How intrepid leaders are redesigning meaningful work
Photo by Mohammad Bagher Adib Behrooz on Unsplash
In the midst of ‘The Great Renegotiation,’ as people reimagine what work means to them and the role it plays in their life, meaningful work has become the lynch pin of a powerful employee experience.
Employee Experience Matters
Employee experience is less about making people feel warm and fuzzy, and more about enabling people to do their best work - meaningful work - within an organization they believe in. An intentional, well-designed employee experience gives clarity around what folks want, and helps leaders navigate their ability and willingness to design and deliver on those desires in a way that works for everyone. Ultimately, a well designed employee experience enables each person to bring the best of themselves to the business in service of growth.
And it's absolutely connected to the business’ ability to deliver profit. Employee Experience leaders (or EX leaders) are known to have 4x higher average profits, 2x higher average revenues, 40% lower turnover and 24% smaller headcount than leaders who don’t focus on employee experience. People who report having a positive employee experience, additionally, have 16 times the engagement level of employees with a negative experience, with disengaged employees costing companies between $450 and $550 billion dollars a year.
As our world has become increasingly interconnected, employee experiences are no longer influenced by single factors such as pay, benefits, or a supervisor. Rather, they are the cumulative experience of how well work meets an individual’s desire for growth, reward, connection, and flexibility: more an opportunity across the whole organization than the singular responsibility of HR.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
So how are companies ensuring their complex workplace creates both the opportunity for people to do meaningful work and the conditions that enable their best work?
To answer this question, I’ll offer below a window into four organizations, exploring how leaders are designing meaningful work experiences for their teams by using the four cornerstones of any employee experience: flexibility, connection, growth and reward to shape powerful opportunities that drive engagement, retention and growth.
The Narwhal: Flexibility as a lever that drives meaningful work:
The Narwhal is an investigative journalism organization that dives deep to tell untold stories about Canada's natural environment, harnessing the power of journalism to bridge divides. We recently helped them articulate their Purpose, Vision and Values. Since doing so, they’ve been building meaning into these ideas, slowly embedding this clarity in everything they do, from guiding editorial content to shaping their performance and growth process.
Carol Linnitt, Executive Editor, talks about their employee experience being enhanced by the flexibility that a clearer Editorial process has offered her team. It has, for example, empowered journalists across all levels of their distributed organization to make stronger editorial decisions, offering them new clarity around what makes a Narwhal story a Narwhal story. She notes that this has helped both staff writers and regional editors refine their thinking around story selection and given individuals the tools they need to unlock the autonomy they desire. Today, people are empowered to move ahead with assignments, rather than deferring to the executive editor or editor-in-chief to guide decision-making. Each person is now able to work in the ways that serve them best as individuals, within a clear set of guidelines that work for everyone.
Key takeaway: Connecting work processes back to purpose and values gives work meaning, and offers clarity that enables people to have greater autonomy.
Stok: Growth as a lever that drives meaningful work
Team members at Stok are interdisciplinary experts in the built environment, offering solutions at the intersection of healthy and sustainable environments. They are committed to a radically better world for all. For them, meaningful work involves supporting people to choose their own career path and develop in ways that are most meaningful for them. At a retreat last year, their self-managed team designed and committed to the promise that every “Stoker” has the ability to choose their own growth path in service of growing Stok towards a collective vision.
We’ve been supporting the team to bring that promise to life with a clear “Pathways for Advancement” process. This process supports individuals to embark on the journey of choosing the specific foundational and mastery skills they want to resource and develop over the next 12 months. This supports them to grow towards a role they find personally energizing – all in service of Stok’s growth. Supported by others on the journey, there is no predetermined outcome - just a massive opportunity to move towards doing work which energizes and excites every individual team member.
Key takeaway: Help people connect their own growth to growing the organization towards a meaningful vision.
Photo by Chen Yichun on Unsplash
Bridger Brewing: Reward as a lever that drives meaningful work
Bridger Brewing is a local Montana Brewery, inspiring more adventurous, connected & meaningful lives. As the company leadership codifies their culture in service of a major expansion, they have been exploring ways to ensure their people feel valued and recognized for their contribution - all in a time of major upheaval in their business.
We have been supporting them to reimagine a pay and reward structure that includes flexible and accessible ways their diverse team can step into feeling valued for their contribution, such as equitable profit sharing, career development and novel ways to give back. It’s exciting to be a part of their journey as they bring creative and out-of-the-box solutions to ensure that every team member - from the General Manager to the kitchen dishwasher - has the opportunity to step more fully into aspects of their role that make the experience of work more meaningful to them personally.
Key takeaway: Find creative ways to help individuals step into the work they find most meaningful and take ownership of delivering value
Culture Foundry: Connection as a driver of meaningful work
Culture Foundry is a South African creative agency that works to build better brands. They understand well that people are hungry for trust, social cohesion and purpose. And for them, the key to meaningful work lies with a deeper connection and more transparent ways to live the culture in service of their purpose of ‘building bridges between brands and people’.
We helped them to codify their purpose and values into their feedback process, offering each individual the opportunity to connect to and bring their organizational purpose to life in their own diverse way. Their team talks about a double benefit of this important work: each individual has an opportunity to be celebrated for the diverse contributions they make to the culture; and feedback has shifted from being an arbitrary experience of being evaluated as “good” or “not good” to a powerful opportunity to explore ways that each individual is delivering on, and connected to, their purpose.
Key takeaway: Unlock meaningful ways for individuals to understand their contribution to your purpose and be celebrated for their diverse contribution to the fabric of the organization
Embrace the Opportunity to Create Conditions for Meaningful Work
It’s clear that the way employees experience work has become more important than ever. May this peek into some of our fave clients inspire you to bring more intention to the experience of work at your organization and help to illustrate how you can unlock your people’s ability to do meaningful work, for an organization they believe in, in service of your growth. I hope, too, that it’s got your creative juices flowing seeing how other intrepid leaders are bringing some high level concepts to life meaningfully.
Designing an employee experience (that works for everyone) is a journey for leaders and organizations. It’s our privilege to support them, ensuring leaders are equipped and resourced to deliver on the employee experience promises that work best to drive retention and unlock potential. If you’re curious about what the journey entails, let’s chat. You’re welcome to also read more about what this journey is unlocking for us at Within.
As a starting point, we suggest asking yourself these key questions:
How is work currently being experienced in my organization?
How well is the experience of working here enabling each person to bring the best of themselves to this business in service of our growth?
What would my team like to be different - where are the key opportunities that we might want to harness?
And how comfortable would I feel committing to delivering that?
And finally, what would be unlocked with my entire team feeling valued and able to do their best work?
We wish you all the best on your own journey.
