Giving employees meaning at work is a vital part of your 2020 Employee Experience strategy. If you aren’t providing meaning in these 4 areas, start now.
This new decade has brought about a spirited search for more meaning, purpose, and aspiration among generations in the workplace. While it is trendy to blame Millennials, social media, and technology for this pursuit, this quest for deep purpose has been alive for centuries, and it is making an unavoidable, grand entrance into our corporate offices.
In February of 2019 alone, over 2 million Americans quit their jobs. Inadequate compensation is the top contributor to turnover, but we are seeing a radical increase in employees that are leaving their jobs to pursue more meaningful work. For many, this search for “more meaningful work” is actually masked as a longing to be valued within the organization they were already in.
Our Wishlist team outlined a few expert tips on how to cultivate an ecosystem of meaningfulness within your workplace by incorporating empathy and intentionality in these key areas:
- Organization
- Job
- Task
- Relationships
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANINGFULNESS
The foundation of purposeful culture is understanding what matters to your organization. You need to know who you are and what you stand for as a company. Your employees want to be a part of something bigger than themselves at the end of the day. When you help employees connect the work they do on a daily basis to your organization’s greater purpose, you will begin to see a shift towards a culture of ownership.
JOB MEANINGFULNESS
Provide direction and growth opportunities at the start of the hiring process for the role the candidate is interviewing for. For current employees, set up a meeting to help them define not just their responsibilities, but their greater impact and significance within the organization. By giving your employees this broad, high-level vision of who they are and what they contribute, they will begin to feel that they are necessary to the success of the company.
TASK MEANINGFULNESS
To create value in the mundane, nitty-gritty areas of your employee’s job, connect the tasks they must accomplish to a greater organizational purpose. Show them how their performance affects the entirety of the business. When things within their project get tough, they will remember the problem they are solving, and the positive impact their solution will deliver.
RELATIONAL MEANINGFULNESS
Share with your team how they can be of service to each other – and why being of service will help not only them but your whole team and also the company – supports a workplace culture of ownership and transparency.
Employees who are searching for a meaningful employee experience want to be taken on a journey with your company. They want to develop, learn and become a better professional during their time at your organization. Watch your employees develop a deeper drive to support their coworkers and to make your company successful by implementing these tips in your workplace.
