<img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.9327426980005721628072884736%2FHRM%20and%20Happiness_IgnjatMilinkovic_1.webp?alt=media&token=33329d4c-41ad-4382-95bb-fc985dde9228" alt="" width="765" height="510" /> Capitalism as an economic system is pulling strings all around the world. The world is becoming increasingly interconnected as an outcome of massively enlarged trade and cultural exchange. Corporations are spreading their business and manufacturers to other countries in search for nominal costs and expenses. Acquisitions are more frequent today than ever before.&nbsp; The world is much faster, stumbling and rushing towards higher revenues, no matter what. CEOs have only one aim- higher income, with lower expenses. In that rat race, we all forget the primary resource, without which we couldn&rsquo;t accomplish any of these. Hands, minds, and motivations of all of those who are making teams and personnel of the big and small corporations have become secondary objectives. They are taken for granted, exploiting every pair of hands they can. Of course, not every company is alike. Some of those are trying to refocus on people, understanding that only those people, which we call employees, are the only ones relevant and capable of building up the quality and quantity of products and reputation to the organizations and institutions. Research is still trying to find out how to motivate, encourage and increase the happiness of the workers to fulfil their self-accomplishment and employee satisfaction. Many of the theorists from different backgrounds share their views, which are applicable and relevant for today&rsquo;s business problems. Let&rsquo;s peek at the most suitable ones. <h2>The hierarchy of needs</h2> First, conceptualizations of motivation and general happiness, which we will reveal, explain motivation from satisfaction with basic human needs. The study of organizations is streaming their attention to the idea that people are motivated to use their job to satisfy their own needs. The most famous theory of human needs in organizations is possibly the one according to Maslow. His thesis was that if people grow in an environment and collective which does not meet their necessities and demand, they will not function as healthy, happy, and well-adjusted individuals. If people don&rsquo;t have their needs met on the job, they will not be efficient. Consequentially, the product on which they are working will not satisfy the needs of corporations or users. According to this theory, people have five types of needs: physiological, safety, belongingness or love needs, and esteem needs which lead to self-actualization, and self-fulfilment, which is equal to happiness in the widest possible sense. On the other side, Alderfer&rsquo;s ERG theory of needs is correspondent to Maslow&rsquo;s five needs theory, and he is choosing: Existential, Relatedness, and Growth. In both cases, happiness is a concept that could be equivalent to higher accomplishments in a working environment. <h2>How are managers applying these theories?</h2> Since self-actualized and happy workers will use their maximum creative potential, it is reasonable to reach this state by allowing them to meet their essentials. Some companies allow their employees to meet physiological needs with various incentives to support their health (physical activity, team sports). To meet the social needs of their employees, some corporations are organizing a family outing near the office, hiking, or different types of team building. An essential way of meeting the needs of respect and esteem is to recognize employee achievements. Some companies reward their employees who have found a way to improve customer service or improve company performance. <h2>What the numbers tell us</h2> As we can see, the human resource factor is relevant for the companies outcomes on the market. Employee happiness is the most important value if you want your business to flourish. Actively engaged employees are emotionally connected to and invested in creating value for their organizations. <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.9327426980005721628072884736%2FHRM%20and%20Happiness_IgnjatMilinkovic_2.webp?alt=media&token=6b9501e0-a4bf-4ddb-8972-4238b60d1790" alt="" width="764" height="574" /> According to Gallup&rsquo;s research, only 13% of people worldwide actively engage at work. This number might or might not be correct, but certainly, it tells us that the vast majority of workers are not giving even their 70% of energy and skills while they are on the job from the beginning to the end of the workday. That means that companies are doing a poor job of creating an emotional bond between employees and the organization. Although many companies may be doing their best to address this problem, that number has barely budged since 2015. Maybe you may never have thought about it, but you are in the business of creating happiness. If you do it well, you will not only be highly profitable, but there&rsquo;s a good chance you&rsquo;ll be a bit happier yourself.

Happiness and Human Resource Management

<img alt="" src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.67198275032574851636739932056%2Fimage1.webp?alt=media&token=61e70db4-8e09-409a-8c9d-7c9e0f2c8adc" > &quot;What absolute clowns, how can they not see what I see? Common sense is not so common these days.&quot; A phrase or thought process I&#39;m sure we have gone through at some point in our lives. In any environment where two or more people are expected to achieve a particular goal together, there is bound to be some friction between personalities or disagreement on ideas. Conflict in the workplace happens from genuine misunderstandings or not so sincere intentions. So how do we handle this energy-draining chain of events? Often we dismiss the other party as unreasonable and in the &#39;wrong&#39; and then proceed to fight to make our point heard, possibly by repeating it over and over or just saying it louder and slower. This view is precisely the problem. If you approach the situation with the thought that whoever is incorrect is &#39;wrong,&#39; you no longer fight for the truth or progress. You are fighting to be correct regardless of the company&#39;s health. It would be best if you approached all conflicts with a positive attitude; in fact, you should be happy when a dispute arises as it is an opportunity to learn about the topic at hand or the person you are in disagreement with. The first thing you need to realize when conflict begins is that you are attacking a problem you need to solve and not the person. Don&#39;t view yourselves as two people facing each other with a topic or issue in between; it is not a high school debate. You have the same goal in the company, and therefore, you must view yourselves standing side by side, facing the problem, chipping away at it together, and stopping to discuss the next best course of action. Refrain from bringing up previous disagreements unless it concerns the topic at hand; otherwise, all you are doing is trying to discredit your counterpart. Practice active listening. Active listening is the process of consciously trying to understand what the other person is saying while responding with non-verbal cues to signal you have heard a point. <img alt="" src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.67198275032574851636739932056%2Fimage2.webp?alt=media&token=f705fecb-9292-4f2d-9f2c-3c1920afd3e8" > Some people have trouble expressing their ideas, and that&#39;s when you will find you are essentially saying the same thing and arguing over nothing. Always remain courteous and respectful despite their organizational rank. Nobody likes to be disrespected; this will aid in stopping the situation from escalating to a physical altercation or hurting you or the other person emotionally. How you treat others when other people are watching is how they will truly perceive you. If possible, seek mitigation from a neutral party or attempt to reach a consensus. It will allow each person to express their idea clearly and possibly help you understand what they are saying. In an organization,you have to be doing what&#39;s best to achieve the goals of the company. Although conflict is an opportunity to learn, it is counterproductive. Thus, the time spent arguing must always be kept to a minimum to maintain peace and constant productive energy flow. Remember your health is most important, so therefore, if you feel an argument is getting to an unhealthy stage, propose some time apart, even five to ten minutes, to cool down and allow for each person to gather their thoughts will bring the tensions down. Always seek out to understand the other person&#39;s perspective and respect it. You cannot always be correct, and sometimes if you are, it&#39;s not worth the time lost or relationship ruined.

Conflict Resolution in the Workplace

<img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.38291449564924561628072884245%2FThe%20Philosophy%20of%20Love_IgnjatMilinkovic_1.webp?alt=media&token=d674f6c3-560e-41c3-809a-4caf2fb455aa" alt="" width="765" height="478" /> <h2>Mysticism and Illusion of love</h2> One of the essential topics that interested humans from the very beginning is Love. As social beings, people seek relationships. They write unfulfilled and even tragic love stories. Most of these stories become legends, and some remain myths.&nbsp; &ldquo;Like a waver of fine cloth, they spun the tales and legends of love into an amazing tapestry of the human psyche.&rdquo; From the story of Eros and Psyche, across the troubadours of the 12th century to Shakespeare&rsquo;s Romeo and Juliet, we can see that love is the impulse to live. Lovers are the greatest utopians, and their Love is the most wondrous utopia. In love, we feel more than we should, we ache more than we think, we dream more than we live, and we say the things in which we reasonably doubt. In love, there is nothing reasonable. Love is a state of mind without balance and without rethinking. That is why the ancient Greeks considered love to be sickness and those in love to be sick. Even the oath lovers took, had no judicial value.&nbsp; &ldquo;Take good care, my son, that you never sacrifice your reason for the love of a woman&rdquo;, Creon says in Antigone. While he speaks about Antonio and Cleopatra, Plutarch says: &ldquo; The soul of the one who is in love lives in the other one&rsquo;s body&rdquo;. Love cannot be spoken of wisely, for love is not a matter of the mind but the senses and feelings, and because love is true only when it is blind, it is not subject to any measure of reason. A man in love is a mystic who lives by illusion, who believes in miracles, but not the obvious, who invents fortunes and misfortunes, and finally, who builds plans without proportion and logic, quite contrary to everything he would have done if he had not been in love. In love, man seeks destiny in divination. He is encouraged by words, and he does not believe his eyes and ears. <h2>Love and religion</h2> <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.38291449564924561628072884245%2FThe%20Philosophy%20of%20Love_IgnjatMilinkovic_2.webp?alt=media&token=9f7c992c-9752-4021-8978-2f1bdf4d95ac" alt="" /> In love, as in religion, it all starts with a feeling and believing in the unbelievable. Love is proof of intelligence because a man without ideas cannot love since love is the greatest wisdom and the finest spirituality. St. Teresa tells Lucifer that he is unhappy because he cannot love, and St. Francis made women out of snow. In the Christian world, the saints were in love, but in the pagan world, the gods were also in love. Even the goddess Rhea, the mother of Zeus, loved Phrygian young man, the handsome Attis. One of her sons, Pluto, was dying of love for Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, and the other son, Zeus, was sowing love through all the Greek roads through which he passed. &ldquo;Love to be loved. For God punishes according to justice&rdquo;- Here with the Greek lyricist, philanthropy and love are the same; and indisputably, those feelings are inseparable.

The Philosophy of Love

<img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.065927279545930921628072884125%2FScience%20Behind%20The%20Smile_IgnjatMilinkovic_1.webp?alt=media&token=d4862162-8ba2-4dfa-ab5b-2c7a24b4b3e4" alt="" width="764" height="509" /> Before you start reading this article, take a moment and ask yourself: &ldquo;How do I feel now?&rdquo; Is it happy, joyful, excited or sad, sorrowful, helpless, pessimistic? Whatever is the answer, you should give yourself another moment to recall all the situations that eventually triggered your actual feelings. Tap your back and know that mostly those feelings are transitory and that they are just visitors of your previous actions and reactions to certain situations that you were in. Happiness is becoming mainstream and a norm that all of us are reaching for. Society is expecting us to feel happy, to feel free. It&rsquo;s pushing us towards positive thinking, constantly burying down the true specter of feelings that we have in use and which we are sensing consciously or unconsciously. <h2>But what does science says about happiness?</h2> Psychologists define happiness as a subjective state of satisfaction with a current life situation, related to the feeling of self-fulfillment and enjoyment. An absence of negative emotions and stress. It is important to unpack this concept.&nbsp; We should know one basic thing, we could not feel happy if we don&rsquo;t feel sad. We could not feel joy if we don&rsquo;t feel despair. All of those are just extremes of a continuum. A dimension with two poles. The negative and positive sides. They are driving life as most humans know it. As aware beings, we have the luxury of consciously experiencing feelings. To think about them, recall them, learn how to overcome them or how to enjoy feeling them. <h2>Pleasure vs. Happiness</h2> Have you ever thought about the distinction between pleasure and happiness? Let&rsquo;s take a look what are the differences because the majority of people are misusing these concepts. First of all, pleasure is connected to our sensory level. According to a time dimension, it&rsquo;s short-lived, while happiness is long-lived.&nbsp;&nbsp; How to achieve it? Well, mostly by taking consumables (ex. food). On the other side, happiness is attained by giving and sharing (ex. human interactions, altruism). How it&rsquo;s experienced? Pleasure could be experienced even when we are alone, but happiness is shared in a group setting. <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.065927279545930921628072884125%2FScience%20Behind%20The%20Smile_IgnjatMilinkovic_2.webp?alt=media&token=6fe16e36-5f13-4bcd-a0f6-225896234534" alt="" /> <h2>Neuroscience and Happiness</h2> On a physiological scale, a neurotransmitter in charge of pleasure is Dopamine. The one responsible for happiness is Serotonin.&nbsp; When taken to extremes, too much pleasure could lead to an addiction. You can&rsquo;t be addicted to happiness, right? Still, it&rsquo;s very hard to measure happiness because of its subjectiveness. But neuroscientists have discovered the brain parts and neurotransmitters, they have found the &ldquo;neuroanatomy of pleasure&rdquo;. They&rsquo;ve divided it into three major substrates: motivation, pleasure or &ldquo;liking&rdquo; and learning. From a thing that motivates or encourages someone to do something (it defines what we want), through conscious pleasure and hedonic impact, to cognitive processing and associative learning. All three of these have their own structures and areas in the brain which are duty-bound for different actions. Those areas are interconnected, they have functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus. Affective neuroscience research on sensory pleasure has revealed many networks of brain regions and neurotransmitters activated by pleasant events and states. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that mediated satisfaction, happiness, and optimism. For example, Serotonin levels are reduced in depression, and most modern anti-depressant drugs, known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), act by increasing the amount of serotonin available to brain cells. <h2>Common sense&nbsp;</h2> After all, we should know that happiness is a process, not a destination.&nbsp; To achieve it, we need to go through the pitfalls, we need to feel the burden of negative emotions, we need to let all of those feelings come through us, to analyze them, see where our blind spot is, and overcome them. We need to be proactive in our search for happiness because only then we can rip our chains and feel free again. Research shows that much of the happiness is under personal control. Regularly indulging in small pleasures, getting absorbed in challenging activities, setting and meeting goals, maintaining close social relationships, and finding meaning beyond oneself all increase life satisfaction. It isn&rsquo;t happiness per se that promotes well-being, it&rsquo;s an actual pursuit that&rsquo;s a key.

Science Behind the Smile

<img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.220565898454474271639211397850%2Fimage1.webp?alt=media&token=2d82e687-a48a-42bf-8bb8-ef9c64fb0c91" alt="File preview" width="700" height="466" /> On any journey, be it an innovative startup or a relationship, the most important thing and often the most difficult is getting people to stick around. For the sake of easiness, you and I will refer to all such undertakings as a venture. But do not confuse these ventures as being the same. Though they might have similar underlines, building a relationship is vastly different from building a startup. So how did we get here? <h3>Vision onboarding</h3> Getting people onboard is not easy. How eager others are to join you on your journey depends on your destination and the path you propose. This is your vision. Where do you see yourself and your venture ending up, say in a few months to a couple of years? You have to sell others how you envision bringing your dream to fruition. If people find their trajectory overlapping or aligning with this journey, they will choose to take a leap of faith and jump aboard. It sounds simple but bear with me. You like everyone else, have a path laid out ahead of you. Even if you don&#39;t know exactly where to go, you might have an idea of where not to. This is equally important, if not more. And only when there is sufficient alignment between two intended paths do people enrol in the proverbial carpool. <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.220565898454474271639211397850%2Fimage2.webp?alt=media&token=ba0390d8-a4d7-46e0-911b-d50b9e381d7c" alt="File preview" width="700" height="466" /> As difficult as it is to get people onboard, it is only the first step. What follows is getting to know your fellow travellers and assessing in real-time if they joined for the reasons they claimed and if they are in it for the long haul. <h3> Why is it essential that we find people that are in it for the long haul? </h3> Think of it this way. Today&#39;s tinder generation is habitual of swiping left and right. When matched, the two people embark upon a usual and familiar journey, which entails getting to know each other and finding common ground, which becomes the basis of a new relationship and hopefully avoids any creeps. The getting to know the other part of it is almost scripted. You tend to repeat the same surface level small talk worthy nonsense about you over and over until it gets exhausting to do it. You end up wishing that at least one of these people clicked so that you won&#39;t have to go through this again. <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.220565898454474271639211397850%2Fimage3.webp?alt=media&token=e9b3eb4e-57b3-4bf9-99f5-bb061a2c9003" alt="File preview" width="700" height="466" /> Similar is a case with organizations and employees. Every new hire comes with huge costs. Cost of productive hours lost, cost of hours spent looking for new people, cost of the actual hiring process, cost of retraining and initiation of the new person into the system, so on and so forth. And these costs are not just monetary but also temporal. And one thing companies and, most importantly, new startups hate is wasting time. Time is their only ally and enemy. So yes, rehiring people over and over sucks. But what can we do to address this? The solution, I believe, is two-fold: From the organization&#39;s side and the individual&#39;s. Let&#39;s look at what companies can do. <ol> <li> Offer better salaries and incentives:&nbsp;Salaries and compensation are about value. If you believe that an individual is adding value to your company, reciprocate it monetarily. It will only push the person to deliver more. But what if you are in a bootstrapped startup? Offer your people something other than money. Trade money today for higher benefits in the future. </li> <li> Give people what they want:&nbsp;There are things people want from their jobs apart from money. It could be more days off, compensation for travel or opportunities for working remotely. Maybe they want to switch job roles and work in a new department altogether. Be as accommodating as you can be, and this way, you will get people to stay with you as they will see their paths aligning with your company&#39;s. </li> <li> Build a positive and safe working environment:&nbsp;This is a no-brainer. People identify with their work, and when that identity is dark and traumatising, they want to distance themselves from it. Do not let that happen. Word travels fast, and more so today in part due to social media. </li> </ol> <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.220565898454474271639211397850%2Fimage4.webp?alt=media&token=f0ee0908-a059-49f4-a4f7-f1f93cdc054f" alt="File preview" width="700" height="466" /> What can employees do? <ol class="c5 lst-kix_kbi4cplktx8d-0 start" start="1"> <li> Realise relationships aren&#39;t built in a day:&nbsp;Every relationship, either personal or professional, requires time and attention to develop. Almost every organisation has a training and orientation period to loop you into their system. And if you jump ship every couple of years, you end up wasting a lot of your time in this way. Remember the tinder analogy? </li> <li> Look for what your company can offer you in addition to money:&nbsp;We have heard enough stories about employees getting paid millions of dollars but not being able to enjoy any of it. Don&#39;t be that person. Find out ways of how your company can make your work life more fulfilling. Ask for medical insurance, allowances, flexible working hours, more vacation days or even the opportunities to work at night if that is your thing and if it can be managed. </li> </ol> We have more choices now than ever before, choices for our partners, and choices for our employers. But developing a good relationship in any of these scenarios requires a lot of time and commitment. Commit to a path and see where it goes for a few years. It is challenging, but ultimately as we see in our relationships, it is the thing that makes life worth living.

How To Get People To Stay?

<img alt="" src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.95060762475388861635087782163%2Fimage2.webp?alt=media&token=06996007-6580-4d52-945c-7ef69de2f915" >Unselfishness is not an inherent human quality.Selfishness is a human fact. Unselfishness is a non-fact. Human beings are born selfish. It is simply that our selfishness tones down with time. When a child comes out of his mother&rsquo;s womb, he cries unstoppably - out of selfishness. The child was utterly comfortable inside his mother&rsquo;s womb, and suddenly he is out, which causes him discomfort, and hence, the act of weeping is selfishness. It is an innocent yet desperate cry to revive his comfort back.As you grow up, you observe selfishness is a troublesome quality to have. You get yelled at by your parents and teachers, you struggle with building trust with people, and you realize that if you continue to be selfish, you will be alienated from the world. Gradually, you understand the value of compromise. The fact that the ideal way to act in the world is by being unselfish, to give without expecting anything in return. To give for the sake of giving.But, the very act of cultivating unselfishness within yourself is not pure unselfishness. It is but an indirect form of selfishness. It implies, you cleverly adopt an appearance that seems empathetic and unselfish, but that appearance is merely a deception you use, a means to a selfish end. Now, this behavior starts manifesting itself in different areas of life - in love, friendships, relationships, and beyond.We like the idea of unselfishness and are yet driven by our selfish interests, which makes us a vessel of selfishness disguised as trustable and selfless. And, that&rsquo;s the tragedy.<img alt="" src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/creed-community.appspot.com/o/images%2F0.95060762475388861635087782163%2Fimage1.webp?alt=media&token=113cc53f-a3ff-4289-9bb6-abb63a0de5f7" >&ldquo;The problem with unselfishness is that you cannot be unselfish and yet attached.&rdquo;The core necessity of unselfishness is absolute detachment from the worldly world. Unselfishness is a side-effect. To cultivate it as if it exists externally means you are trying to create a side-effect without having the source that spurts the side-effect.Let&rsquo;s take love as an example. Only unselfish love can be everlasting, and it&rsquo;s a fact, not a perception. The relationship issues that have become so ridiculously common are a result of selfish love. Two people uniting and using each other as a means to their selfish ends. They&rsquo;ve concealed their selfishness so profoundly in an unselfish appearance that even they do not realize that it is their selfish interests that govern their actions. They&rsquo;re so tremendously selfish because they&rsquo;re desperately attached to the transitory and ephemeral pleasures of the world. And hence, they cannot cultivate unselfishness any more than its tentative appearance.Only a man who is detached is unselfish. I don&rsquo;t have to explain any further. You can see it for yourself.Visualize a state of mind where you are totally detached from the world - a world that caters to your pleasures and keeps you trapped in its chase perpetually. In that very visualization, you&rsquo;ll find unselfishness, the true form of it, and in that, you&rsquo;ll discover absolute freedom. Unselfishness for the sake of unselfishness. And it is only through detachment that you can ever attach to the world and its people truly. Because until then, you&rsquo;re nothing but a slave to your own pool of endless needs. So, the problem with the kind of unselfishness you&rsquo;re trying to cultivate and what the motivational speakers, gurus, or social workers preach - is selfishness itself.

What do think about this idea?

Creed

Contact Us

Connect With Us