Analyzing Your ‘Corporate Happiness’

If properly defined, understood, communicated and otherwise managed, the concept of ‘corporate happiness’ can become a very powerful corporate performance maximization tool.

Why? Because it is a universal concept that can be understood and accepted by individuals from practically every culture there is. Which is vitally important nowadays when you have to deal with more and more culturally diverse workforce.

Therefore, happiness can be used as a fundamental tool for uniting all of your employees (the ‘glue’ for sticking them together) and focusing their energies toward a common goal – ‘corporate happiness’. Happiness for all – shareholders, employees, clients and other stakeholders.

Like Business Description Language (BDL) is the universal language that all functional specialists (in finance, marketing, IT, etc.) can understand, ‘corporate happiness’ is also a universal language that all your employees can understand.

Thus, ‘corporate happiness’ is a highly effective and efficient ‘common platform’/’integration tool’ for building a modern, diversified, multicultural corporation and integrating highly multicultural personnel into highly efficient and motivated workforce.

The ‘corporate happiness’ as a common fundamental objective for all employees is far superior to a traditional financial common goal – ‘making money together and then splitting it’. For a number of reasons.

First, the universal key objective of a human being – explicit or implicit – is to be happy (‘achieve happiness’) – this is simply human nature, regardless of race, nationality, age, gender, etc. Pursuit of happiness is one of the most fundamental human rights, needs and desires (in the U.S. Constitution it is recognized – and for a good reason - as the third most fundamental human right after the rights to life and freedom). And making money is a means, not an end.

Second, happiness requires satisfaction of aggregate needs – financial, functional and emotional. In other words, maximization of aggregate value. Including financial value. Hence, achieving corporate happiness does not contradict the fundamental objective – it requires it.

Third, not all cultures are as materialistic as the American one. For many (if not most) cultures out there, consumerism is not a dominant ideology. Making money and then using it to consume ‘stuff’ is simply not nearly as important as it is to most Americans.

Therefore, the call ‘let’s make a lot of money together’ is not a powerful enough motivational drive. Drive to maximize their performance, that is. But the call ‘let’s be happy together’ is.

Fourth, happiness is ad egalitarian concept which makes all employees – and shareholders – equal. In this case, equal in pursuit and attainment of happiness. With ‘making money together’ there is always the issue of splitting the take which inevitably results in huge income disparities - between shareholders and employees, top managers and clerks, etc.

Which, in turn, creates envy and a whole lot of other negative emotions, conflicts, etc. that negatively impact corporate performance and financial value. The call ‘let’s be happy together’ does away with all that. For good.   

Finally, a human being is a social being; therefore, he or she can be happy only in the ‘happy environment’. Naturally, human beings want to be happy not only at home and in their social relationships, but also in the workplace (where they spend half or even more time when they are awake) and in their professional relationships. Therefore, the ‘natural’ key objective of managing organizations is building and managing “happy organizations”. The organization that have accepted creating ‘corporate happiness’ as its key management objective can be called happiness-focused organization. Which is not a bad idea at all.

As, by definition, a happy organization is the one that makes happy all of its stakeholders, a happiness-focused organization can be also called a stakeholders-focused organization. I covered procedures for making happy all external corporate stakeholders in the corresponding section. In this section, I will demonstrate how your company can - and must – make your employees happy.

To make your employees happy, you must satisfy their aggregate needs - financial, functional and emotional (the issue of their wants and desires I will address later). To satisfy these needs, you have to find out what they are. And to find out what they are, you will need to use the optimal paradigm for discovering and structuring human needs.

Fortunately, such a paradigm exists. In fact, it has been around since about 1943 (which is quite ironic, if you meditate on that). It was developed by Abraham Maslow - an American psychologist and thus received his name - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. More accurately, of human needs. Or personal needs.

It is – not surprisingly – usually presented a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization at the top. Maslow divides human needs into five basic categories – physiological, safety, love/care/belonging, esteem and, finally, self-actualization.

Interestingly enough, you can (and probably should) develop a similar hierarchy of corporate needs as it would be a useful business analysis and management tool. 

In reality, it would be better to rename it into Maslow’s structure of human needs and visualize it as a circle rather than a pyramid. This would be a more accurate representation, because to make your employees happy, you must satisfy all these needs of theirs concurrently (as is implied by the circle) rather than consecutively (as is implied by the pyramid). And equally as well. In fact, decades of extensive research into human needs found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described or for the existence of a definite hierarchy of human needs at all.

Physiological needs are the physical requirements for human existence which in the modern world (and in the corporate environment) means comfortable, healthy physical living. Which requires sufficient amounts of clean air and water, nutritious food, comfortable clothing and healthy living and working conditions (the latter covered by the science of ergonomics).  

Safety needs refer to personal security (protection against violence and other crimes against persons), financial security (in a corporate environment that includes job security), health and well-being and a ‘safety net’ against accidents, illnesses and their adverse impacts on the individual in question.

Love/care/belonging needs (often also called relationships or social needs) are essentially the needs to have a sufficient number of valuable (in terms of mostly functional and emotional value) relationships with individuals and groups in the corporate environment.

Colleagues, superiors, subordinates, workgroups (both formal and informal), functional units (meaning a group of employees that comprise the latter), social groups, etc. Employees want to feel accepted, understood, cared about, valued, important, needed and loved (the latter meaning ‘love for your neighbor’, of course). Specifically, they want to feel empathy for their needs, values, principles, feelings, problems, etc. And, obviously, they need attention.  

Esteem needs are in a way a higher form of the previous need category, with which they partially overlap. The difference is that the previous category deals with the human need to be accepted as they are as individuals (regardless of their professional achievements, duties or capabilities).

Esteem refers to the need to be accepted, valued and appreciated for what they did (their achievements and accomplishments), do in their responsibility areas and can do (their professional capabilities) for their company. In other words, esteem is a sense of contribution or value.  

There are actually two closely interrelated categories of esteem – external and internal. External esteem is the need for professional and corporate status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. Internal esteem refers to the need for professional competence, mastery, self-confidence, and freedom.

Self-actualization is located at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; however, in our self-centered world which has various celebrities as probably the only acceptable role models, just about everyone needs it. Which is actually not a bad idea at all.

Why? Because it means that – as Maslow himself put it – “what a man can be, he must be”. Obviously, ‘man’ and ‘he’ here refers to both sexes. This level of need refers to (1) discovering and measuring what an individual's full potential is, (2) where exactly it is and (3) the realization of that potential. Maslow describes this level as the desire to accomplish everything that one possibly can; to become the most and the best that one can be.

In the context of this book, it means generating the maximum possible amount of aggregate value – financial, functional and emotional – for the stakeholders of an individual in question.

For obvious reasons, your company does not satisfy physiological needs of its employees (with notable exceptions of free or not-so-free coffee, water, lunch, cookies or other foodstuffs and in some instances transportation and corporate housing). Instead, it provided its employees with sufficient financial compensation to cover all basic necessities – and much more.

To satisfy safety needs of its workforce, your company provides your employees with a safe,  comfortable, and ergonomically sound workplace environment; physical and information security from violence, fraud, identity theft and other crime in the workplace; adequate health and disability insurance, highly efficient training and development programs (that make sure that employees stay competitive in the job market).

If the company has to let the employee go through no fault of his/her own, it also should provide a generous (but fair) severance payment and a valuable amount of assistance in finding a new job on a permanent, temporary or contract basis.

To satisfy the social/relationships needs of its employees, your company develops a corporate culture and enforces a code of corporate conduct that result in behavioral patterns that satisfy these human needs. Which – unlike the previous two categories – are specific enough for each employee that require to be properly documented.

Esteem needs of your employees also are highly specific and, therefore, must be included into your comprehensive employee database. They are usually satisfied via development and implementation of highly personalized and customized employee motivation system (mostly its emotional component).

Equally well-documented (especially well-documented) must be self-actualization needs of your employees. These are satisfied mostly by (1) giving your employees challenging assignments with tough – but not impossible – levels of ‘stretch’ and (2) developing and implementing a perfectly personalized and customized employee training, career development and overall development programs.  

There are a couple more issues in making your employees happy. In our highly imperfect world, perception are the only reality. Unfortunately, it is not enough to just satisfy the aggregate needs of your employees; they must need to perceive it that way.

Second, it is human nature to confuse genuine needs with wants, whims and desires. The former are finite and, therefore, can and must be satisfied. The latter are infinite and, therefore, impossible to satisfy.

Therefore, your company must develop and implement a highly efficient internal communication campaign to make sure that (1) your employees want what they need and (2) that if and when their aggregate needs are met, they perceive it that way.

Another important requirement for this communication campaign is (1) development of high, but realistic employee expectations of your company in satisfying their aggregate need and (2) exceeding these expectations on a regular basis. Having one’s expectations exceeded is an important component of happiness.