To Support Employee Well-Being, We Must Connect Work To Organizational Purpose

HR support is essential to establishing meaning

Workplace well-being will remain important for HR going into 2023. The U.S. Surgeon General, in its November 2022 Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being report, listed mattering at work as one of its five essential initiatives to strengthen workplace well-being. The Surgeon General’s report highlights the importance of a worker’s ability to find a broader purpose and significance in their work. The report cited research that indicates that finding meaning and purpose in work increases both an employee’s physical and mental health, by reducing the risk for health complications such as heart attacks and stroke, and by increasing an employee’s motivation and sense of positivity. For businesses, the report cited research arguing that employees who find meaning in their work are more productive and more innovative, and they are more likely to remain with their organizations.

Many of us spend at least 40 hours a week working for our employers. We spend more time at work than we spend doing anything else, including parenting, interacting with our loved ones, and engaging in personal passions. We want and need to feel that the significant time we invest in our work and the sacrifices we make for our jobs serve an important purpose. Companies need to help employees find that purpose – the “why” – in their work. In particular, younger employees increasingly expect companies to reflect their personal values, as they seek to have a positive impact on other people’s lives and the world they live in. They believe that the purpose of business should be to contribute to human flourishing and to the creation of a more caring and equitable society. They want to belong to communities of meaning, including workplace communities of meaning.

If we establish that today’s employees need to find purpose in their work, what can companies do to help them identify that purpose? Companies must know the answers to two fundamental questions: “Why do we exist?” and “What broader societal purpose do we serve?” The answers to these questions must be authentic. Authenticity in a company’s purpose is apparent when purpose is threaded into the organization’s strategy and the everyday execution of that strategy in the form of actions, decisions, and choices. If purpose is threaded into the execution of a company’s strategy, then it is woven into the jobs of its workforce. And yet, when we look at the average written job description, we might struggle to link the job to organizational purpose. Establishing this link should not be challenging. Purpose can be found in job roles across all functions and in all sectors. Two examples from companies operating in the toy and financial services sectors illustrate the point.
 
When the LEGO toy company was on the brink of bankruptcy the CEO at the time asked two basic questions: What is our purpose? Why do we exist? The company’s answer: “Systematic Creativity.” The idea is that when playing with LEGOs, a child intuitively learns how to program and build algorithms and structures. Playing with LEGO toys also fosters imagination and creativity because children use LEGO toys to build in a systematic manner while also using their imaginations to create an infinite variety of unique structures. In a nutshell, LEGO’s purpose is to offer core products with a unique design that helps children learn systematic, creative problem solving which is a crucial twenty-first-century skill for human society. Lego’s “systematic creativity” is very relevant to the flourishing of children and society. Every employee working for LEGO, across all roles and functions, understands the company’s purpose of systematic creativity. Whether a LEGO employee’s job is in purchasing, logistics, sales, accounting or HR the importance of the job to enabling “systematic creativity” can be identified and articulated. Without the understanding of purpose, an employee at LEGO might think he or she earns a paycheck working for just another toy company. With an understanding of purpose, though, employees place tremendous value on performing their roles to unlock “systematic creativity” with the goal of helping children flourish.
 
When Dan Schulman took over PayPal in 2014 the company had high employee attrition and could not attract the right talent, especially high-caliber technical talent. For Schulman, establishing a sense of purpose was a key factor in attracting new talent to the organization and in retaining that talent. Under Schulman, PayPal adopted a social purpose of democratizing access to financial services by focusing on the needs of lower-income populations. Few will argue with the fact that there is a genuine societal need and market opportunity to provide secure and inexpensive financial services to lower-income populations and small businesses. When the pandemic accelerated the shift from cash to electronic payments, the company’s attention to lower-income consumers and small businesses enabled it to be of greater help than other financial institutions.

PayPal was able to get government bail-out funds into the hands of individuals and small businesses by processing more than $2 billion in small business loans to help organizations get through the worst of the crisis. In a very palpable sense, PayPal’s purpose allowed it to improve conditions in the communities and for the customers it serves. PayPal’s commitment to social purpose has enabled the company to attract and retain top-notch software engineers in a fiercely competitive market. It also enabled the company to achieve a greater degree of racial and gender diversity compared to other tech companies.

Employees at PayPal are able to connect their daily work to PayPal’s societal purpose and the organization has engendered trust among its workforce by living its purpose internally in visible ways.  It raises wages and benefits and offers equity participation for all low-wage employees. The company also eliminated pay disparities by race in the U.S. PayPal’s ability to attract and retain superior talent demonstrates the company’s success in tying the work of its employees to the company’s purpose. Again, regardless of function or level, all PayPal employees understand the meaning in their work.
 
Whether it is Danone’s purpose of “Bringing health through food to as many people as possible” or Walmart’s purpose of “Helping customers save more of their hard-earned money for the things they care about most,” there is no doubt that having a valuable purpose and helping employees understand that purpose is becoming increasingly important to workplace well-being. As Walmart states, “delivering value to our customers, creating economic opportunity for associates and suppliers, strengthening local communities and enhancing the environmental and social sustainability of our business and product supply chains” addresses important societal needs.

Walmart has backed up its purpose statements in its everyday actions and operations. Even an organization of Walmart’s scale, with its 2.3 million associates, is in a position to link every job role to purpose.
 
HR has a real opportunity to improve workplace well-being by addressing the key aspect of mattering at work by making the connection between job role and purpose more explicit for employees. HR teams can help employees connect the dots by taking three actions:
1. Making purpose more visible to employees through “purpose communication campaigns”
2. Adding a bullet point linking the job to purpose in every job description
3. Spotlighting how individuals across functions and at all levels fulfill the purpose and highlighting examples of specific individuals in company newsletters, social media, etc.
 
These actions will help employees understand exactly how and why their work matters and a positive impact on productivity, innovation, engagement, and retention will follow.
 
Building a sense of shared purpose and a culture of working towards a common societal goal adds meaning to work, generates pride and fuels motivation, all the while reducing physical and mental stress. If organizations and HR leaders care about how their employees feel about the work they do every day, they will help them establish this important connection and everyone will be stronger for it. 

Author Bio

Heide Abelli is an accomplished executive who has held senior leadership positions at leading educational technology and training providers such as Skillsoft and Harvard Business Publishing where she developed award-winning, ground-breaking corporate training solutions. She is a seasoned veteran of product development, innovation and product management in the fields of corporate training and HR tech. Abelli is a globally recognized subject matter expert in the areas of leadership, management, general business skills, the unique skills required for success in the digital economy, employee learning and development and effective corporate training practices. Abelli is currently a teaching faculty member of the Boston College Carroll School of Management, an independent consultant in the ed tech sector and the co-founder of an entrepreneurial venture in the employee performance support space called SageX Inc. Connect Heide Abelli