The Hindu Business Line : Energised or enervated by work?

Bill devoted the fourth session on HR philosophy to the marvel of the human capital to appreciate with use! “Have you ever wondered why children demonstrate more energy during vacation time than when school is on?”

Contrary to popular belief that expects work has to necessarily drain us of energy, some individuals who perform some aspects of work actually end up more positively energised after a gruelling engagement! Can HR come up with a philosophy that could capitalise on this freak occurrence?

Eupsychia: Abraham Maslow coined this word to mean a ‘good mind’ that embraces benign suffering as an investment for a higher order purpose or cause. Much like the sculptor, artist, painter, their stamina for endurance may ‘grow with time, always oblivious to and living through the pains of their progress with a state of mind that may be energising the rest of the body! Accepting the legitimacy of the experience itself as their sweet reward, they rarely seek material rewards for their labour.

Celestial rendition accompanies any situation where the act of work and the joy of doing act in unison to create a more energised state of ‘existence’, spiralling upwards until reaching a crescendo or a ‘high’! Pleasure, as opposed to pain in the case of Eupsychia, is the trigger and reward.

Pastime depicts an aimless pursuit of a ‘Sailor on shore leave’ alternating between voyages and simply having a good time until the next destination is chartered out. This is a state typified by ‘anything goes mindset’. Content with undertaking a journey to anywhere and anytime and remain happy as ever with whatever comes their way, they may be very popular but complacency, unless contained, could get contagious.

Addiction is a winner’s curse that the ‘addicts’ may be unwilling to let go of. Consequently, activities that may have been meaningful at earlier times may have become a chore but no one may be willing to ‘bell the cat’. Bill alerted the need for instituting a HR policy that was sensitive to tracing the levels of energy expended in each of the four quadrants, depicted by the energy consumed by the task (X-axis) and the energy released by the purpose (Y-axis). Else the organisation could be frittering away the precious ergs of human energy on to something that may be worthless. Any one for ‘human energy audit’?

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