satisfaction is a matter of balance

´Economic growth gets to a point where quality life is damaged´. Chilean-german economist Manfred Max-Neef is the author of the polemic threshold theory, which defends that the developed countries have been modernized without satisfying most of the people requirements to be happy.
 

What does a person need to feel fullfilled?. A scientific investigation identified nine needs, the same ones allover the planet, to be happy: survival, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Each one will satisfy people in their own way, but somehow everyone aim them.
 
An obstacle to achieve the happiness in the modern societies is that ´the economic development damage quality of life´and doesn´t allow to satisfy people demands. Manfred Max-Neef defends that the anguish and the uncertainty are higher in industrialized countries than they were before, because they have been modernized without previously analyze the grade of poverty and inequality that the advance envolves with it.
 
The polemic study made me think about the parallelism between this and the companies. Each day our companies are getting bigger, have more available resources, proffessionals get higher beneficts…but, how much does if contribute to their happiness?. Could the same than in the threshold theory be happening here, so company growth means also a growth in the employee un-satisfaction? Considering it, Im continuosly looking for parallelisms. What about giving a kid everything he wants? What about getting everything without an effort? What about people who get huge amounts of money without working for it? Thinking about it I can´t stop thinking that it will never be good for anyone. When things come in our hands too easily, we don´t appreciate them.
 
Let´s go back to the study about the nine requirements to be happy and let`s think about each of them within our organizations, and in which percentage employees have access to them: survival, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom.
 
From the HR perspective, we should be able to find the balance between all these factors, and design policies to guarantee the access of the proffesionals to each of them. But careful, let´s do it in the right measure, don´t promote a bad mannered organization, without humility, hopeless, without involvement, complaining… Is our responsibility to manage all the needs in a right way. If we get it, if we manage to make our employees happy with themselves and with their own lifes, the goals of the company will be further easy to reach. Good luck!!!...suggestions are welcome…