As an HR professional, you might have come across hundreds of quotes to increase productivity, motivation, and so on. But have you ever come across quotes that focus solely on you? No? Well, you are in luck because we’ve compiled a list of incredible HR quotes for you to read right now!
We all need our regular doses of motivation to keep us going. Like Zig Ziglar rightly quoted, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That is why we recommend it daily.”
We live in a society with an abundance of inspiration available through podcasts, motivational videos, blogs, and more. It is entirely up to you which medium you prefer for getting your daily dose of motivation.
But in this unprecedented situation— all thanks to the novel Covid-19— all HR professionals are struggling with the new work challenges. They are working hard to push the boundaries in developing and strategizing new policies to accommodate remote employees.
Now, more than ever, HR professionals need to know that they are not alone in this struggle.
Thus, here are 100 amazing HR quotes to keep their spirits and enthusiasm strong
1. Steve Wynne
Human Resource isn't a thing we do; it's the thing that runs our business.
2. Simon Sinek
When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.
3. Peter Schutz
Hire character. Train skill.
4. Steve Jobs
You cannot mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best.
5. Jack Welch
HR should be every company's killer app. What could possibly be more important than who gets hired?
6. Lee Iacocca
Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
7. Mark Zuckerberg
Treat your employees right, so they won't use your internet to search for a new job.
8. Mark Hortsman
People and their behaviors are what deliver results to your organization. Not systems, not processes, not computers, not machines.
9. Doug Conant
To win in the marketplace, you must first win the workplace.
10. Rutvik Oza
Accepted that we all are human resources, but we are humans first and resources later.
11. Ken Robinson
Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them; they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.
12. Bill Gates
The key for us, number one, has always been hiring very smart people.
13. Lawrence Bossidy
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.
14. Julie Bevacqua
In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what matters most to your people.
15. Renee West
You can have the best strategy and the best building in the world, but if you don't have the hearts and minds of the people who work with you, none of it comes to life.
16. Stephen Covey
So often, the problem is in the system, not in the people, and if you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results.
17. Robert Half
Time spent on hiring is time well spent.
18. Akio Morita
I emphasize this- no matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.
19. Phil Jackson
The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.
20. Rob Silzer
Financial Resources may be the lifeblood of a company, but human resources are the brains.
21. David Ogilvy
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
22. Bob Nardelli
I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.
23. Craig A. Meadows
I enjoy the challenges of improving policies and procedures that will facilitate growth, maintain control and increase the success of our clients.
24. Richard Branson
Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.
25. Meghan Biro
Employees engage with employers and brands when they're treated as humans.
26. Bill Gates
The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.
27. Sara Blakely
Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.
28. Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company 600,000. No, I replied. I just spent 600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
29. Mark Victor Hansen
The only waste of human resources is letting them go unused.
30. Kahlil Gibran
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved but at what he aspires to.
31. Andrew Carnegie
You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless they are willing to climb.
32. Betty Bender
When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.
33. Thomas John Watson Sr.
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
34. Peter Schutz
Hire character. Train skill.
35. Sir Richard Branson
Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.
36. Tina Fey
In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.
37. Elbert Hubbard
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
38. John Cleese
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
39. Eleanor Roosevelt
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.
40. John Maxwell
The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.
41. Dave Bookbinder
The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and intellectual capital are managed by human capital. You’d better get the human capital part right.
42. Hassan Choughari
The hardest challenge being an HR is that sometimes you have to be the LAWYER, the JUDGE, and the HANGMAN.
43. Mmanti Umoh
Without the right succession planning put to play in human resources, we build for the future without a future.
44. Sunday Adelaja
The wealth of time is the only wealth that is more valuable than human resources
45. Matthew Jeffrey
Recruitment IS marketing. If you’re a recruiter nowadays and you don’t see yourself as a marketer, you’re in the wrong profession
46. Bill Gates
The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.
47. Max de Pree
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
48. Tony Robbins
Any idiot can point out a problem… A leader is willing to do something about it! Leaders solve problems!
49. Ross Perot
Inventories can be managed but people must be led.
50. Seth Godin
Leadership is about giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
51. Charles Kettering
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
52. Mary Kay Ash
If you’re good to your staff when things are going well, they’ll rally when times go bad.
53. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
54. Bill Owens
True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do, and doing it well.
55. Lee Lacocca
Management is nothing more than motivating other people
56. Amit Kalantri
Children imitate their parents, employees their managers.
57. Tom Haak
Every good conversation starts with listening.
58. William Shakespeare
Brevity is the soul of wit.
59. Paul J. Meyer
Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success.
60. Rollo May
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
61. Peter Drucker
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
62. Epictetus
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
63. Sydney J. Harris
The two words’ information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.
64. François de la Rochefoucauld
We never listen when we are eager to speak
65. Byron Rivers
For effective communication think about how is your speech is perceived than in what you are actually saying.
66. Stephen R. Covey
When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.
67. Lee Brown
Your ability to communicate is an important tool in the pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers.
68. Anonymous
If you think hiring professionals is expensive, try hiring amateurs.
69. Malcolm Forbes
Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he’s hired to do.
70. Henry David Thoreau
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for the love of it.
71. Arte Nathan
You can’t teach employees to smile. They have to smile before you hire them.
72. Howard Schulz
Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.
73. Red Adair
If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.
74. Paul Russell
Development can help great people be even better – but if I had a dollar to spend, I’d spend 70 cents getting the right person in the door.
75. Anonymous
You’re not just recruiting employees, but are sowing the seeds of your reputation.
76. Helen M. & P. Schubert
Ultimately, delivering strategy is about hiring the right people and motivating them to deliver results.
77. Nolan Bushnell
Hire for passion and intensity; there is training for everything.
78. Anonymous
A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected.
79. Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
Some people today are wandering generalities instead of meaningful specifics because they have failed to discover and mine the wealth of potentials in them.
80. Venkat Kumaresan
They are not human resources. They are resourceful humans
81. Gyan Nagpal
In the modern, networked and symbiotic world we live in, people management is less about squeezing performance from the organized few and more about curating contribution from the limitless many.
82. Oran Tkatchov
In America, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work, or about a quarter of his or her adult life. Job satisfaction, then, can have an enormous influence on quality of life.
83. Denise Wilkerson
Your role as an interviewer has a direct impact on each person you meet. Some candidates will be at a crossroad in their lives. Some candidates may want to make a career move. Others not so much. Some, through displacement or termination, have been placed in a position in which they are forced to make a change. We have all been there, whether through our own choice or the choice of someone else. We are forced into making a change, and change can be scary.
84. Lailah Gifty Akita
The glory of the youth is their strength. In a country, where the youth are deprived of work, what a waste of valuable human resources.
85. Eric Schmidt
But there is a golden rule to hiring that cannot be violated: the urgency of the role isn’t sufficiently important to compromise quality in hiring. In the inevitable showdown between speed and quality, quality must prevail.
86. Leyda Aleman
The good and the bad, the exhausting and the empowering, the wins and the losses...Every part of leadership has a bigger impact when we’re doing it for a greater purpose.
87. Janna Cachola
Systems and rules are guidelines, leadership is lifeline.
88. Kent Alan Robinson
Most people do not see their words as power.
89. Henrietta Newton Martin
Fifth wheel employees are those who are a result of the mistake made by the human resources wing, i.e. by recruiting wrong person to the wrong job just to fill in the vacancy and then expect better performance. Further such an employee is unable to put in his best and is just an additional mass available within the organization.
90. Peter Thiel
Recruiting should never be outsourced. Everyone at your company should be different in the same way.
91. Matshona Dhliwayo
Unleash the potential that is in another and you unleash the potential that is in you.
92. Angela Lynne Craig
The body may be bought with a paycheck but the heart is earned with a purpose.
93. James Pritchert
Every day is a training day and every event is a training event.
94. Nikhil Sharda
If you must then hire for passion first, experience second and credentials third. Then train those hired for directed passion, dropping the excess baggage and the whole process of unlearning. An entrepreneur is much like an architect shapping human resources into a well crafted power house.
95. Antonio Gramsci
It is in their interests to have a stable, skilled labour force, a permanently well-adjusted complex, because the human complex (the collective worker) of an enterprise is also a machine which cannot, without considerable loss, be taken to pieces too often and renewed with single new parts.
96. Tapan Singhel
I have more than 6670 employees spread across the length and breadth of the country who live and experience the brand ‘Bajaj Allianz’ everyday. I’d like to believe that these people are the company’s most valued brand ambassadors.
97. Paul Krugman
Incentives aren’t the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste.
98. Booker T. Washington
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
99. Arundhati Bhattacharya
In any merger, the biggest challenge is always integration of human resources because the people who are coming in have a lot of apprehension.
100. Hassanal Bolkiah
The development of our human resources is an area in which we need to do well as it is decisive in determining the success of our diversification programme.
Before you go
Strong leadership takes more than simply being able to manage and communicate with one’s team. It also requires the capability to adapt and improve oneself.
Being a leader necessitates a high level of enthusiasm and passion. The role of the HR department is multi-faceted and constantly changing on a day-to-day basis. This means remaining organized at all times is essential.
Even the employees look up to their HRs for inspiration. But we all need a push now and then to motivate us to work harder and set an excellent example for the rest of the team.
This article is written by Bhaswati Roy who is a Content Marketer at Vantage Circle. In her spare time, she can be found reading crime thrillers or scrolling through food apps, unable to pick what to eat next. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.
