Purpose @ Work for Organizations
Unleash the power of purpose in your organization
Tap the potential of a purpose-driven workforce
Purpose is now front and centre in conversations about the future of work for both organizations and individuals. More and more organizations are declaring their social purpose while individual employees are exploring new ways to make life at work more fulfilling.
Organizations that successfully align the two megatrends of individual and corporate purpose will thrive in our increasingly complex social reality and rapidly evolving economy.
Those who ignore the transition to do more to attract and keep the best employees may find themselves another statistic owing to quiet quitting.
With purpose at the core of their operations, organizations create a win-win-win. Not only do they become a catalyst for a thriving workplace culture, but they also generate a positive impact on their customers, communities, and stakeholders while protecting the bottom line.
The Six Dimensions of Purpose@work
Your organization is not one dimensional and neither are your employees. The Six Dimensions of Purpose provides a new perspective on how purpose is multi-dimensional and actually shows up in everyday life, both for organizations and employees. The basic construct of the Six Dimensions – applicable to both individuals and teams– is shown in the following graphic.
The Six Dimensions of Purpose is a powerful framework for brainstorming and strategizing purpose in the workplace.
Creating a culture of purpose for all
Rebuilding and redesigning organizations around purpose is an imperative in this age of social and economic disruption. Key to that is attracting and retaining talented employees who are seeking to integrate their own wider purpose while consciously helping to create a better world. Focusing on purpose from both the organization and employee perspective is a great way to do that.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals, organizations and external stakeholders are re-evaluating and reformulating their motivations, clarifying core values, and redefining their vision for a better future. Beyond profit and planet, they are looking for a greater sense of purpose, the kind of purpose that makes a positive impact in the world.
But how do you embed purpose authentically in your organization and truly harness its power to motivate employees while propelling the organization to success? We believe the way to do that is through purpose alignment.
Getting to the WHY@Work
An innovative program to help individuals and teams reveal and articulate their purpose at work.
While companies have been grappling with these bigger WHY questions for quite some time with sustainability, triple bottom line, CSR, GRI, ESG and social purpose language and frameworks being popularized, for many employees figuring out their why has not been so obvious or straightforward.
While they might not be using those precise terms—meaning and purpose—more and more employees are looking to their worklife for a greater sense of wellbeing, connection, significance, fulfillment, and contribution.
All this comes down to one overriding concern that many employees have identified—they want their work to be meaningful and have a greater purpose than just monetary gain.
At Greater Meaning, we help employees uncover and clarify their own WHY@Work while assisting organizations to better understand their employees’ intrinsic motivations. Finding ways for each to support the other in pursuit of their purpose builds greater alignment, loyalty, and performance.
Using our proprietary Six Dimensions of Purpose™ framework, we help companies and employees make sense of exactly what they are both seeking to achieve. The following “purpose pyramid” summarizes the key characteristics of organizational purpose at each of the Six Dimensions of Purpose.
The evolution of purpose for organizations
Organizations are evolving to support higher levels of purpose beyond profit, beyond best practices, beyond unique selling propositions and market dominance.
Today’s most innovative organizations are serving a higher purpose that drives a greater ethic of care to their customers, the communities they serve, the environment, and to the planet as a whole. The Six Dimensions of Purpose help Identify and make sense of this process so that purpose is embedded more deeply throughout the organization and communicated authentically, internally and externally.
The evolution of purpose for employees
Many employees are reevaluating their relationship to work and with whom they work. This is also about understanding their bigger WHY. Why am I here? What do I stand for? What difference do I want to make? They want their work to be meaningful and have a greater purpose beyond a paycheck.
They have higher aspirations of finding and following their own purpose in life and making a positive contribution to the world. But can they do that in their current role? Are their employers able to help them achieve that? Or do they need to look elsewhere?
We help organizations better understand what their employees really need to feel fulfilled at work. And we help employees better understand their own purpose and how to fulfill it while aligning with the organization’s purpose.
Purpose alignment
Aligning organizational purpose with employee purpose creates a powerful synergy for high performance teams and a committed workforce.
Using our powerful Six Dimensions of Purpose™ and the Purposphere™ for understanding motivations and purpose, organizations now have an effective and practical process to integrate and align their social purpose with their employees’ purpose. Through purpose alignment, organizations can nurture a level of employee commitment, engagement, and initiative rarely seen in traditional organizations.
Identifying purpose-driven potential
For an organization to achieve its vision and fulfill its purpose, their employees need to do work that matters to them, helping them fulfill their own purpose. People can move mountains when they know what they want to do and are passionate about something. They need to believe in the company they’re working for, and in the work they themselves are doing.
Many organizations are still stuck in a transactional relationship with their employees—money for performance—when what employees are increasingly seeking is a fuller relationship between themselves and their work. They want to feel that they are an integral part of the organization beyond performance and, importantly, they want the organization to better reflect their concerns and greater aspirations.
By empowering employee and organizational self-awareness of purpose we help reveal new and different ways to approach and solve problems and, most importantly, achieve mutually beneficial goals.
Purpose@Work consulting
Take purpose to a higher level of engagement and commitment within your organization. Greater Meaning can support your social purpose strategy by helping you embed purpose throughout your organization. Contact us to discuss your needs and how we can help.
YourWHY@Work workshops
Our half-day workshops help clarify and connect your employees’ own purpose with your organization’s. Working with individuals and teams, we help your organization unleash the potential of purpose-driven work and relationships.
YourWHY@Work Self-Assessments
To help your employees better understand and articulate their own motivations at work, this online self-assessment tool measures what’s really important to them and how well they think their employer is meeting that need. Using the YourWHY@Work Self-Assessment, your employees will be able to identify and articulate their own purpose at work, and you will be able to better understand how their role at work can not only help fulfill their own purpose but also how they might align with yours. This is a powerful tool for you to measure the level of engagement, commitment, and purpose-alignment of your workforce.
Custom workshops for Purpose@Work
Let’s talk about how we can help you better unleash purpose in your workplace. Learn how employee and organizational purpose can align to build a more dynamic purpose-driven culture for your organization, while increasing loyalty and performance of your employees.