A New Approach to Employee Engagement

A new approach to employee engagement has the potential to become a revolution in the workplace.  It is the realization that performing meaningful work is more important than pay, which is another way of saying that meaning is more important than money.  A Kelly Global Workforce study was conducted in November 2008 to January 2009 worldwide, questioning over a hundred thousand people across 34 countries.  The results of the survey told us that 51% of the folks in the study would sacrifice status and pay to have work that is more meaningful.

The results can be seen here: http://www.kellyservices.com/res/content/global/services/en/docs/kgwi_press_release_2_25_09.pdf  These results are absolutely astounding when you think about them and certainly go against conventional wisdom.  Nevertheless, this is what people are telling us, and the experts agree.  Evidence supports the idea that intrinsic motivation, sometimes called passion, meaningfulness and particularly pride in what one is doing, lead to business success.

Making a contribution, making a difference, working in alignment with a common purpose, all of these factors are proving to be the greatest differentiators of people in businesses that have created sustainable success over time.  For companies to be able to leverage this realization is an incredible opportunity and it leads to a whole new approach to employee engagement, particularly in these budget-constrained times, because aligning with something more meaningful and helping employees and management get on the same page together is not something that is expensive.  It is actually a pretty straightforward process.

The Passion Test For Business

This new approach to employee engagement is the Passion Test for Business. The Passion Test for Business leverages intrinsic motivation as a key contributor to employee engagement.  It starts with identifying the unique contribution that the company provides to the world.  The company’s mission statement or vision.  While many companies may already have a vision or mission, it is necessary to make sure that the company’s mission is stated in a way that resonates with heart values.  While positioning products, services and customer service are very important and admirable characteristics of a company’s mission, their vision should say more about how that organization or company contributes on a grander scale to progress and evolve, in the service of life and human kind here on the planet.

That may sound very aspirational, but when you think about it, our current motivators in business are most often money-driven and materialistic, and this has resulted in the major crises we have seen in recent times.  The meltdown on Wall Street can be attributed to a very materialistic value system, whereas when an organization is motivated by meaning, it offers a very different purpose to the working environment.  When a company focuses beyond the contribution of their products and services and considers their contribution on a grander scale around the area of meaning, purpose and furthering human evolution, it changes the view of what business is about.  So, the Passion Test for Business within a particular organization enables a shift that empowers and aligns everyone in the organization around a higher purpose that is experienced by the members of the organization, as well as their customers.