Table of Contents
STATE OF MEANINGFUL WORK : HOW TO EVOKE MEANING IN YOUR WORKFORCE
On average, we spend one-third of our adult lives at work. While we’re there to make a living, we also want to be engaged and inspired by the work we do. And at the end of the day, we want to believe that the hours we invest make a positive impact on our organizations and the greater good.
Finding meaning at work has skyrocketed to the top of the priority list for employees. In fact, less than a third of millennials believe that an organization’s purpose is to make money, according to Josh Bersin of Deloitte. But the search for meaning at work isn’t limited to millennials – it extends across all generations. Today’s employees are looking for opportunities to transform jobs into satisfying life experiences.
But how do people find meaning at work? What qualities do those who find it share? And how can you cultivate meaningful work experiences to improve retention and help employees perform at the highest possible levels?
These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself. If you can create a deeper bond between people, their work, and your larger organizational mission and values, you’ll be on your way to attracting and retaining high-performing talent.
Introduction
STATE O F M E AN I N G FU L WO R K : H OW TO E VO K E M E AN I N G I N YO U R WO R K FO RCE
Methodology
People who understand their organization’s mission and values are much more likely to find meaning at work. The employee-manager relationship is crucial to the search for meaning. Ninety-one percent of people who feel their work is very meaningful say their supervisors care about their professional success. Money has little to do with meaning. Less than one in five employees who find their work very meaningful rank monetary rewards as the primary factor in meaningful work. As headcount grows beyond 1,000 employees, so do the the opportunities to improve engagement and retention by creating meaningful environments. Looking at longevity and organizational tenure isn’t the best way to measure meaning, as happiness and trust tend to drop at the 10-year mark. Agile employee success and recognition strategies can combat that and ensure long-term employees feel a sense of meaningfulness, too. Men are more likely to find meaning in their work and to trust in the organization, but these feelings have more to do with their company status than their gender. To better understand meaningful work and its implications, we asked 1,200 full-time employees across more than 20 industries about meaning in the workplace. Our study took a deep dive into how people find meaning in their daily work and how it differs across organization size, employment tenure, gender, and more.
Technology
MOST-REPRESENTED INDUSTRIES:
33 % CONSTRUCTION
21% HEALTHCARE
7% CONSULTING & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
5% FINANCIAL SERVICES
The data we collected led us to key insights about what it takes for the modern person to find meaning in the workplace.Now you can cater your engagement strategies to these important trends:
Section One
The good news? An overwhelming majority of employees find some level of meaning in their work. But while roughly half (51%) find their work to be very meaningful, 42% of employees feel their work is only somewhat meaningful and 8% don’t believe it to be meaningful at all. Employees who do find meaning in their work have some important things in common. Most importantly, they understand why their organizations exist. People who know their organization’s mission and values are more likely to experience meaning in their work than people who lack knowledge or connection to the organization’s purpose. In many cases, an employee’s connection with the organization’s mission and values is rooted in their perception of the organization’s leaders. People who find meaning in their work see the CEO as someone who embodies the organization’s values and will likely leave if the CEO stops doing so. On the other hand, people who don’t experience meaning from their jobs also don’t see the CEO as someone who personifies organizational values.
Uncovering How Employees Find Meaning at Work
FACTORS THAT DRIVE MEANINGFUL WORK:
95% Not at all Meaningful
87% Very Meaningful
75% Somewhat Meaningful
80% Understand Company Mission
53% Believe CEO Always
51% Embodies Company Values
96% Are Happy in Current Job
Perceptions about meaningful work improve when employees have strong relationships with their leaders. Of those employees who have relationships with their leaders outside of work, 73% find their work very meaningful. On the flip side, of those without a relationship with a leader outside of work, only 40% find their work to be very meaningful. Not surprisingly, those who feel that their work provides them with a sense of meaning and purpose are just plain happier with their jobs. Happiness declines for people who derive no meaning from their activities in the workplace. Money appears to have an inverse relationship with meaning at work. Of those who see their work as very meaningful, only 17% ranked monetary rewards as the number one factor for finding meaning. By contrast, money is a more significant driver for those who don’t derive meaning from the daily grind – half of respondents who described their work as “not at all meaningful” ranked money as the primary way they find meaning in their work. The key takeaway is that for most employees, meaning is derived from mission – not money. You can cultivate meaning at work by being more transparent with the organization’s values and encouraging employees to set goals that align to them. Unlike traditional performance management processes, real-time employee success processes create clear connections between employee actions and the organization’s mission and values. As a result, meaning and happiness levels all around go up.
Maintaining a Sense of Meaning in Growing Organizations
As organizations grow, scaling that sense of meaning can be tough. Happiness, meaning, and trust don’t scale as easily as cloud servers. When employee numbers increase into the hundreds, thousands and eventually, tens of thousands, it’s often difficult to nurture personal meaning at work. People at smaller organizations are more likely to find meaning in the shared belief that their daily work contributes to the greater good. They’re more likely to feel like true members of the team, forming close relationships with colleagues more easily than their peers in larger companies. Employee happiness steadily declines as organization size increases. The same goes for meaningful work rates. While more than half (56%) of employees at companies with 500-1,000 employees are very happy with their jobs, only 36% of those at organizations with 10K+ employees are very happy in their current positions. Traditional performance management practices reinforce the gap in meaning and happiness in large organizations. As the organization grows, it becomes more difficult for employees to form close bonds and demonstrate the contributions they make to the company’s success. This disconnect inevitably erodes another key ingredient for finding meaning at work: trust.
HOW DO EMPLOYEES FIND MEANING AS ORGANIZATION SIZE INCREASES?
44% Contributing to the Greater Good
20% Monetary or Other Rewards
31% 500-1k Employees
27% 1k-3k Employees
34% 3k-10k Employees
28% 10k+ Employees
Section Two
An employee’s sense of trust in the organization declines as company size increases. Case in point: 65% of employees at companies with 500-1,000 employees are very trusting of their organizations, but the number drops to 55% in companies with 1,000 – 3,000 employees and 54% in companies with 3,000 – 10,000 employees. It bottoms out at 41% in companies with workforces of 10,000+. Likewise, employees’ sense of trust in direct managers is highest in organizations with 500-1,000 employees, but remains relatively flat at companies with workforces of 1,000+. Employees’ trust in their managers is higher across companies of all sizes when compared to their overall trust in the organization or measures of meaning and happiness. Managers hold the keys to the connection an employee has to their work. The manager- employee relationship can make or break the employee’s experience and the likelihood that they will find meaning at work. Strong relationships with managers help build trust and morale; they inspire employees to go the extra mile. One way to build trust through the employee- manager relationship is to give employees the autonomy and resources to request Sync-Ups and feedback from managers. WorkTango’s platform enables any person to request feedback from any other member of the organization at any time. When people experience that level of access, their trust in the organization and in their leaders grows. And so does their sense of meaning in their work.
HOW ORGANIZATION SIZE IMPACTS EMPLOYEE TRUST IN DIRECT MANAGER
67% 3k-10k Employees
59% Very Trusting of
59% Their Direct Manager
61% 500-1k Employees
1k-3k Employees
10k+ Employees
STRATEGIES FOR CULTIVATING MEANING THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH
Remove roadblocks and bottlenecks for people where you can. Help managers understand how to naturally build employee relationships through proactive, consistent feedback in weekly Sync-Ups and quarterly performance Check-InsFacilitate a culture where employees can give and receive continuous feedback from their peers and frequent collaborators. Empower employees to set professional goals that align with business objectives. Connect the work that people are doing to the broader mission of the organization by helping employees recognize one another in a visible, social way. WorkTango’s Goals & Feedback solution allows employees to see team, department, and organizational goals at all times– and to structure their own goals in alignment. WorkTango’s Recognition & Rewards platform gives employees and leaders the ability to name a colleague’s contribution in real-time, say thanks, and tie it back to organizational objectives. Aligned goal setting and recognition give employees the autonomy and latitude to contribute in meaningful ways.
Extending the Meaningful Work Sweet Spot
Employee tenure presents another potential hazard for organizations interested in improving employees’ sense of meaning at work. Conventional wisdom assumes that long-term employees remain with the organization based on company loyalty. But the metrics typically associated with company loyalty – sense of meaning, trust, and happiness – do not increase in the long term. They peak between five and 10 years before sharply dropping off. The decline in meaning at work is paralleled by a decline in trust. In year one on the job, 51% of employees report that they are very trusting of their organization. This number peaks at 60% during 5-10 years, before dropping off t0 44% beyond 10 years. These findings show that the sweet spot for meaning and trust occurs during the five-to-10 year window of a person’s tenure. In the early years, you have an opportunity to instill meaning, trust, and happiness, but beyond a decade of service, these things are difficult to sustain. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the level of trust employees have in managers and CEOs. Peak trust occurs during the 5-10-year window, then drops sharply after that. Employees are also less likely to have a personal relationship with managers after 10 years. At five to 10 years, 46% of employees say that they have a relationship with their leader outside the workplace. After 10 years, this number plummets to 26%.
Section Three
SENSE OF MEANING DECREASED AT TEN YEAR MARK
51% 1-2 years
52% Less than 1 year
55% 5-10 years
53% 3-4 years
44% Over 10 years
STATE O F M E AN I N G FU L WO R K : H OW TO E VO K E M E AN I N G I N YO U R WO R K FO RCE
The drop in meaning and trust at the 10-year mark may simply be a reflection of current employment trends. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the January 2016 median employee tenure in the U.S. was 4.2 years, down from 4.6 years in January 2014. Declining employee sentiment at 10 years aligns with the fact that it is somewhat rare for workers to remain at a job that long in today’s current landscape. Regardless, the data on meaning and trust just highlights the importance of creating a culture of meaning, trust, and happiness early in the person’s tenure with the organization. In conversation with managers, employees must be empowered to tackle new projects, allowed to explore lateral opportunities, and encouraged to participate in organization-wide initiatives. To retain talented individuals beyond the 10- year mark, employers should explore incentive programs that offer meaningful financial and non- financial rewards (e.g., bonuses, sabbaticals, and 10-year trips). Peer-to-peer and manager-to-employee recognition can also help retain people beyond 10 years. By giving employees and managers tools for calling out a peer’s good work that aligns with the organization’s mission, you can help employees build meaning and purpose from their jobs – regardless of tenure. WorkTango’s Recognition & Rewards platform makes giving recognition easy. A few clicks is all it takes to let someone know that their contributions and presence matter.
HOW DOES EMPLOYEE TENURE IMPACT TRUST IN LEADERS AND THE CEO?
60% Less than 1 year
41% 1-2 years
56% 3-4 years
49% 5-10 years
64% Over 10 years
48% Very Trusting of CEO
69% Very Trusting of Direct Supervisor
Give employees a voice via a platform to share their concerns. WorkTango’s Surveys & Insights makes it possible for employee responses to be anonymous or confidential. You can even design surveys that preserve anonymity while giving HR or leadership the ability to follow-up with individuals based on their responses– all without compromising their identity. Frequent pulse surveys allow leaders to establish a baseline for levels of employee trust, sense of meaning, and happiness– and then to track trends over time. When employees realize that leaders are listening and acting based on their responses, their sense of trust and their engagement grows. Show appreciation for employees’ commitment and contributions through a social recognition program. Provide tangible rewards at various mile markers (and all along the way) in the employee’s relationship with the organization. Using a Recognition & Rewards platform means you can offer custom incentives and rewards that increase the meaning and timeliness of gratitude. Encourage leaders to ask for feedback on their own performance. Work this into your real-time employee success strategy. When employees are asked for upward feedback, it cultivates a sense of trust.
STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING END-TO-END EMPLOYEE TRUST, HAPPINESS, AND SENSE OF MEANING
Men and women rate their own performance and productivity nearly identically, and age distributions are the same as well. Yet, the men in our survey enjoy their work more than women. Our findings suggest the difference in meaning, trust, and happiness between genders is connected to the inverted gender distribution across the org chart. Nearly two-thirds of male employees (58%) believe their work is meaningful, compared to just 44% of female employees. Similar percentages – 58% of men and 47% of women – are very trusting of their organizations. Men are also more likely to report they are “very trusting of their direct supervisors” (66%) than women (56%). Interestingly, male employees significantly outpace female employees in developing meaningful relationships with managers . While 42% of men report that they have a relationship with their leaders outside of work, only 25% of women raised their hand to having a non-work-related relationship with their managers. The gender gap illustrates a clear connection between meaning at work and opportunities in the workplace.
Members of the gender non-binary community are also more likely to experience lower levels of meaning in their work due to poor representation in leadership. Effective DE&I initiatives–especially those concerning equity of opportunity for advancement–result in greater workplace fulfillment.
Overcoming the Gender Gap in Meaningful Work
It’s not that women and members of the non-binary community are less capable of experiencing meaningful work than men– it’s possible that they don’t enjoy the same opportunities for advancement, leaving them to feel their work has less meaning and purpose. An agile employee success framework enables managers to empower gender diverse (which includes female) employees by raising their profile within the organization. Employee success conversations and real-time feedback mechanisms allow managers and gender diverse employees to head in the right direction by addressing the barriers that limit advancement and give them more opportunities for career growth.
GENDER AND HAPPINESS AT WORK
49% Male
41% Female
Section Four
9% Entry Level
12% Analyst/Associate
33% Manager
46% Director
29% Vice President
28% C-Level Executive
WHAT DOES GENDER DISTRIBUTION LOOK LIKE ACROSS LEVELS
Strategies for IncludingMore Gender Diverse Individuals Higher in the Org Chart
- Provide strategic mentorship opportunities for female and non-binary employees and encourage male leaders to advocate for them to help advance their careers.
- Reduce unconscious bias in hiring, promotions, and employee success conversations.
- Offer additional training to help people find and participate in informal conversations and interactions across the organization, and document those interactions for key takeaways.
- Create more opportunities for peer-to-peer recognition, as women aren’t as statistically likely to recognize or acknowledge their own strengths and accomplishments.
Section Five
Setting and tracking performance goals that align with the company’s overall objectives creates a greater sense of connection for employees. Organizations, especially leadership teams, should make an effort to communicate mission and values, and tie performance and behavior to those principles when they can. That’s where a platform like Goals & Feedback helps– mission, values, and goals are always visible. Many organizations rely on annual reviews to provide guidance and feedback to employees. But to achieve a positive workplace culture where employees are trusting and happy, you should encourage frequent, employee-driven conversations and continuous interaction between both managers and peers. Simply increasing managers/employee facetime can improve sentiment and meaning. Without reinforcement or adequate oversight, managers can easily put feedback on the backburner. But with a technology solution in place, you can keep a pulse on how much support and feedback your employees are receiving. With the WorkTango platform, for instance, managers are reminded of Weekly Sync-Ups and quarterly Check-Ins with employees to ensure they are regularly providing feedback, coaching, and personal connection to team members. Millennials in particular crave continuous feedback, and the right employee engagement platform can ensure they feel recognized for their accomplishments.
Next Steps: Strategies for Cultivating Meaning in Employees
FACILITATE AGILE GOAL-SETTING
INCREASE SYNC-UP CADENCE
SUPPORT A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS FEEDBACK
Positive reinforcement is an infinite resource. With the right technology in place, managers and peers can recognize their colleagues on a mobile platform that is designed for on-the-go, always-on lifestyles. And when your employees feel appreciated, they will be more likely to extend the five-to-10-year sweet spot of meaning, trust and happiness within your organization. As our survey indicates, money can distort how a person finds meaning in their work. To borrow from Daniel Pink, author of Drive, salaries and bonuses are extrinsic motivators. The desire to create, learn, and deliver positive results, on the other hand, are intrinsic motivators – and they are far more powerful. Organizations need to solicit employee feedback more frequently than bi-annual employee engagement surveys. Regular feedback allows companies to monitor the overall mood of their organization, answer questions on the spot and address employee concerns before they become huge problems. Implementing pulse surveys and slicing the data by various attributes including business unit, tenure, or location allows companies to pinpoint areas for improvement. This (sometimes anonymous) forum also allows employees to raise concerns they may feel uncomfortable bringing up in person. WorkTango’s Surveys & Insights platform even provides learning and action suggestions for leaders based on employee feedback.
RECOGNIZE EMPLOYEES SOCIALLY AND PUBLICLY
SEPARATE COMPENSATION FROM PERFORMANCE
TRACK EMPLOYEE SENTIMENT
Our survey results show that strong relationships with managers often produce positive feelings toward work and the organization. But including lateral feedback in performance conversations can have an even greater impact on employees’ sense of meaning. Even in the largest enterprises, peer-to-peer feedback helps reinforce feelings of inclusivity and support for employees.
ENCOURAGE PEER-TO-PEER FEEDBACK
Helping people-first companies create amazing employee experiences. We believe companies flourish when their employees are both aligned and inspired. This only happens when employees find meaning and growth in the work itself, and when people feel appreciated by and connected to their colleagues and organization. To achieve this, companies need to turn outdated approaches to performance management, recognition, and engagement on their heads. They need to adopt a new way that’s continuous, manager- and employee-led, and people-first.
