Creating a More Purpose-Driven Organization: The Power of Purpose at Work
Creating a More Purpose-Driven Organization: The Power of Purpose at Work. It’s never been more important to consciously, intentionally connect employees with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose at work. From celebrating your organization’s reason for existence, to finding simple ways to shift employees’ sense of purpose, here are some ways to help create a more purpose-driven company.
Engaging Employees Through the Power of Purpose and Meaning
As more organizations are challenged attracting great employees and keeping great employees and keeping those great employees motivated and engaged, it’s never been more important to connect employees to a sense of purpose, to a sense of meaning in their jobs. Surveys suggest that year over year this is getting more important. An international Mercer survey found that this was one of the top motivational influences for people across a range of industries.
Now you might be thinking, “Well, we’re not solving world hunger anytime soon or curing cancer. Is it still possible to instill a sense of purpose and meaning in our organization?”
Here are a few thoughts on how anybody can instill a greater sense of purpose in their employees.
First and foremost, let’s make sure that your vision, your mission are truly inspiring, that they speak to people, that they’re engaging and conversational, and that they don’t sound like some blah, blah, blah meaningless bureaucracy speak generated from some sort of computer bot. Bring them to life. Create fun videos around them. Make sure you are connecting the dots for people. When you onboard and train employees, constantly bring your culture to life and make sure you are celebrating your employees and reminding them of how what they do connects to your ultimate reason for being. That’s absolutely critical.
Another thing you can do is make sure that all of your employees understand that their job working for you isn’t just to do their job; their job is to also contribute to your culture in a positive, meaningful, substantive way. That helps give employees another reason for coming into work and another sense of purpose in their jobs, knowing that they are contributing to a positive work environment where people want to show up on a Monday morning.
Another thing you can do is remind people that the ultimate reason you exist is to provide rocking, great service to your clients and customers. Everybody is in the service business but you have to remind people of that. Again, show the connection. No matter what it is they do, remind them of how their role contributes to, if not customer service, then to the overall customer experience that your customers are experiencing when they work with their company, and how everybody has to think about that ultimate goal of rocking it with their contrubution to the customer experience.
Also, consider the language that you use to bring employees’ jobs to life and make a connection to purpose. Consider the simple example of Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, where they changed the language around from “providing good customer service” to “make someone’s day.” Isn’t that a little more interesting? When we think of it from a purpose point of view, isn’t that a more exciting, creative sense of purpose to try and make someone’s day (in a non-Clint Eastwood-like manner) than just providing good customer service? So, think about how simple language changes can help instill a greater sense of purpose.
Relentlessly celebrate your wins, celebrate your milestones, and celebrate your progress so that people have a greater sense of purpose, because they see that things are changing. They see the impact that your organization and their team and their own jobs is having. Some of my clients at my suggestion have created a purpose wall in their office where they have one entire wall of a hallway dedicated to all the downstream benefits of their company, all the success stories, all the impacts their company has had on their community, including the charities that they’re involved with and all the impacts on their clients’ lives. On the other side of the wall, they have everybody’s individual reasons for working in that company. So they bring that sense of purpose to life in a very visible, creative way.
Finally, Yale professor, Yale researcher, Amy Wrzesniewski, talks about the importance of crafting people’s jobs in such a way that they gain a greater sense of purpose. She talks about the power of purpose at work and how important it is. We see this is every walk of life, in every type of job.
For example, I talk a lot about how window washers around the world at children’s hospitals sometimes dress up as superheroes to wash the windows. Think about how that would have a huge impact on their sense of purpose. Instead of just being the window washers, they now feel more connected to the goal of a children’s hospital by doing something that makes a really positive impact on the children in the hospital.
So, think about all sorts of different ways, simple ways that people might be able to change their jobs, craft their jobs in such a way that they do have a greater sense of purpose.
There’s a restaurant for example, where they have instilled two-way cameras between the kitchen and the buffet table. They did this to connect the kitchen staff to a greater sense of purpose, so, the kitchen staff can see the customers interacting with their food, and the customers in turn can see the kitchen staff working in the kitchen. It just builds a little bit of a relationship and a connection there.
There’s all sorts of simple things we can do. Amy Wrzesniewski talks about a study in Midwestern hospitals of custodian employees in hospitals. She found there was a huge difference between janitors within the same hospitals. Now think about this for a moment, same hospital, same jobs, same probably level of pay, and yet at one end of the scale, the janitors would comment about their jobs in ways like, “Well, it’s boring. Anybody can do it. You know, it’s a pretty simple job.” And then they would describe their work by describing the bullet points on their job descriptions.
But, at the other end of the scale, were janitors that were happier in their jobs and more engaged. Theses custodians spoke about the impact their work has on cleanliness in hospital, that their jobs actually save lives. They recognized the value of their work. They talked about how meaningful it was to engage in the patients in those hospitals in some ways.
So yes, part of that is from attitude, and we want to make sure we’re hiring people with that kind of attitude, who are already connecting themselves to a greater sense of purpose, but we also have to go the extra mile and make sure that we are intentionally connecting people, reminding people just how important their jobs are, and offering them opportunities and ideas for how they can shift their work to create more meaningful connections at work.
So what about you? What do you do to instill a sense of purpose at work for yourself? Or what does your organization do to make sure everyone feels a greater sense of purpose at work? Please leave a comment in the comment box below. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, Inspiring Workplaces, please hit the subscribe button and join our growing community as we talk about workplaces that rock.
Michael Kerr is a Hall of Fame speaker who speaks on inspiring workplace cultures, inspiring leadership, and businesses that leverage their humor advantage to help them laugh all the way to the bank. Michael Kerr is the author of 8 books, including The Humor Advantage and The Jerk-Free Workplace.
