How To Avoid Dangling Employees
The second of the twelve Gallup questions that ties into employee engagement is: Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
It’s no surprise that this is on the list. You already know from your own personal experience that if you feel there’s “no point” to a particular job task — that it’s meaningless and/or accomplishes nothing important, it’s really difficult to expend energy particularly when there may be other things you would prefer to do, simply because you DO see the point of doing that task, and doing it well
Challenges In Helping Employees Establish Meaning
- Companies do not control the meaning or lack of meaning any employee creates. Meaning of work occurs inside the employee, but companies CAN create an environment where it’s more likely employees will see how they contribute, and the point of it all.
- Since job meaningfulness is created by EACH employee for him or herself, there is no magic formula that works across an entire organization. That’s why the meaning of a job or task, at least from the employee’s view is going to depend on the interactions he or she has with the immediate manager and colleagues, on a DAILY BASIS.
- If managers aren’t actively involved in helping to create that meaning, then it’s not going to happen.
- Meaning extends to the employee’s job, taken as a whole, but also for each job task. That makes the task of helping to create meaning a tough one. Everyone has job tasks that seem pointless, at least until someone takes the time to explain why this “meaningful task”, HAS a point, a meaning.
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