Are you doing enough to make work meaningful for your employees?
I am always fascinated about finding meaning in one’s work, since it is so much a part of who we are and what we do for so very long, and work is so critical to our well-being for almost all of our lifetime.
In the Atlantic Monthly recently, I fell upon this article by Uri Friedman who interviewed both David Brooks, a columnist from the NY Times, and Arthur C. Brooks from the American Enterprise Institute about how to make work more meaningful.
This is really an unbelievable statistic – in a Gallup poll conducted in 142 countries a few years ago, respondents were asked about how they felt about job satisfaction, whether they felt their work was important, and whether they believed there were opportunities for growth in their workplace – 87% WERE NOT ENGAGED OR WERE ACTIVELY DISENGAGED – THEY WERE UNHAPPY AND UNPRODUCTIVE!
So if you are a business owner or a CEO, knowing that your employees may just be working for a paycheck has to be very disconcerting, especially since I hear many business owners so often say they are overpaying their employees!
The good news is that Both Brooks’ offer some advice for employees to make work more meaningful for themselves: attach work to ideals; recognize meaningful moments; serve others or don’t; ask why you do what you do; follow fear; be conscious of life stages; don’t invest everything in work.
And I would add that a business owner or a CEO who is dedicated to making his/her company the best that it could be, must also be absolutely committed to making work as meaningful as possible for their employees.
I encourage you to read the full article and let me know what you think.