Peng Lei has been in charge of Human Resources Department of Alibaba for more than 10 years, but few of her in-depth articles on HR management was found, and the only one we can see is her speech at the end of 2010. years later, we can also read her unique insights on corporate culture and human resources management, which are still encouraging today.

I believe that the story of Peng Lei will inspire many female HR forward, for gentle can rule the world and control the world.

l Alibaba is both realistic and ideal

What kind of company is Alibaba? And what fulfills Ali’s dream? In fact, Alibaba is a quite realistic company, of course, it is also particularly idealistic. At present, people’s comments on Alibaba go to two extremes-either deified or demonized.

Outsiders comment that Alibaba is a myth, a dream-driven company, and all employees take the company as their home and work tirelessly..., but to me all these are extremes and misreadings. Because today, all companies have problems related to tiring, the balance between work and life, contradictions of ideal and reality, as well as ineffective management capacity, employees feeling their efforts not be recognized and their job-hopping moods and intentions.... All in all, problems in general companies also exist in Alibaba

If you say that Alibaba is a company with passion and dream, I think it’s half right, because passion and dream are always there, but also some unpleasant things.

The other extreme is to demonize Alibaba, and one of the most common word is “brain washing”. Outsiders say that Alibaba is especially good at brainwashing the employees, as a result, the employees are greatly invigorated to work tirelessly, just like being injected chicken blood, not caring about returns but having all their hearts set on working.

As a matter of fact, we are just sticking to our values on management. As I said earlier, we want our employees to achieve a balance between mind and work. For another example, I hate the word “workplace”, because when it comes to this word, life immediately becomes boring and work is frivolous and emotionless. Maybe this is my paranoid understanding, but the word “workplace” just can not give us a comprehensive, rich and complete overview of our work environment. So what is the missing element? Workplace, in addition to a place for occupational activities, but also should be a place for emotional interaction.

l Make Workplace into Emotion Place

We can count that how much time we spend on working in our life? Is the time we spend with our colleagues more than that with our parents? If you can not feel the growth of your own soul, can not feel happy, improvement and the joy of  self-achievement when you work with your colleagues, then the work will become particularly painful. When you open your eyes every morning, what comes to your mind is you have to work with those usual faces, have to see the boss’s stink face, and have to deal with heaps of unpleasant things..., so what motivation can wake you up?

Therefore, can we have some elements that make us feel different? Let us make “workplace” into “emotion place”. Others may find Alibaba wired when they hear this statement. “Work is work, we get paid after work and evaluations about final judgement, accepting punishment, rewards or penalties, all are clear, isn’t it work?” No one willing to care about the final home of emotion.

l Employee Well-Being is an Unsolvable Proposition

There is another common word “fantastic talks”. We put forward the concept of “building employee well-being index” in our 10^th anniversary, so what was the stimulation? Alibaba conducts OES (Organizational Effects) survey every other year, and the result of the latest survey was beyond endurance. As the age structure changes of our new employees, our ability to understand employees’ psychology is limited.

We want to know what the elements of happiness are for all employees who work in Alibaba. In fact, putting forward this index is to some extent asking for trouble, because it is inevitably a proposition without solution. Happiness itself is an unresolved proposition.

The happiest country in the world is Bhutan, which boasts rich tourism resources, but the tourist threshold is extremely high and expensive, as Bhutanese do not want to be disturbed. In addition to refuse to develop the tourism industry, Bhutan also does not want to vigorously develop other industries. Due to its closure, the citizens are generally poor, and the religious beliefs are very common. Is there any interconnected element between the happiest country and the happiest enterprise?

From the example of Bhutan, only one conclusion can be drawn: happiness is quite subjective, therefore, setting an index is equivalent to put a trap for ourselves, but even if there is no solution, Alibaba still hopes that it will be possible to get some inspiration and direction in the process of finding the answer.