Nowadays, everyone talks about the importance of companies providing possibilities for employees to find a purpose in daily work. But why is this so important? Why people actually need to have a purpose in their work/life?
When we think about ourselves, what makes us feel happy? What makes us to have a nice feeling of achievement? Most of the times, these feelings come from challenges we set to ourselves, which we are able to accomplish. Those are daily challenges, either in our life or career. Our life would be boring without these challenges. It seems we need to be in a constant search for something bigger, something that give us a purpose to live.
In reality, there are studies showing that people suffer when they do not have a purpose in their life. Clinical studies demonstrate that people deteriorate in various ways when they live without a purpose. Some of the most affected groups in our society that suffer from this phenomenon are for example prisoners of war, people in nursing homes, or retirees. Because of their life situation, these people cannot find great purpose in their life.
The industrial era (compliance era): because of the nature of the work that did not allow workers to have much of a purpose in their work caused significant psychological costs for workers. It was an era where people would simply exchange forty hours a week of work for some money that would allow them to survive. It was a type of work that did not bring much of enjoyment.
In today’s world, things are different, the majority of work belongs to knowledge workers; they expect to get some satisfaction and some meaningful work. If companies are not able to provide this, people will simply leave in search of something better. In the book from Robert Wendover, “Crossing the Generational Divide”, we can observe that young people want more freedom to work in their own style in order to find their own ways to accomplish a task purpose.
Our era is completely different than hundred years ago, organizations need to create new ways to attract and keep knowledge workers on the basis of meaningful work. This is the only way for companies to survive and prosper in this new era. And this is one of the fundamental reasons why companies must provide purposes with what employees will identify themselves. They need to be able to keep employees engaged in meaningful work.
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I would love to get a star rating for this post:
Luis, I totally agree. Just one thing: I think it is not the work itself which has to bring enjoyment and purpose. Often work is not fun, many things just have to be done. But the results of your work, things you accomplish, can give you purpose. - A small, but important distinction, I think.
Hence, today the challenge for companies of our knowledge society is, firstly, to create purposeful value for customers and, secondly, to make the contributions of their employees/networks to this customer value visible.
Sorry Hans,
I took some time to reply to your comment, really sorry.
I fully agree with your second paragraph, but I am forced to not agree with the first one. Of course some times we do things that we do not like but when most of the time is spent doing things that we do not like something is really wrong, what do you think?
Luis
I fully agree with you Luis. If it is not a current situation that you enjoy most of your work, you should at least have a plan how to change it and proceed to change it. I personally think that this is the main thing that needs a focus when being employee. The time when enjoying the work was making us successful is changing to that it is becoming a critical factor to be able to release from struggling and suffering in long term personally and to deliver quality and performance to customers on company level. It is strongly connected with this new era as you mentioned and we have a great opportunity to be a part of this evolution.
Thanks for your nice comment :) And Yes I agree we have a great opportunity to be part of this evolution :) Thanks
I fully agree… Most of the companies do not know how to transmit this too people… They just care with money and nothing else… They are doomed if they keep doing this…
Shades of Dan Pink and his book Drive.
Automy, Mastery and PURPOSE
Nice article Luis :)
Thank you :) Not just from him but yes a lot from him :) Thanks