Voices
challenge, performance feedback, and the chance to work on
a whole product or service from
start to finish. As important as
these factors are, though, there’s
another that matters more.
Consider the following jobs.
They all meet some of the criteria above, yet about 90 percent
of people fail to find them highly
meaningful:
Fashion designer
TV newscast director
Revenue analyst
Web operations coordinator
Airline reservation agent
Graphics animator
Why is meaning missing in
these jobs? They rarely have a
significant, lasting impact on
other people. If these jobs didn’t
exist, people wouldn’t be all that
much worse off. By contrast, here
are the jobs that are highly meaningful to virtually everyone who
holds them:
Adult literacy teacher
Fire chief
Nurse midwife
Addiction counselor
Child life specialist
Neurosurgeon
They all make an important difference in the lives of others. Not
convinced yet? Here’s a taste of the
ADAM
GRANT
evidence on the link between helping others and meaningful work:
A comprehensive analysis of
data from more than 11,000 employees across industries: the single strongest predictor of meaningfulness was the belief that the job
had a positive impact on others.
Interviews with a representative
sample of Americans: more than
half reported that the core purpose
of their jobs was to benefit others.
Work is a search
‘for daily meaning as
well as daily bread.’”
Surveys of people around the
world: in defining when an activity qualifies as work, “if it contributes to society” was the most
common choice in the U.S. — but
also in China and Eastern Europe.
On multiple continents, people
defined work more in terms of contributing to society than as getting
paid for a task, doing a strenuous
activity, or being told what to do.
Studies of people who view
their work as a calling, not only a
job or career: Yale professor Amy
Wrzesniewski, widely regarded
as the world’s leading expert on
HUFFINGTON
02.09.14