The Search for Meaning at Work: Part 3
The Search for Meaning at Work: Part 3
The Search for Meaning
OK, so maybe the search for meaning is due, in part, to the fact that employees are spoiled. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t address the issue. Anything that may increase corporate productivity—and employees’ happiness—is worth pursuing.So, what makes work meaningful? What ignites passion on the job and makes a person want to leap out of bed in the morning? Well, that depends on who you ask. Sandy McAfferty, a Denver member of Forty Plus, an organization of workers age 40 and over who are in the midst of a career transition, says for that her, meaningful work involves developing and supporting other people. She’s a corporate trainer, so her answer isn’t surprising.
John Meeker, another Forty Plus member, has spent his career in a variety of manufacturing and engineering jobs. What makes his work meaningful? “When management listens to employees and takes advantage of our views,” he says. “For me, it’s not so much what I’m doing that makes the work meaningful, but whether or not the environment is supportive.”
Ask five other people what makes their work meaningful and you’ll get five different answers, including creativity, the ability to learn, a high salary, and being able to influence others. That’s because meaning is as unique as our fingerprints. Given that, how can companies be expected to light a fire under all employees when the fuel is different for everyone? “By helping employees discover for themselves what activities are meaningful,” says Welch. “You see, most people don’t understand how to go about finding meaningful work because they don’t know what is important to them. We just haven’t been taught to think that way.”
According to Welch, trainers can play a valuable role in helping employees find meaning in their work by helping them identify their talents and skills, uncover their work and life values, and assess the environments and activities in which their values will be met while their talents are utilized. Typically, when employees devote their talents to projects and companies that support their values, the work is meaningful. “That kind of discovery process can be done easily in a classroom,” says Welch.
Though some employers are helping employees uncover their talents and values, that usually happens during out placement when an employee is already halfway out the door. Imagine the kind of commitment companies could generate by helping employees find and apply their passions while they’re still employed. “I did a values clarification seminar for a group of machinists who were being laid off and, without exception, they told me they wished the company had offered the workshop years earlier,” says Welch. “They felt that maybe they could have done a better job for the company and prevented the downsizing altogether.”
Because lifetime job security has evaporated, some enlightened employers have realized they need to help employees take responsibility for their careers before a layoff occurs. A few have even gone so far as to set up career self-management programs that offer employees such resources as career libraries, networking groups, job counseling, and online job posting.
Finding Passion
But Welch believes that many of those efforts suffer from the same problem college planning courses do: They don’t teach people how to find work and careers that they’re passionate about. Of course, if you help employees uncover what is meaningful for them, you run the risk of their leaving—unless you structure the discovery process in such a way that people stay focused on finding meaning in the current work environment. That is exactly what GTE’s Information Systems Division—which is part of GTE Government Systems in Chantilly, Virginia—did last year when it launched an intrapraneur pilot program. In it, 22 employees were given resources to help them find something meaningful to create for the company.
According to Anthony Spadafore, the career consultant who helped design the program, work on the Intrapraneurship pilot began two years ago following a restructuring that failed to boost productivity. “The restructuring didn’t catch on because people weren’t passionate about their work,” he says. “It was like operating like a car with no engine. We couldn’t move the company the way we wanted.” Searching for a solution, the company agreed to fund a pilot project in which employees would be given resources to find ways to pursue their passions in the workplace.
