The mismatch between "corporate propaganda" and reality is astonishing.

All companies claim that their people are their most valuable asset. Yet, when the time comes to trim the budget, employees are the first item slashed to keep costs low.

What’s worse is that this behavior is pre-determined by a glitch in modern accounting: under current rules, employees are classified as expenses to be minimized rather than assets to be grown.

If we moved "people costs" from the expense column to the asset column on balance sheets (treating them like true capital assets) we might finally encourage companies to be more human-oriented.

https://thesystemsthinker.com/if-people-are-assets-why-do-we-treat-them-like-expenses/