What we want from work has changed. When it’s hard for so many to cover basic living expenses, and employers demand they work harder for longer hours, employees need more to keep them motivated than just money. Purpose-driven work can fill that need.
When people feel like their work has a purpose, they’re more likely to be engaged and therefore work harder.
On the flip side, if someone feels like their work is all-consuming and lacking in purpose, they’re more likely to become disconnected and disengage.
What is purpose-driven work?
Purpose-driven work is when employees do something that fulfills them.
Usually, this comes with working in a role that aligns with their personal and professional values.
For instance, someone who cares about the environment working in green energy.
Feeling like their position is a contributing factor matters, too. When someone feels that their job is important to the company mission, they’re 3.6 times more likely to have a strong sense of work purpose.
What are the benefits?
When employees’ purpose matches their employer’s purpose, they’re more engaged. In fact, there’s a 41% difference in engagement between employees with a strong work purpose and those without: 9% of employees with low purpose are engaged, while 50% who have a strong work purpose are engaged. That’s a huge difference in productivity, culture, and revenue right there.
Purpose-driven work also comes with a lower risk of burnout. Just 13% of employees who have a strong work purpose feel burnt out “always” or “very often.” On the flip side, 38% of people with a low work purpose say the same.
It also improves employee retention: 68% of those with low purpose are actively job seeking or watching for opportunities, compared to 41% of those who do have a sense of purpose.
How to provide purpose-driven work
Communicate your mission everywhere
I once worked somewhere that valued treating everyone like a human. All meetings, therefore, started with a check-in. Everyone was asked how they were, how their weekend was, etc. That was a concrete way to embody the company’s culture and remind people of it at every meeting, even if the questions felt tedious.
Companies that don’t do small talk, or small check-ins, can feel cold and impersonal. The human side of business matters now, more than ever, especially in the context of purpose-driven work. Talking to someone about how they stay cool in a heatwave or what they watched last night can make a big difference in fostering employee connections.
Share it in interviews
Your job interviews are an important way to measure how someone will feel working for an organization like yours. If they feel it’s too fast or too slow for the way that they work, it’s a sign of a cultural mismatch that would be a waste of their time and yours.
With hiring being so expensive, you want to get it right the first time. Communicating your company purpose and the opportunity for purpose-driven work is a key part of that.
It’s worth including the company mission in job descriptions, as this can weed out those who are a wrong fit. But if you really want to emphasize how important it is to your organization, reiterate it when interviewing too. Then you can see how they react to it while you’re speaking to them and get a better feel for how they really connect with it.
Onboarding
Your onboarding sets the stage for your working relationship with an employee. It’s the difference between them staying for years or leaving before their probation period is over.
If you leave them to figure things out for themselves with no documentation, no colleague introductions, and no mentor, of course they’re going to feel lost and confused.
If you connect them with a mentor who can show them what your business is all about — what drives it and what your goal is — they’re going to feel like you actually want them as a part of the team.
When their mentor, manager, and any groups they join all share the same mission with them, it starts to become concrete. So then they can get on board much more easily than something vague you said in a job description that they’ve probably forgotten by now.
The more we repeat a message, the more it sticks in our brains. And the more important it feels. For purpose-driven work to really hit home, employees have to internalize your mission.
Use employee groups
Not only can employee groups help you share your mission, but they can also reflect it. The types of employee groups you have will say a lot about your business and the types of people you attract.
How you integrate them into your business matters, too. For example, do you consult them during product development? Do they help employees learn new skills and gain promotions? The more integral they are to your business operations, the more it shows you value your people. And the more it can help them feel connected to purpose-driven work.
Want help managing your employee groups? Workrowd’s got you covered. Get in touch to find out more.
Collect employee feedback — and act on it
Collecting employee feedback, such as in a survey, is only half the solution. If you really want to prove to employees that you’re interested in what they have to say, you have to do something with their feedback.
Too many organizations don’t act on employee feedback then wonder why people leave.
Want to send surveys faster? And skip all the number crunching with automatically analyzed results? Workrowd enables you to do just that, giving you more time to make changes within your organization.
Conclusion
It’s one thing to say that you’re a mission-led business. But if you want a truly purpose-led culture, and to attract employees who want purpose-driven work — and who’ll also work harder for you to achieve your goals — your company culture needs to reflect that purpose.
Everything from how you communicate to what you don’t say tells employees and outsiders what your true company purpose is.
