Meaning, Inc

Recommendation

Declining morale, lower productivity, burnout and lack of advancement make work seem like a grind. Plummeting employee engagement is a global phenomenon, especially in developed nations, but there is a remedy: add meaning to your corporate culture. Author Gurnek Bains (writing with Kylie Bains) teaches that making your employees’ work more meaningful can reinvigorate their engagement, and improve your profits, productivity and public relations. getAbstract finds plenty of depth in Bains’ argument that companies prosper and people work better when they know that their labor serves a greater good. Using studies and analysis, he demonstrates why leaders who want energized employees should begin by explaining what their work really means.

Take-Aways

• Companies worldwide are finding that workers are not fully engaged in their duties.
• Only 20% of U.S. workers reported being “enthusiastic” about their jobs.
• Employees want their work to be significant and to make a contribution to society.
• Today’s companies face more responsibility: Two-thirds of the world’s largest financial entities are corporations – as opposed to nations.
• People have a sense of meaning when their activities relate to something purposeful.
• Meaning becomes more powerful when workers can connect their values and beliefs to what their companies are doing.
• People create meaning to survive and to frame their activities positively.
• Creative leaders transform their organizations and convert opportunities into action.
• Maintaining work-life balance is a major source of meaning and job satisfaction.
• Your company can improve engagement by giving employees a sense of purpose.

Summary

The Price of Great Rewards

Businesses today ask more of their employees, clients and customers. At the same time, governments ask more from businesses. In the years ahead, increasingly powerful corporations will be asked to contribute more to society, over and above paying taxes. To put this in context, realize that Wal-Mart’s $287 billion gross annual sales in 2005 would have made it the 22nd largest nation in terms of gross domestic product. The World Bank and Fortune magazine found that two-thirds of the globe’s largest financial entities are corporations, not nations or public institutions.

“Meaning can and will give businesses a genuine competitive edge.”

As companies become more important, some executives are finding that they can encourage their employees to work harder by helping them reach for more meaningful corporate and personal goals. Companies such as Virgin, Starbucks, The Tata Group, ANZ Bank, Genentech and Southwest Airlines have realized that working toward purposeful objectives motivates employees and leads to greater profitability. Injecting meaning into daily operations gives employees a sense of purpose. The alternative is having workers who are no longer engaged in their work, thus undermining morale, competitiveness and earnings.

“At the core of a company’s identity lie the implicit values and ground rules that govern its day-to-day behaviors.”

Companies create meaning when they improve the way they relate to their employees and customers. Companies on this positive path typically exhibit these characteristics:

• They offer stretch goals in pursuit of their core objectives.
• They innovate, deliver employee benefits and make people feel special.
• They allow people to be individuals and to build their own talents.
• They critically evaluate each person’s work and contribution to group efforts.
• They are concerned about wider issues.
• They forgo short-term goals that conflict with their deeper purpose.
• They live their stated ideals.

“Genuinely listening to what people want and responding to it authentically is what we understand by ‘creating meaning’.”

For example, take British Petroleum, whose CEO was one of the first major executives to acknowledge the danger of global warming, an odd admission from an oil company leader. BP, now the world’s second largest oil concern, uses the concept of “mutual advantage” to work with different constituencies. Genentech, a biotech firm that Fortune called the best company to work for in the United States, spends about 20% of its revenues on research and development. It offers innovative HR programs and it caters to working mothers. Starbucks also supports its employees and its coffee growers, even though that doesn’t always boost its bottom line. Companies that embrace a higher meaning thrive because they meet their customers and employees’ expectations of how socially conscious businesses should act.

“The increasing reaction against big global brands stems from the sense of personal meaning that people seek as consumers.”

Not only do employees want their work to make a meaningful contribution, but customers are also starting to scrutinize companies more critically. A gasoline company can no longer just provide fuel; it must be a key participant in environmental and conservation issues. McDonalds had to change its operations after bad publicity about the impact of fast foods on health. Incidents like this have made customers more aware of their power. Half of those who responded to a British bank’s survey said they had boycotted a business within the last year because of perceived ethical violations. The Internet has made it much easier to organize boycotts by directing messages to targeted audiences. More companies are struggling to find new ways of doing things as they realize that the approaches they used in the ’80s and ’90s no longer work.

Finding New Ways

At the executive level, more CEOs say they are devoting more time to image management and regulatory demands. One oil executive said his company’s main business was managing political relationships, not drilling for oil. Other executives complain that old ways of shaping employee behavior, such as organizational restructuring, process re-engineering, goal incentives and hiring new executives, no longer motivate the workforce.

“One Australian executive described to me how shocked people from his American parent company had been when he told them that to get people to come to business meetings they had to serve beer.”

A 2003 Gallup poll found that overall only 27% of workers said they were “engaged” in their work. In Great Britain, only 19% of people found their work satisfying; in Germany 12%; in Singapore 6%; and in France 12%. In the U.S., a Harris survey of 23,000 workers found that 20% felt “enthusiastic” about their work, 22% felt valued and 20% felt their companies honored their stated values.

“In 21st-century organizations, the key to raising levels of commitment will be to create an authentic sense of meaning.”

Since people spend about 50% of their lives working, their quest for meaningful employment is not surprising. Keeping people in jobs that offer paychecks but no larger purpose is getting more difficult. To complicate matters, executives often develop inaccurate impressions of employee concerns and morale, particularly since workers tend to disguise their true feelings about their jobs. Fear and ambition drive many workers, but studies indicate that employees have begun to wear a “psychological uniform” that disguises their cynicism, staleness, “change fatigue,” resentment and belief that life should mean more than just working. More workers find their superiors are pushing them to meet increasingly higher growth targets with no end in sight.

“At best, engagement levels are stuck at disappointingly low levels, despite all that organizations have done in an effort to inspire and motivate people.”

For their own survival and peace of mind, people try to create meaning and to frame their activities in a larger context. Noted psychoanalyst Victor Frankl, writing about the psychological importance of meaning, said human beings want to know why they exist. Psychologist Abraham Maslow advanced Frankl’s work by placing self-actualization near the top of his hierarchy of human needs. In Eastern cultures, the Sikh religion fosters communal belonging and distinctiveness. Historically, Sikhs are bold, courageous and willing to act on new ideas – all attitudes that help create meaning.

“Hence, career commitment is replaced by career ambivalence, at best – career apathy, at worst.”

People experience “meaning” when they see that their activities are linked to something purposeful. This affects brain chemistry. When a person creates a meaningful association, a chemical reaction links neurons in different parts of the brain. These new pathways form fresh concepts or put events in context. Building these connections adds to the individual’s sense of significance. Linking your personal goals to helping society improve is very powerful, particularly when you figure out how to have a positive impact. Employers can nurture this process by helping workers connect their personal sense of meaning to the company’s activities. This is a subjective process, so people have to make many of these connections themselves, perhaps with a leader’s help. The result is a larger sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Input vs. Output

Maintaining a balance between work and life is a major determinant of job satisfaction, but an increasing number of workers believe they have put more time and commitment into their jobs than they have received in wages or appreciation. Even when corporate productivity and profitability increase, workers rarely receive a direct personal benefit.

“A major reason behind the ubiquitous sense of work-life imbalance is that people don’t really know what they want.”

People tend to bracket their work lives as separate from their personal lives because they derive meaning from their personal time that is largely absent at work. Work creates stress. Levels of tension are even higher at companies where people have few opportunities for self-expression, individuality or purpose. The opposite is true at companies such as Genentech, which emphasize a good work-life balance. The firm allows people to work on projects that interest them, and provides day care and paid sabbaticals.

“The creation of meaning is all about how people frame things and contextualize their activities.”

In companies where employees share a sense of meaning, managers tend to be less controlling and competitive, and more self-aware and collaborative. This makes staffers more accountable, energized, innovative and willing to take responsibility. Creative leaders can transform their organizations in this direction. Such leaders, like Steve Jobs of Apple, know their company’s DNA and environment. They possess economic, technological, political, social and demographic foresight. They understand what drives their firm and their employees’ efforts.

“While many believe that earning more money will improve the quality of their life, the reality is that once people in the U.S. and the U.K. earn over the threshold of £12,000 ($25,000), there is virtually no relationship between their salary and their happiness.”

To enlighten employees about your company’s meaning, undertake “inside-out” branding, sending employees the branding messages you would generally direct to customers. This approach makes employees, not an ad agency, responsible for building the brand. Virgin Airlines is very adept at inside-out branding. Its employees are its biggest advocates on and off the job. Branding from the inside out can help your company develop a distinct identity and live its values. Use it to reorient staffers and involve them more emotionally with your customers.

New Approaches

Companies can create meaning by using innovative organizational structures. Take these firms, for example:

• Semco – This Brazilian builder of ship parts reorganized when it passed into the hands of its founder’s 21-year-old son. He fired many senior managers, eliminated job descriptions and business cards, and told people to organize themselves into self-managed teams to pursue value-adding activities. Since 1988, revenues have increased “tenfold.”
• W.L. Gore – The manufacturer of Gore-Tex encourages workers to pursue projects they enjoy and to follow colleagues whom they think have the best ideas. Worldwide surveys consistently rank it as one of the best places to work.
• Whitbread – This U.K. brewer revamped its structure and culture. Among other steps, it began fostering workers’ individual talents. Within two years, its share price doubled.
• Diageo – The world’s largest manufacturer of branded liquor (including Smirnoff, Johnny Walker and Guinness), launched a mentoring program to create “world-class leadership.” Some 5,000 executives took a two-day seminar to become better managers and team members. The classes emphasized coaching, including observing and understanding performance, giving feedback and suggesting change.
• Southwest Airlines – The company built its reputation for service by cultivating a fun-loving, familial, egalitarian culture. It engenders employee loyalty by avoiding layoffs, and offering profit-sharing and stock-purchase programs. It has a history of profitability and the industry’s best safety record.

The Importance of Belonging

The lack of a sense of belonging is the greatest predictor of employee depression, according to a 1999 University of Michigan study. Depressed staffers make mistakes and miss work. In fact, depression costs billions of dollars a year in lost productivity. In the Western world, people traditionally derived a sense of belonging from their families, religions and community lives. But as those societal ties have weakened, people have come to base more of their personal relationships around their work. When the workplace fails to provide bonding or meaning, the result is stress, turnover, absenteeism, poor performance, detachment, weak morale, pressure to conform, and a lack of trust between workers and management.

“The cliché that money can’t buy happiness seems to be true.”

To create a sense of belonging, companies should welcome newcomers since they reinvigorate long-time employees. Corporations also should encourage strong collegial relationships, inspire loyalty by promoting from within and raise their culture’s level of inspiration, innovation and creativity. Firms should openly communicate about the way their values translate into business practices.

Linking Money and Happiness

In the search for individual meaning at work, many employees confuse bigger salaries with greater happiness. However, studies show that simply earning more money does not increase employees’ level of happiness. People commonly pursue careers they believe will make them happy, only to find that once they achieve their career goals, they are not actually happier. Often society’s prevailing norms define career goals and success, not the individual. This undue pressure to meet a standard of happiness defined by other people just creates a sense of failure and more stress.

“I used to think culture was an important part of the game. I now realize it is the whole game.” [–Former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner]

Modern society has many valid definitions of “success,” ranging from earning wealth to exercising regularly and losing weight to being well-read and having lots of friends. These confusing, multiple goals can jeopardize a person’s work-life balance. To break this cycle, people can seek outside help to determine what would make them happy, to provide a sense of fulfillment outside of work and to foster change, if change is necessary.

About the Author

Gurnek Bains is a founder of a corporate psychology consultancy with offices in London, Sydney, New York, Hong Kong, Edinburgh and Düsseldorf. He has been a senior corporate adviser on cultural and personnel issues for 20 years.