 million. With an asset turnover ratio of 10.0, is it justified to conclude that the assets “commanded 10 times” revenue compared to its value?
It is high time to treat employees as volunteers, rather than mere assets. They are people, not resources to be harvested from the land. They are volunteers, and it is totally up to them whether they return to work the next day.
Volunteers usually work in charitable organizations, and it is just appropriate, given the rise of social enterprises, which put impact on the pedestal instead of profits. The way social enterprises operate also influences how commercial businesses prioritize values, which focus on stories and address social or sustainability problems, all beyond profit.
Acknowledging the limitation of financial statements in quantifying intangible assets such as talent, knowledge businesses shift “investment” to people, computing capital expenditure per head, as if humans are merely cash-generating units to be improved and spending maintenance expense on.
With the boom of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines, there is an unending surge of perks for employees such as sleeping pods, daily free lunch (even buffet), Friday pizza, gyms, gaming lounge, coffee corner, and the list goes on.
These are great things and, indeed, elevate workforce incentivization, but we cannot deny that all these benefits are just compensatory in nature. Unlike an item of property and equipment, perks cannot be viewed as “asset enhancements” which management can view as extending their “estimated useful life” (or in our discussion’s context, tenure) or improve productivity.
At the end of the day, the will of the employees cannot be controlled or owned by the company. Regardless of a big compensation package, an employee may still leave if the truly important things are missing, such as culture, nobleness of a company’s cause beyond profit, organizational structure, cultivation of professional aspiration, and work fulfillment.
A firm’s intellectual capital is contributed by its members, and no amount of “investment” or gimmicks can ever justify restraint of letting them go. The company may just “compensate” for the time, intellect, sacrifices and opportunity cost that the employees exerted in choosing to work.
The next time bosses receive a resignation e-mail, may this put the matter in a different shade: to acknowledge that it is merely a cessation of volunteering contract with an organization, and to readily and happily accept it with well wishes.
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Christian Fev Cendaña is vice president for professional development at the Association of Certified Public Accountants in Public Practice (Acpapp) Rizal chapter. He is also managing partner at accounting firm Caparros, Cendaña, and Co.
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