Commentary
Including spiritual capital in our HR agenda
by
Maria Pia Chircop, CEO, FHRD
Spiritual Capital is hardly a new concept. In my commentary (The Sunday Times, September 30), I briefly listed a few ingredients that are needed for organisations to better motivate their workforce for superior performance. Indeed, these ingredients were nothing but values on which employers, HR managers, and all who lead and manage people, should build their strategies for better organisations.
In this commentary, I will continue to develop this concept, giving it a more adequate term, which is "spiritual capital", and expand briefly on its implications for business sustainability.
Most scholars link "spiritual capital" to the wealth of benefits humans receive from belonging voluntarily to religious organisations. Danah Zohar, by contrast, defines it as the wealth that enriches the deeper aspects of one's life through the search for meaning and purposes, through personal, interpersonal and transpersonal values for higher motivations, both in our lives and at work.
Businesses are all about making money through maximising their own self-interest. Unfortunately, this generated wealth is not equally distributed. We see that while some communities get extremely rich, other communities in the same country became very poor.
Moreover, the world is experiencing the repercussions of this self-interest through environmental pollution, abuse of human capital,1 the erosion of morals and values, and an increase in stress-related diseases, like depression, chronic fatigue, various stress-related syndromes, drug and alcoholic abuses, and even suicide.
In this new century, the world is experiencing the potential exhaustion of capitalism's material capital. Restructuring, downsizing, mergers and closing down of businesses, political crises, chaos and instability also in the ecological world is what we continue reading in our newspapers every day.
The world is not sustainable by itself. Zohar argues that a paradigm shift to a value-led culture is necessary if we really want our businesses to be sustainable.
At an individual level people need to develop self-awareness and a vision, have a positive approach to adversity, take a holistic approach to life (not forgetting the work-life balance), be compassionate, look for diversity for self-development and learning, take full responsibility of their rights and decisions, be analytical and be spontaneous in risk-taking and their approach to change (Zohar D., Marshall).
People need to treat their work as a vocation, showing deep interest, encourage their organisation to be socially responsible and finally need to learn to be humble by appreciating and praising others for their contribution and being ready to learn from their own mistakes.
At an organisation level, leaders need to foster a culture based on values like communication, relationships, fairness, trust, power, truth, flexibility and empowerment, applicable both for its employees as well as for all stakeholders.
They should have strategies that reinforce their corporate social responsibility towards their immediate community and the world as a whole.
Zohar argues that a culture based on self-interest and profit-making, disregarding long-term consequences is unsustainable. While a value-based culture, in which wealth generates a decent profit for the common good of all, is sustainable we should all strive to make the world a better place through discovering what we really value in life, stay true to our deepest ideals and values, and make what difference we can, at whatever level we operate in life.
"Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. But give the world the best you have anyway" - Mother Teresa.
Ms Chircop was inspired to write this commentary following a seminar on 'Spiritual Capital' by Danah Zohar at the CIPD conference in Harrogate last month. The FHRD is striving to instil these kinds of values not only through its commentaries but also through its Excellence in People Management (Malta) Award.
References
Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. (2004): Spiritual Capital, Wealth we can live by; Roosevelt Malloch T. (2003): Social, Human and Spiritual Capital in the Economic Development.
1. Human capital defined as 'Skilled and educated people' Richard Crawford in Roosevelt Malloch, Social, Human and Spiritual Capital in Economic Development. | 
