9 Strategies to Help Your Employees Find Their Purpose (Or Watch Them Leave) Purpose-driven organizations seemed like a foreign concept for many. Today, it is the key for businesses that want to stay competitive.
By Britt Andreatta Edited by Maria Bailey
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Studies show that people's hunger for purpose and meaningful work is at an all-time high. It's one of the top reasons people give for leaving a job and it's what they're looking for in their next one.
While leaders set the tone for a purpose-driven organization, managers are the ones who bring it to life. Or bury it. Managers matter because their daily words and actions create the work environment for 90% of any organization's workforce.
Being a great manager is about creating the conditions for the people who report to you to do their best work. If you manage others, here are nine strategies to enliven purpose and enhance your employees' experience of meaningful work.
Related: Everyone Wants Meaningful Work. But What Does That Look Like, Really?
1. Communicate your organization's purpose and the good it does
Hopefully, your senior leaders are regularly sharing the purpose, vision and values but if not, you can play an important role. Ensure communication makes it from the top of the organization to the people who report to you. Spend time discussing the purpose, vision and values in team and one-on-one meetings. If you can, watch all-hands meetings together and discuss what you learn. Make sure your people get access to senior leaders too. For example, invite an executive to have a coffee discussion with your group and ask them to share more about the purpose of the company and your group's efforts.
2. Get to know the whole person
Spend time getting to know each of your people. Build rapport so you can have authentic conversations to learn about what makes work meaningful to them. Discover their dreams and what gives them stress. Ask where they are on their journey to finding their own individual sense of purpose. Ask how they like to be supervised and what makes them feel appreciated. Be willing to share as well. The most authentic and open relationships are reciprocal.
Related: Everyone Wants Meaningful Work. But What Does That Look Like, Really?
3. Help your people discover their sense of purpose
If some of your people are unclear about their purpose, provide opportunities to support them. Encourage people to read books about purpose and meaningful work. See if your organization's learning program offers relevant workshops and resources that guide people through a discovery process of their purpose. This information will help you both create better alignment in their current role and projects.
4. Help your people find alignment between their role and the organization's purpose
Spend time talking with them individually about their roles. Explain how their daily activities connect to your department's important work and how this, in turn, supports the organization's purpose and its impact on the world. Ideally, you would do this with all your employees. It's especially impactful when you are recruiting, hiring and onboarding new team members.
5. Shine a light on successes to build pride
People can feel their work is more meaningful when they see the impact of their role and/or organization. Make a point of regularly sharing success stories. Feature stories from your customers — ask your marketing department if they have any to pass along to your team. Highlight your own team's successes as well as other teams or projects in your organization. Look at the impact they are having on the community. Better yet, do this as a team — have people take turns finding things to share. Together, these things can build pride in where you work.
6. Use emotional intelligence to create authentic rapport
Emotional intelligence is more about effort than innate skill. So reflect on what you know about others, gathering and verifying information as you go. Develop your emotional intelligence skills to understand them better and create authentic rapport. When you do your job well, employees will share how they feel and what they need.
Related: Emotional Intelligence: Why You Need It and How to Spot It at Work
7. Help employees connect and build positive relationships
Researchers have found that a major component of meaningful work is feeling camaraderie with our colleagues. Design work environments and experiences that help people connect with their coworkers. Encourage casual events and invest in both team building and team training, as they are different but crucial for group success. These efforts are especially important if you have a distributed team.
8. Prioritize creating psychological safety and inclusion
Psychological safety and inclusion are the cornerstones of high-performing teams. Psychological safety is the absence of fear of being rejected or punished for speaking up with questions, concerns or mistakes. That's a pretty low bar so, it should be considered the minimum you want to create. Inclusion, on the other hand, is how we create feelings of belonging, where people feel like they matter at work. Belonging at work creates high levels of trust, productivity and retention.
Related: Psychological Safety in the Workplace is More Than Being Nice
9. Recognize and reward both effort and progress
Part of what makes work feel meaningful is when others recognize our contributions. As a manager, take time to acknowledge each person's strengths and their contributions to the project and team. Make a point of celebrating milestones and project completions. Research shows that these casual rituals of celebration contribute greatly to people feeling like they and their work matter. In addition, be sure to reward effort and progress. Your team can be working very hard, and we can tend to focus on where we are behind or how much there is to do. But by rewarding effort and progress, you keep everyone motivated, and on the path to learning and growing.
As you use these strategies, you will play a powerful role in creating a workplace where people feel aligned with their purpose and their work is meaningful. This will more than pay off in motivation, engagement and productivity. You'll likely find that in helping your people, you will likely feel an enhanced sense of purpose too.
