Finding Meaning at Work, Even When Your Job Is Dull

This article was published in Harvard Business Review, a credible and valuable source in the field of business.

Authors: Morten Hansen and Dacher Keltner

Do you experience meaning at work—or just emptiness?

In the United States, people spend on average 35–40 hours working every week. That’s some 80,000 hours during a career—more time than you will probably spend with your kids. Beyond the paycheck, what does work give you? Few questions could be more important. It’s sad to walk through life and experience work as an empty, dreadful chore—sapping energy out of your body and soul. Yet many employees do, as evidenced by one large-scale study showing that only 31% of employees were engaged.

Work can, however, provide an array of meaningful experiences, even though many employees don’t enjoy those in their current job. So, what are the sources of meaningful experiences at work?

We’ve compiled a list based on our reading of literature in organization behavior and psychology. Many theories speak to meaning at work, including need-based, motivational, status, power, and community theories. The phrase “meaning at work” refers to a person’s experience of something meaningful—something of value—that work provides. That is not the same as “meaningful work,” which refers to the task itself. Work is a social arena that provides other kinds of meaningful experiences as well.

Before we run through the list, it’s important to note that different people look for different types of meaning at work and that different workplaces provide different meanings.

If your job has any of the following aspects, then it’s likely that you experience meaning at work, which can be more motivational than any salary bump or success on an individual project.

Purpose

Contributions beyond yourself

The people at Kiva, a nonprofit, channel microloans to poor people who can use the money to start a small business and improve their lives. Their work clearly has a greater purpose—that of helping people in need. This taps into a longing to have a meaningful life defined as making contributions beyond oneself.

The problem is, however, that most work doesn’t have such a higher purpose, either because work is basically mundane or because—let’s face it—the company doesn’t really have a social mission. Critics like Umair Haque argue that work that involves selling yet more burgers, sugar water, high-fashion clothes, and the like has no broader purpose whatsoever. In this view, Coke’s “Open Happiness” is just a slogan devoid of meaning. However, as Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer argue, much work can be infused with some level of purpose. Companies that make real efforts in social responsibilities do this; for example, Danone, the $25 billion, highly successful consumer goods company selling yogurt, has defined its business as providing healthy foods (which led it to sell off its biscuit business). The litmus test here is whether employees experience that their work makes positive contributions to others. Then they experience meaning at work.

Self-Realization

Learning

Many MBA graduates flock to McKinsey, BCG, and other consultancies so that they can rapidly acquire valuable skills. General Electric is renowned for developing general managers; and people who want to become marketers crave to learn that trade at Procter & Gamble. Work offers personal growth: opportunities to learn, expand horizons, and improve self-awareness.

Accomplishment

Work is a place to accomplish things and be recognized, which leads to greater satisfaction, confidence, and self-worth. In the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we see Japan’s greatest sushi chef devote his life to making perfect sushi. Well, some critics like Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times say there isn’t a real social mission here. But, from watching the movie, his quest for perfection—to make better sushi, all the time—gives his life a deep sense of meaning. And for Jiro, the work itself—making the sushi—gives him a deep intrinsic satisfaction.

Prestige

Status

At cocktail parties, a frequent question is, “Where do you work?” The ability to rattle off a name like, “Oh, I’m a doctor at Harvard Medical School” oozes status. For some, that moment is worth all the grueling nightshifts. A high-status organization confers respect, recognition, and a sense of worth on employees, and that provides meaning at work for some.

Power

Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria wrote in their book Driven, that, for those drawn to power, work provides an arena for acquiring and exercising power. You may not be one of those, but if you are, you experience work as meaningful because you have and can use power.

Social

Belonging to a community

Companies like Southwest Airlines go out of their way to create a company atmosphere where people feel they belong. In a society where they increasingly are bowling alone, people crave a place where they can forge friendships and experience a sense of community. The workplace can complement or even be a substitute for other communities (family, the neighborhood, clubs, and so on).

Agency

Employees experience meaning at work when what they do actually matters for the organization—when their ideas are listened to and when they see that their contributions have an impact on how the place performs.

Autonomy

As Dan Pink shows in his book Drive, autonomy is a great intrinsic motivator. Some people are drawn to certain kinds of work that provide a great deal of autonomy—the absence of others who tell you what to do, and the freedom to do your own work and master your task. For example, entrepreneurs frequently go into business by themselves so that they can be their own boss.

There are no doubt other sources as well, but these aspects seem to be especially important. Encountering several of these elements at work is not necessarily better. Experiencing one deeply may just be enough. But chances are that if you don’t experience any of these, you probably have a hard time going to work every day.

Morten Hansen is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at INSEAD, France, as well as author of Collaboration (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009). Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life.