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Finding Meaning & Purpose at Work

Written by: Arupa Tesolin

Article Overview: More and more employers need to provide work that employees find meaningful and interesting. Here are some of the motivation factors.

Finding Meaning & Purpose at Work

Copyright June 2006 by Arupa Tesolin

When is a job not just a job? When does a career become a vocation? Where do you link customer service with service to humanity? The answers to these questions are highly individual and becoming increasingly blurred as organizations and the people in them change.

Beyond pay, most workers will cite that what makes them happiest is that they have a meaningful level of contribution to their organization or enterprise, that they can take an active role in shaping the outcomes and results. Others love their career when it strikes them that they are fulfilling their unique interests in the world and growing. Others find challenges in their work that help them to develop skills they would not have developed anywhere else in the spectrum of human life, opening new aptitudes of capability, learning and interaction with others.

Education and business is another world that is becoming more blurred day by day. Every business has an interest in educating employees when these employees are the vested intelligence capital of the company.

So, what is the difference between those organizations that offer meaningful work with purpose and those that don’t? Here are some shaping considerations starting with the top.

Leadership: “Nothing is more important” says University of Toronto Professor Gareth Morgan, “than developing leaders in organizations. If you get the leadership right, organizational performance will follow.”

Climate:
Professor Morgan claims there is a revolution going on about “how we develop” people. Most of the corporate development has been largely behavior based rather than results based. He related research that showed companies who increased profits by 66% (10% per year) as their positive organizational climate increased. Clearly, treating people well pays off.

Strategy:
“Corporate strategies” Professor Morgan recounts “used to come from a corporate retreat. Now most strategies come from operational breakthroughs. We’re in a stage where many of these breakthroughs will occur BELOW the leadership level.”
We’re seeing the evidence from many years of overpaid bad dog CEO’s.
90% of CEO’s lost their job because of a strategy failure.
17% lose because of a failure of vision + strategy.
75% lose it because they failed on implementation.
Hmmm…..Could empowering people have something to do with it? Look at this next category.

People Management
This area consistently scores the worst. Most organizations showing a glaring need to focus on better people management, but not yesterday’s people management. If the bottom line is employees engaged in meaningful and purposeful work supported by a cohesive and focused management practice, there is no reason for outmoded management practices that deflate rather than inspire, discourage rather than encourage.

Some organizations have managed to be successful despite their bad management. But as the saying goes “The chickens come home to roost eventually.” For today positive management is the only sustainable solution. Churning trained people out of your organization will only cost you - now or later. The average cost of losing an employee are 1 to 2 times his or her annual salary. Are you competing to keep your staff?

No employee needs to be loaded down with the frustration of bad management and low growth opportunities in this day and age. It’s simply short-sighted and naïve.

Learning
Professor Morgan states “The real learning is occurring in the operational side of the business.”

Learning Summary:
Learning is now continually merged with work.
Organizations simply cannot afford to not have time to learn.
More learning is adapted to just-in-time needs.
Learning is more collaborative and solution oriented.
Life-long learning is related to high performance.
Learning includes making mistakes and correcting them and solving problems with urgency.
Learning engages multiple senses, hearing, collaboration, and engages innate curiousity.

Action learning is very important today. You start with a problem or challenge using a group process. This generates knowledge-sharing and new questions and a chance to reflect on them. The realness factor is that the learning is in the process. Once the problem is identified, the solution identifiers become the implementers. Other key roles such as implementation coaches become an important integrator. They help increase the learning commitment and build the skills along the way.

The end-note is this. If you want engaged employees who are meaningfully involved in your company, look to the support factors above as essential components.

Related Articles
  10 Ideas about Life Purpose
  Your Life Purpose
  What would your sales-role and business be like with less fear?
  Ten Characteristics Of Meaningful Work
  Business Purpose in 3 Steps

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