Today’s employees want to do something meaningful, according to the Work Foundation.
Identity and individualism at work are rising as corporate hierarchies and trades unions decline.
Likewise, shifting social values mean employees are as concerned with self-expression and fulfillment as they are with high earnings.
Rising expectations of working life have resulted in an “historically unusual sense that fulfillment occurs, or should occur, in the everyday, ordinary business of going to work,” says the report’s author, Stephen Overell.
It also hints at frustration with big business sleaze. The report coincides with Lord Woolf’s call for aerospace giant BAe to undergo an ethical audit and his remark on the damage poor reputation can wreak on employee morale.
Another report, CHA’s Meaning at Work, also reveals how important corporate reputation is to employees.
It says employees want a job:
- They can do well
- That contributes to society
- That they can be proud of
- Where they can apply their skills
- Where they can make a difference to the organisation
According to the Work Foundation, employers cannot create meaning for employees, but they are perfectly capable of destroying it by exploitation, disrespect or mismanagement.
Its outline of meaningful jobs — which include variety, a degree of autonomy, security, a balance of effort with reward and skills with demand — hardly seems a stretch.
But how compatible are these with the profit motive?
Neil Crofts’ Authentic Business movement clearly finds something wanting, calling for a new business model that “delivers on our needs for self-actualisation”, the pinnacle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
A new book by his holiness the Dalai Lama, The Leader’s Way, also seeks to improve upon capitalism by applying Buddhist concepts such as “Right Conduct” to businesses.
Is this an uphill battle? Share your views below.
