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Finding meaning in work can be beneficial to job satisfaction, wellbeing, and engagement. However, it is not a blanket approach, and each individual will have different wants and needs in their journey to finding meaningful work.
Recruitment specialist and author Nina Mapson Bone described what meaningful work means for an employee.
“Meaningful work is the importance an individual places on their work meeting their current personal beliefs, values, goals, expectations, and purpose in the context of their social and cultural environment,” said Ms Mapson Bone.
“That is the definition we have given meaningful work as a result of the research we have undertaken into this area. As you can see from the definition, it is unique to each individual.”
Understanding the individuality that comes with this concept is an important first step. From there, employees can begin to adjust their job roles to fit their preferences.
“First, they need to understand what it is for them, as an individual. Knowing the three key messages and four factors of meaningful work will go a long way to helping them identify it. Then knowing this, they need to work on tweaking the factors of meaningful work that are most important to them,” Ms Mapson Bone explained.
“There is less need to focus on the factors that are, relatively speaking, less important. This could be through self-reflection, discussion with your leadership, tweaking your current work, or [re-evaluating] what you do day to day completely.”
Tweaking a role to fit personal preferences may not be realistic in every position. Coordinating this with business leaders is crucial so the productivity of the organisation doesn’t suffer.
Ms Mapson Bone described the best ways to implement meaningful work: “They need to understand what it is about their current job that isn’t meaningful, and which factor or factors are at play. Having spent time on this, they can reflect [on] what the best course of action is.”
“If it is in the individual factor, for example, it might be about aligning their job more to their strengths, motivations, or personal narrative. If it is within the job factor, they may need to redesign their role to enable more meaning – this could be through changing jobs or tweaking the job they are in.
“If it is within organisation, they’ll need to understand if its leadership, process, relationships, or other organisational factors. Or they could discover there is a conflict between their societal factor and their psychological perspective, in which case they need to find a way to resolve that tension.”
There are a variety of benefits that come with meaningful work, said Ms Mapson Bone. Adjusting work processes to suit the individual can help to get more out of them.
“Meaningful work is of benefit individually. If you are in meaningful work, you will have increased job satisfaction, better career development, and you will be less stressed and have better health and wellbeing,” she said.
Ms Mapson Bone concluded: “It’s also good for organisations. When your people are engaged in meaningful work, they have higher commitment to your organisation, higher engagement levels, less sick leave and are less likely to leave your organisation. It even increases your organisation’s performance during times of downsizing or downturns.”
Jack Campbell
Jack is the editor at HR Leader.
