Not just an employees job to find purpose

Employers also need to be responsible for their employee’s feeling purposeful at work.

Herway asserts that employees become passionate about their work when they can look at work and claim it as their own.  Herway asserts that the way to make employees feel this is to ensure that they feel purposeful at work.

According to Herway, employees' purpose is often confused with being happy at work, whereas purpose is what actually drives employees to get work done. Herway recommends having employees take the CliftonStrengths test to determine what it is that makes them feel purposeful. According to Herway, employees who feel purposeful and like they can claim ownership over their work are 6 times more likely to be engaged in their job and 3 times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life. This can be really important in work because it leaves people feeling complete and enjoying their work more to overall take more pride in it.

This article is important because it places the responsibility of feeling purposeful on the employers. While I believe that it’s both the employees’ and employer’s responsibility to feel purposeful at work, it often falls to just the employee to find their purpose. Allowing the employer to understand how to engage their employees and help make them feel useful at work, is beneficial so that all the responsibility doesn’t depend on the employee, however, the benefits of employees' having purpose at work are still felt.

Written by: Bryn Garick

Sources: Herway, J. (2022, September 2). To get your people's best performance, start with purpose. Gallup.com. Retrieved September 11, 2022, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/350060/people-best-performance-start-purpose.aspx