Providing Employees Purpose: Why It’s So Important

Business and organizational leaders often wonder what truly makes their team and staff motivated.

Clearly, this is an important topic to consider, as employee motivation impacts major organizational performance areas, such as employee retention, productivity, and quality of work environment.  As it turns out, in considering the question of what impacts motivation in the workforce, one should also consider generational differences and the role these play.

More particularly, in today’s workplace, where members of the Millennial generation are occupying an increasing percentage of the workforce, one specific job quality is gaining an increasing amount of attention: namely, purpose.  In other words, does a given job or position provide the person occupying it a sense of greater purpose and meaning.  If the answer is no, an increasing number of today’s employees, particularly those coming from the Millennial generation, may be looking for a new job.

From the employer perspective, coupled with a need for feedback, mentoring and social interaction, this desire for purpose can be used as a means of affirming employees and keeping them focused on organizational goals.

“You want people to experience their contribution and fulfillment inside the enterprise,” explains David Cunningham, M. Ed., a communication and leadership expert who has led seminars and courses to more than 100,000 people as a Senior Program Leader for Landmark Forum. “Everyone should be working toward the same things, from the CEO to the employees,” Cunningham adds.

This unity in the workplace may sound like a fairytale, but it is attainable with a reasonable amount of attention to the driving forces behind employees.

It also helps for organizations and employers to emphasize how they are making an impact and helping at a broader community level.  These are some ways that an organization may do that:

1. Choose a charity to be your corporate focus. Have the marketing team work on ideas to plan competitions and other fundraising efforts to benefit this charity.
2. Regularly publish success stories of how your products or services helped a client or customer or even helped the greater community.
3. Establish a more casual way to have informal, but structured meetings as a team. A social or chat platform may be useful for this. Millennials want to feel plugged into something bigger, but they also want to feel at home and part of a cohesive team.

The reality is that the workplace is something that is constantly changing.  What employees expect out of their jobs and what they count as important (outside of a paycheck) is also changing.  In order to stay competitive in a fast-paced environment, it’s the employer’s responsibility to remain in touch with these changes and adapt their organization accordingly.