Last week I went to a seminar on
the soul of work. What may seem like a fluffy subject turned out to be a very
interesting and enlightening afternoon. Those of you who follow me on twitter
have seen the very enthusiastic tweets J.
Monique Valcour, a professor at
EDHEC business school, held an engaging presentation on the importance of
having a meaningful job. Research has shown that meaningfulness is crucial to
having engaged employees. Consequently, leaders should be ‘stewards of
meaning’.
I have written several times
already on key leadership skills but this for sure was a new angle.
Many companies have a yearly
engagement survey, questioning their employees on how committed they are in
their job and how their leadership contributes to that. I don’t think any of
them have a question included as to whether people feel that their job is
meaningful. I wouldn’t put it in either…until now…
Monique had several examples on how
to add meaning to a job but the most striking one was a story about a cleaning
person in a hospital. She had to clean rooms of people who were undergoing
chemotherapy. Not the most pleasant job to say the least. However she found
meaning in it by realizing that due to her contribution patients still had some
dignity in their most vulnerable moments. Head’s off for that!
Taking this example and looking at
leaders being a steward of meaning…if you can create an environment where
people can find that meaning in even the lowest of jobs…than you really have an
edge on all others.
Meaningful work is different for
every individual, what someone cares about is very personal. This means that
you cannot make work meaningful for people. They need to do that themselves.
What you can do is to create context
that employees can leverage to derive meaning from their work.
You can do by some fairly simple
actions:
- · Show them how their work fits into the bigger picture
- · Capitalize on their strengths because that is what energizes them
- · Give them autonomy in completing their work
- · Give recognition for good work
Creating such a work environment,
will allow people to connect their personal interests and life objectives with
their job and will automatically lead to a higher employee engagement.
After all, wouldn’t you want to
join an organisation whose work engages your interest and deserves your
passion?
Isabel
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