Meaningful employment refers to the degree to which people find their work to have purpose. It is the desire for your work to have a very positive impact on others, thereby finding a greater meaning in life. When employees’ work is meaningful, they become more motivated to challenge themselves. Many employers discuss about employee engagement and motivation in workplaces. However, the connection between the two is almost never made.
Push Boundaries
Research has shown that employees become more engaged when we push their boundaries beyond what they can do. Some employees rise to challenges and discover hidden talents and thereby developing new skills. Since trust is directly linked to the level of responsibility assigned to employees, they become more encouraged to do so since they have the pleasure of working on many different new tasks.
Focus on Job Enrichment, Not More Work
Employers sometimes ask for greater outputs from employees to make the work more challenging. Leaders should try to provide more opportunities for people to explore what allows them to have more satisfaction. This is a better option than to try to burden employees with additional tasks as a means of stimulating them.
Remove Useless Tasks
When examining some of the tasks assigned to people in your team at work, it can be ascertained that some their responsibilities have little or no organizational value. Therefore, from time to time it is important to review tasks and eliminate the useless ones.
Give Complete Units of Work
Employers should be able to assign complete units of work whenever possible which would allow employees to view the tasks from the beginning to the end to experience a sense of completion.
The Benefits of Meaningful Work
If employees are motivated and find their work more meaningful, they are less likely to report sick and participate in training sessions to better their skills. Some works who think that their jobs are very meaningful want to postpone their retirement. However, this has another share of problems for policy makers around the globe due to the high level of life expectancies and older workers in the economy.
Work is not just a source of income, but it provides individual self-esteem and identity. Therefore, it is a very important part of human life.
Due to the corona virus pandemic, most workplaces have been transformed. Teleworking is the new norm and some tasks that were high priority before having now become low priority. However, due to social distancing, some employees have found it difficult to find the support needed from colleagues and management.
In Belgium for example, the Team4Job programme which is supported by Semlex For Education, is a non-profit organization that is advocating for equal opportunities to meaningful employment for all.
If there are other projects that you would like to share with us, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Written by Bhoomattee Surujdin for Semlex For Education.
Sources
[1] ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership & Workplace Performance-Five practical ways to make work more meaningful-copyright 2021.[2] Nikolova Milena -What makes a job meaningful? – Global Economy and Development-copyright The Brookings Institution 2021.
