I just got done reading an article on Forbes that says: “Meaningful work is leading people down the wrong path because it’s causing them to go after something that’s impossible or to expect too much.”

Harvard Business Review published a study saying that 9 out of 10 people would trade an average of 23% of their salary for more meaningful work. 

Gallup organization published a report that claims that “What the world wants is a good job.” 

Payscale.com features some of the most meaningful occupations ranging from anesthesiologists to radiation therapists.

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. There’s so much conflicting information out there about what creates more fulfilling, more desirable work: 

• Is it the job? 
• Is it the company? 
• Is it the type of role or occupation?
• Is meaningful work really even obtainable in the first place? 

The short answer is “yes,” but in reality it happens differently than what most of the world thinks it does.

We often find ourselves battling the societal status quo and the pressure to “be responsible” and comply with whatever our company tells us to do. After all:

• “We’re adults now”
• We have families to provide for, futures to plan and save for”
• “We need to be good, productive citizens of society”

Let’s go back to 2005, when the world had not yet heard of the iPhone, Hollaback girl by Gwen Stefani was one of the most popular songs on the radio, (and people still listened to radio). The dark ages right? It was that year I started studying what creates meaningful and fulfilling work, Primarily because I didn’t have it. I quickly learned that I had what Gallup organization calls a “good job”. One where I have a steady pay check, but I didn’t love it. I certainly didn’t derive purpose from it and most definitely didn’t describe it as meaningful. 

I quickly learned that I wasn’t alone. There were many people just like me that were really there for the pay-check but felt like they had the potential and capability to be doing something much greater, much more impactful and that I could feel not just good but great about. 

Actually, for me personally, I honestly thought that if I was going to be spending this much time working somewhere it was worth my while to find someplace that felt meaningful and paid me well. 

I later learned just how rare this is. In fact, today Gallup estimates that there are only 4% of people in the entire world that have careers that fit in this category. They also estimate that over 3 billion people would like to be in this category.

For me, back in 2005, this meant I had to find and learn from those people who already felt like they had purpose and meaning in their career. What were they doing differently? What did they know that I didn’t, Was it certain kinds of jobs or roles, was it that they had some kind of spiritual awakening? Were they meditating before meditating got popular? 

I just knew that I had to find the answer. I couldn’t go too many more days of soul crushing 2-3 hour commutes for a job that I didn’t believe in. 

I started asking people “what makes work meaningful to you?” Sometimes, I would hear things like: “work where I’m growing and advancing.”

Those are all real people who have done a great job finding meaningful and fulfilling work.

THE NUMBER 1 KEY TO MEANINGFUL WORK

Since 2005, I’ve literally asked thousands of people this very same question. What makes work meaningful or fulfilling? Yes I know that sounds absurd and I’m probably the only person in the world running around asking everybody about their own personal definition of meaningful work for the last decade, but I got to learn a lot about those people and later about what creates purpose, passion, meaning and fulfillment.

The one thing that all humans need to feel in order to feel meaning and purpose became obvious right away.

Every single person needs to feel like they are helping other people. 

That’s pretty simple: let’s all go get jobs helping others! 

But when you start to think about it for a while, you realize that really, every single job on the planet is helping others in some way – whether you are pouring cement or curing disease, really every single job relates back to helping people in some way.

So what does this mean?

IT’S DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE

YOUR PERCEPTION AFFECTS YOUR MEANINGFUL WORK

Another problem we face with meaningful work may not be the company or the work itself. Sometimes, your perception or perspective of the work affects how meaningful the work is.

For example, if you’re having concrete poured for your backyard patio – the person who shows up to put that concrete in can either view it as just making a patio and just another job, or they can view it as they are creating a place for family and friends to get together.

The same task, but one has a more meaningful purpose.

Or here’s another example we see all the time here at Happen To Your Career. We get a lot of people coming to us from companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon. These are impressive companies and many people would love to work there. But is it meaningful work? 

One person who came from Google recently told us, “I feel like my job isn’t helping people, it’s just getting more clicks.” 

That same person could have taken the perspective that they’re helping many people find what’s important to them every day, every time they search on Google. 

So is meaning just a switch that you need to flip in your brain? A different mental lens you can look through to see how any task you might do helps others? Or is it more about finding out what type of work is meaningful to you? 

THE TWO PARTS OF FINDING MEANINGFUL WORK

This means uncovering your personal definition of what creates meaning for you. This means doing the hard work of understanding what people, causes, situations, and tasks are more or less meaningful to you. In the case of people this might mean who are the types of people who you enjoy helping. Do you get more meaning from working directly with an individual, helping groups, communities or maybe even larger impact like states or nations? The answer could be more than one, or it could be none of these and you personally derive more meaning from the way you’re helping or the type of cause you’re a part of.

When you put these two categories together, they give you the clues as to where you should look for work that is more meaningful work.

You begin to realize you have to be able to directly see and connect how you’re helping others.

Michal Balass realized that she was lacking meaning in her work and knew it was going to impact both her and her employer. So, after evaluating her needs and researching career opportunities, she found meaningful work.

OK, so it’s safe to say that Michal clearly directly sees and connects what she does for work to how it helps other people. She clearly gets meaning out of these types of challenges. 

But is this enough? If you’ve done a great job with the internal side of assigning meaning and and you’re fortunate enough to work in a job that provides these for you, is this enough to create work that feels meaningful and fulfilling for you? 

The short answer is no, but don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s our society.

SOCIETY AND THE STATUS QUO

It is rare to have a great job that is also meaningful to us.

Part of the reason is that many people and companies in our society have antiquated versions of what work should look like.

“We’re taught to think in exceptionally stale ways about work, and about the purpose of our lives. We tend to orient our lives and our understanding of work around ways that are handed to us through our education, through our culture, and through our families. We’re not taught that we can take a step back and think differently, consider what makes us unique, and where we can apply that to add value.

So, I think that’s one piece of it. And I think the second piece of it is that, in many ways, we’ve thought about jobs and designed jobs that are too small for the human spirit: they’re often focused on pixelated work, where the human beings doing the work are disconnected from how it supports the organization’s mission and how it impacts other human beings, and we’re not intentional about aligning individual strengths and passions to tasks and activities.”

– Colleen Bordeaux

THE RELATIONSHIP OF ORGANIZATIONS AND MEANINGFUL WORK

There’s a fascinating study out there that was debuted in the Harvard Business Review. It involved 2285 Professionals and found that over 90% of them would trade some portion of their salary for work that was more meaningful. 

Maybe this sounds surprising to some, but, honestly, I was not surprised. Partially, because people usually want what they don’t have, and the reality is that most people don’t have meaningful work. But partially because we’re hardwired as human beings to try to make meaning out of nearly everything. Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister argues that this is because it helps us satisfy the need to create stability for ourselves.

What nobody is arguing about is that most companies are not focused on creating a meaningful work experience for their employees. 

But, there are some organizations that are doing this very well:

• St Jude, Children’s Research hospital
• Dave Ramsey’s company Ramsey Solutions
• Disney

An editors note here, We actually reached out to 15 different organizations that our team here at Happen To Your Career believes are creating a meaningful work experience for their teams. We wanted to try to chat with some of their employees and leadership team team about what it looks like from the inside, however almost all of these organizations were hesitant to give us interview access.

There was one organization who said “Yes”, and pretty much gave us cart blanche access to their team and their leadership, That organization was Philips.

Wait a minute, those are some pretty big impacts to the business that Philips has seen coming from creating more meaningful work.

More innovation, higher diversity and more engaged employees.

Those are pretty big reasons to pay attention to creating a much more meaningful work experience for employees. But, what about the bottom line? Is there any real impact there? 

I mentioned the study that was unveiled in Harvard Business Review about employees taking less salary in exchange for more meaningful work, but there’s also other studies that show evidence of the same phenomenon. So, certainly there’s a willingness for people to work cheaper for more meaningful work, but my experience is that is a short sighted way to make more profit.

Is there a link between employees experiencing more meaning  and profit?

“So, I think, number one is challenging old ways of thinking and orthodoxies around what drives engagement. Old ways of thinking  focused on perks, rewards and support. Those things, of course, matter. However, research suggests that in today’s working world, and looking forward, they’re mattering less compared to other factors. Focus is shifting to job fit, job design, and the ability to find fulfillment and meaning in the work that you do, and that applies to roles across the entire organization.

An MIT study showed that enterprises with top quartile employee experience achieve twice the innovation, double the actual customer satisfaction, and 25% higher profits than organizations with bottom quartile employee experience, which underscores why this topic is top of mind for organizations. A separate Deloitte study found that organizations are starting to invest in programs across industries to better improve on life at work, and are looking at the day to day experience that workers have. They’re getting beyond the idea of work life balance, and looking at how to make work more meaningful and give the human beings that work for the organization a sense of belonging, and trust and kind of a relationship with the people that they work with. And again, that plays off that bringing your full self to work”.

– Colleen Bordeaux

WHY ORGANIZATIONS HAVEN’T PAID ATTENTION TO MEANINGFUL WORK

OK, let’s review.

Organizations that focus on employee experiences create more profit. Employees want more meaningful work and work experiences and are willing to take less pay for it.

So, why haven’t companies really started paying attention to this?

Or are some organizations beginning to wake up and realize that more and more of the workforce is wanting more meaningful work?

“Well, I think if I look back in history, good companies have always done that. Have always had an interest in ensuring that their employees understand the journey they’re on and have a passion for what they do. And so, I think good companies do it,

I think what’s maybe changed is, it’s become an increasing focus, because millennials…have a different demand or stronger demand for a balance and a meaningful place to work. I think, if you look at people, they are getting married and having children later in life. So, they don’t feel that obligation or have that necessary financial responsibility to stay in one place and not take risk. I think they’re much more open to trying new things and moving companies. So, it’s very often I look at CV’s of millennials and they’ve moved companies quite a few times.

And therefore, it’s really important if we want to attract the best people and retain the best people, that we deliver a very good employer proposition, and engage them in very meaningful work, engage their hearts and minds and very much what they do. Also, ensuring that we are giving them the right development opportunities, taking even more risk, I think, with young people, to see how they flourish in different types of businesses and support them to also make a difference in the world, whether that is within their job, and also doing things outside of their job, and in terms of social programs, etc. to make a difference.”

– Caroline Clarke

Even though this is the case, very few organizations still haven’t taken significant action to create a much more meaningful experience for their employees or even considered this as an opportunity to attract new employees., However in a 2019 Deloitte Global survey of CXOs, 73 percent said their organizations had changed or developed products or services in the past year to generate positive societal impact.

So, generally speaking, people have their basic needs met and are looking and needing their deeper needs met. This means that people are really needing to feel fulfillment in their lives and that what they do actually means something more than just survival. People want to make an impact. Organizations can help people by providing meaningful work, and this is something that needs to be in the culture of the organization.

HOW ORGANIZATIONS CAN START PROVIDING MORE MEANINGFUL WORK

“The way I have experienced our company is that, historically, and that’s deep down in the culture and in the DNA of the company, it’s a very…socially driven and people-focused company. And that goes back to our founding fathers. But, we have stayed relevant though for more than a century by reinventing ourselves multiple times, without losing sight of that focus on people and on society, in which we are part of.

I’ve also experienced Philips as a bunch of very talented people with part some resources to start with the brands, but also our intellectual property and financial means and resources. And the interesting thing is that we have a culture and a climate where you can create your own opportunities.

[In the Philips Foundation] by now we have more than 150 projects around the globe, a committed team that is work on reducing health inequality and providing access to care. And it was just an opportunity we could create by tapping into all the resources of the company. And by leveraging this focus on being socially responsible and having a strong interest and genuine interest in people. It’s an example on how, in big enterprises, where you have a lot of resources, if you take the initiative and you show ownership, you can create and shape your own future and take initiatives that give meaning not only for yourself, but for the rest of the organization and probably many that are impacted by it.”

-Ronald de Jong

“In Philips, we talk about our mission being to improve the lives of 3 billion people. And first of all, I can break that down into even my own region. So, in the first quarter, globally Philips improved 1.55 billion people’s lives. And as I’m specific accounted for 139 million of those.

But I think it’s great to get up and go to work every day knowing that you can make a difference. And in the region, we have some great examples that range from consumer products like the air fryer, where we’re educating families on eating healthily and not frying with oil…through to specific healthcare solutions that we are really designing with our customers and co-creating with our customers.

So, we have some nice examples in Australia. We partner with the Royal Perth hospital and a company called Emory Healthcare to remotely monitor intensive care units. And they are based in Perth monitoring intensive care units in Atlanta in the US, which is really interesting, because it’s 12-hour time difference. And so, if we remotely monitor from Perth, with our algorithms, we can direct then the intensivist in Atlanta, to the patient that needs him or her most. And we’ve seen results around 26% improvement in mortality rates.”

– Caroline Clarke

Do those same leaders/teams seem driven by this impact?

Does it appear that the company is focused on hiring other people that are driven by this type of impact?

Is there evidence that they focus on the employee experience?

Not just the normal pay and benefits, but how are they harnessing every interaction as opportunity?

This is likely beyond the norm.

“One of the things we do is that we are trying to reinforce the notion that in each and every team meeting, and those meetings take place on a daily basis. We don’t only spend time on the content in the agenda, but we reserve at the end of the meeting, 15, 20, 25 minutes to also reflect upon how the meeting went in terms of process. The behaviors we have observed and the interventions that we liked; and also some of the behaviors that we didn’t consider to be that productive. That takes quite some effort. Because in the beginning, you see that the intent is there. But after three meetings, we have this pressing content topic that we need to transact upon. So, let’s keep the feedback for today. So, you need to stay at it.”

– Ronald de Jong

There are no perfect organizations out there, but you can begin to recognize those that do a great job of creating a much more meaningful work experience by doing the things we’ve outlined in this episode. 

Clearly communicating the impact that the organization is having on the people that it helps and making it easy to see a direct relationship between the work that is happening and how you’re helping. 

Also, a clear focus on creating a better experience for their team and going to lengths to hire others who are identify with the cause or problems that the organization solves. 

Even still, when there’s so few organizations doing this well and since what creates meaningful work is slightly different for all of us, it can be a challenge to turn this knowledge into an actual career.

3 EXAMPLES OF HOW REAL PEOPLE FOUND CAREER PURPOSE

All this might cause you to wonder, “Are these even possible together, and, if so, how do real people actually find these opportunities?”

With the help of science and some real people who have done a great job finding meaningful work and career happiness, we’re going to break down the answers for you.

So, the question becomes: “How do you find this elusive work that’s meaningful and meets your other needs like a certain amount of income?”

OK, remember that what causes you to feel like you directly see and connect how you’re helping others is different for different people.

So what moves you is likely to be slightly different than Steven, and that’s ok. But I want you to understand that the first step is understanding this so you can see what those things that move Steven. He’s got a great idea of what creates more meaningful work for him, here’s how he applied that knowledge in the job interview.

“I went to do my research ahead of the interview. Philips was transparent and shared the list of people I was gonna talk to. I looked them up on LinkedIn, and so, “Wow, okay. This person’s been here 23 years. That’s interesting.” That’s very out of the ordinary from what I was used to with managing people and having people come and go from my teams and whatnot. It’s like that. That’s pretty amazing. And then it’s like, “Okay. I’ll get the next person on the interview list.” And it’s again, like 25 years. When we look at the next guy, “Yep, same kind of thing.”

So, then I drive to the campus to go for the interview and… I get there a little early and I’m walking around just to kind of prepare. And in the parking lot, there are these a special set of reserve parking spots close to the front door. And they said quarter-century employees as a quarter century. Okay 25 years, and they were mostly full. And this is about, it just in my line of sight at the time, about 20 of them. Oh, this is just different. There’s something going on here, I don’t know what it is, but I got to learn more.

And then talking with the people, they just talked a lot about the support the company had given them, invested in their career, they felt a sense of purpose. There was a lot of camaraderie and strong relationships. And I said, “I really like that, that sounds good to me.” And so, I had that comfort level right in the beginning.”

A while back, I had the privilege of talking with Christy Wright, one of the people on Dave’s speaking team. She shared a little about her career with the YMCA before meeting Dave and his company. She started there as a very young director for a brand new YMCA center.

One concept that seems to come up frequently when we talk about meaningful work is having a connection. Christy, for example, felt like she was missing something, but as she started working with Dave Ramsey’s Organization, she started to see the connection between what she did and how she helped people with their finances and businesses.

Earlier in this episode, we heard Steven talk about how he intimately felt the connection between what he did and how it help others – specifically how it helps his own brother. I also talked with Kasia Wiacek, who also works at Philips as a Supply Quality Manager. She described how she needed something more tangible and useful.

CREATING MEANINGFUL WORK FOR YOURSELF

So what does all this mean?

It means that you must understand what you want and need most. What creates meaning for you.

It means that it’s not just about meaningful work. Having meaningful work but not having other elements that allow you to flourish can take away from the connection you feel and the impact that you’re having. 

It means that you own this and nobody can answer these difficult questions for you. 

But it also means that once you understand these truths building a career around what creates much more meaning for you becomes possible. It goes from unrealistic to completely realistic for you. 

Taking the time and energy to more meaningful work is definitely the harder road, but for those that are willing to take charge of their career, they believe it’s completely worth it. I think it can be for you, too.

Thanks to Philips for their openness and access to both their leadership team and employees as we put this all together.Check out more about what Philips has to offer.

Listen to the 3-Part Podcast Series: