Twelve HR Quotes to Unlock Success and Inspire your Team

Human resources are both the heart and backbone of any successful organization. Between managing employee growth; overseeing training and development; and guiding organizational success, HR teams juggle a wide array of tasks and priorities. Today’s blog captures HR’s profound impact on organizations by highlighting our favorite quotes from different HR leaders, influential thinkers, and industry experts. 

Whether you are an HR enthusiast, a seasoned practitioner, or simply curious about managing people in the workplace, we hope these quotes – which range from leadership and employee engagement to organizational culture and talent development – will inspire you to guide your team to success. 

Our Favorite HR Quotes for 2023 

I. 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.” – Dave Bookbinder (Author, The New ROI)  

II. “In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what matters most to your people.”  – Julie Bevacqua (Founder, Tech Leader, and President of Rise) 

III. “Understanding employees’ skills is essential to operating a business and an imperative for the future of work. Skills data is the foundation for effective workforce planning, recruiting, and internal mobility.” – David Somers (Group General Manager of product for the office of the CHRO at Workday)

IV. “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair (American Firefighter) 

V. “There is a right partnership between humans and machines…the partnership is built around the fact that machines are amazing at analyzing huge amounts of data in seconds, but they have no judgment…the more and more we can get humans to be great at judgment, and not have to worry about crunching numbers where machines are good – it’s very powerful. It’s part of this road towards humans getting to do more valued work and not getting replaced by machines.”  – Aneel Bhusri (Co-founder, Co-CEO & Chairman of Workday) 

VI. “Without the right succession planning put to play in human resources, we build for the future without a future.”  – Mmanti Umoh (HR Expert)

VII. “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.” – Lawrence Bossidy (Business Expert)

VIII. “Solving the skills problem at work is very complex, as skills are constantly changing and organizations need a way to manage them across the business. Workday’s strategy is to build a cohesive skills data model that maps skills from various systems such as labor market data, recruiting, and learning and ties them together for a single source of truth. This is a natural step for Workday, given the growing adoption of Skills Cloud and the massive demand for skills-based talent solutions.” –Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst and CEO of Josh Bersin Company 

IX. “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence” – Sheryl Sandberg (COO, Facebook)

X. “Treat employees like they make a difference and they will.” – Jim Goodnight (Co-founder, SAS Institute)

XI. “It’s no good when a company progresses more slowly than its customers” – David P. Abney (CEO, UPS)

XII. “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.” – Ken Robinson (HR expert)

And there you have it: our 10 favorite HR quotes for 2023. We hope this list has inspired you to think critically about your company’s most important asset: its people.