Il lavoro ha un significato? Fondamenti per una cultura positiva del lavoro

From the anthropological point of view work is the expression and fulfilment of the absolute spirit in the finite sense and is, by its essence, cooperation. This obliges us to reverse the question: "does work have a meaning?", to: "does work have a meaning for workers? Does it allow self-fulfilment?"Work has a meaning if the worker's psychophysical integrity is safeguarded, if by working the individual achieves self-fulfilment as a person, if it has a sense of community.Man as an "actor" achieves self-fulfilment through technical and professional competence, thereby overcoming organizational and social conflicts. Today reducing human and social relations to an economic transaction will lead to the destruction of the meaning of life and work. The study of suicide cases in France Telecom shows that a human being inserted in the working environment wants most of all to obtain recognition. He or she will accept praise or even punishment if this is done with transparency, because the person will acknowledge in such decisions a recognition of his/herself. Many enterprises and consequently many personnel managers do not, in their essence, perceive of any meaning of work, but consider only the instrumental element. The workforce cannot be considered as a commodity, work is embodied in human beings. So either people aim at self-fulfilment or fall into anomie and depression, even to the point of the destructive impulse of elimination. The re-humanization of work and the treatment of enterprises (which are "ill" because they no longer possess any meaning of work) is the challenge that awaits us.