What Makes Work Meaningful—Or Meaningless (Bailey / Madden article, 2016)

 Bailey, C., & Madden, A. (2016). What Makes Work Meaningful—Or Meaningless. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningful-or-meaningless/

meaningful work = highly desirable work .. more often that not.. more than money

• what's the point of doing this job?
• quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work .... but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness

5 qualities sought for meaningfulness

Self-Transcendent

• when it mattered to others more than just to themselves; talking about the impact that one's work has on others, neighbours, community

Poignant

• nurses who described moments of profound meaningfulness when they were able to use their professional skills and knowledge to ease the passing of patients at the end of their lives
• when someone had triumphed in difficult circumstances or had solved a complex, intractable problem.

Episodic

• having moments when you were in the zone... actualizing your full capacity to make a difference

Reflective

• Meaningfulness is rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect and on reflection when people are able to see their completed work and make connections between their achievements and a wider sense of life meaning

Personal

• a sense of a job well done, one recognized and appreciated by others

7 qualities of meaninglessness

meaninglessness - These seven destroyers deemed highly damaging to a sense of meaningful work. 

When several of these factors were present, meaningfulness was considerably lower.

disconnect people from their values

• tension between organizational focus on the bottom line and the individual’s focus on the quality or professionalism of work (my work at CPS - efficiency out of sync with purpose)

take employees for granted

• Lack of recognition for hard work by organizational leaders was frequently cited as invoking a feeling of pointlessness (my work on addressing training demands for 200+ staff in CPS in response to pandemic)

given pointless work

• bureaucratic tasks and form filling not directly related to their core purpose as a source of futility and pointlessness; poorly planned projects where one is left to “pick up the pieces” by senior managers

not treating people fairly

• procedural injustices included bullying and lack of opportunities for career progression; one person treated one way .. and another treated still differently for the same situation.

override people’s better judgment

• being given directions to do something in a certain way which is not professionally correct but being obliged to do it anyway

disconnect people from supportive relationships

• people need to be connected to others for support / work towards common goal; problem of disconnect (Covid 19)

put people at risk of physical or emotional harm

• asking people to do things that put them in harm's way .. and they are not prepared for; asking someone to do something that might harm their professional reputation

Cultivating meaningfulness

important - In the 1960s, Frederick Herzberg showed that the factors that give rise to a sense of job satisfaction are NOT the same as those that lead to feelings of dissatisfaction

keys to meaningful work? (4)

create an ecosystem that encourages people to thrive (growth mindset)

• efforts to control and proscribe the meaningfulness that individuals inherently find in their work can paradoxically lead to its loss.
• make transparent the organization's meaningfulness
• share the values driving the organization (and live them too)
• demonstrate the genuine contribution to society you or others make (made tangible .. not kept abstract)

realize meaningful jobs .. through recrafting

• allow people to recraft their jobs to enhance their sense of meaningfulness
• encourage people to recraft to fit with the organization’s broader purpose or serve a wider, societal benefit
• acknowledge the problematic or negative side of some jobs and to provide appropriate support for employees doing them
• reveal in an honest way the benefits and broader contribution that such jobs make

tedious tasks made more meaningful

• how to come to terms with the tedious, repetitive, or indeed purposeless work that is part of almost every job.
• Where organizations successfully managed the context within which these necessary but tedious tasks were undertaken, the tasks came to be perceived not exactly as meaningful, but equally as not meaningless.
• in other words, inform me as to how this helps "you"

 

interactions made more meaningful

• ensure contact with others who benefit from my work (see the impact of it)
• encourage design thinking (working with your customer)
• my students
• supportive interpersonal relationships
• create a supportive, respectful, and inclusive work climate among colleagues, between employees and managers, and between organizational staff and work beneficiaries
• create time/ space in the working day for meaningful interactions where employees are able to give and receive positive feedback, communicate a sense of shared values and belonging, and appreciate how their work has positive impacts on others

holistic meaningfulness

• a combination of the four (or less) of those listed above
• multiple sources of meaningfulness can be realized

Organizations that succeed in this are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the employees they need to build sustainably for the future, and to create the kind of workplaces where human beings can thrive.