Taking the employee purpose into account as a fundamental part of any corporate strategy is an approach that today’s companies should not neglect. The inner world of employees (composed of motivations, talents, or needs) has not always been considered necessary. Nor has the relevance been given to what a company’s employees intend to do or achieve during their professional life cycle in that particular company and also throughout their entire professional career.
How to understand employee purpose
Assuming that a company’s employees are mere executors of instructions from above, devoid of expectations, creativity, or desires, is not only naïve but also hugely detrimental to the organization’s success.
However, concretely and synthetically defining employees’ purpose is also tricky, given the label’s philosophical or – if you prefer – abstract nature. Something that, more or less intentionally and deliberately, is done to make our professional lives more meaningful and satisfying.
In short, employee purpose is related to their vocation and also has a lot to do with the professional project that, whether they are aware of it or not, each one is carrying out throughout their career.
The purpose of employees should be seen as an element that goes beyond work. It is something that endows professional performance with a relatively deep meaning and is capable of transcending the obvious motivations, usually of a nutritional nature, that any person has for working in a given job.
Employee purpose characteristics
Employee purpose, as a complex psychological process, stems from a set of reflections, intuitions, desires, and referents of which people are not always aware. It also involves a permanent adjustment between one’s expectations, wants, and needs and the potential possibilities the company can offer depending on the moment they are in.
1. It has limits set by the company
Employee purpose does not consist only of their own set of professional objectives. Still, it is influenced and, above all, limited by the roles and responsibilities they perform within the company at a given point in their life cycle as employees in that company.
2. It has a two-way direction
Employee purpose can be interpreted in two ways. One is what they intend (what they plan to achieve or do through their work in the company). Two, what they propose (what is the value proposition they make to the company they work for). All of this is combined with their needs and expectations and the strategy they follow to make that purpose possible.
3. It is alive and dynamic
At a given moment, it may be perceived that the purpose has been fulfilled. However, if the conditions for this do not continue to exist, the aim is lost, distorted, and loses its content. That is why it is something that companies must consider when it comes to securing talent in the team: employees’ purpose goes hand in hand with their professional development, career plan, and commitment to the company and the industry.
HR’s role in employee purpose
An all-around work in people care and HR management should include accompanying the workforce to reflect on a critical question. This involves exploring whether the employee purpose is realistic, whether it contributes to their physical and psychological well-being, what values and personal needs it is based on, and what role it plays in their biographies.
While this is not the sole responsibility of the company, nor does the company have a miraculous ability to achieve this, it is crucial to help team members find sources of inspiration, motivation, and meaning to move employees’ purpose toward something more natural and valuable.
Team cohesion based on purpose
As indicated, the employee purpose must be interpreted as something held at a given moment, nurtured, and can change. It does so to the extent that it has to align with other purposes: the corporate one (of the company as a whole) and each of the particular purposes of the other employees.
Much of the cohesion of a team comes from the fact that its members, despite their differences, work with coherent purposes, which do not clash with each other but feed back into each other and favor working together and achieving objectives. Decisive leadership will necessarily stimulate the correct alignment of the employees’ purpose under its orbit.
Balancing the professional with the other aspects of work
For good psychological well-being, it is necessary to facilitate coherence between the professional purpose of the employees and the other vital objectives they set for themselves. This reduces interferences and dissonances that can generate the feeling of living divided or having to make great sacrifices in some critical areas to favor others.
It is also achieved that the professional career (the tasks and objectives of which it is made, the values that sustain it) has sufficient coherence with the functions, goals, and values of the person in other essential aspects of their lives, instead of generating conflicts of interests and loyalties.
The purpose of employees is a what, which must necessarily be accompanied by a powerful how, a solid why, and a meaningful what for if there is a claim to make it real in their daily professional life. Here we separate these questions to appreciate the nuances better, but in reality, there is no complete separation between them since they feed each other, providing content and answers.
We care for emotional well-being in organizations
At ifeel, we believe that taking care of the employee purpose and integrating it properly into the company’s mission is crucial to fostering the well-being of the people who are part of the team.
Our team of psychologists, experts in well-being at work, has created an emotional well-being program for companies that can guide HR managers in this task and help the rest of the company’s members.
With this service, HR managers can receive personalized, data-driven advice on improving the psychological well-being of the teams in their charge. If you are part of the HR department in your organization, we recommend that you try our program now and see how it could help you.
This program offers all employees a complete mental health care service that they can access in different ways depending on their needs. Those who wish to have access to an online therapy service with one of our psychologists specialized in cases like theirs or interact with one of our professionals to receive emotional support in a more specific circumstance that worries them.
Of course, in our Resources section, you can find different materials that will help you with many of your day-to-day functions as part of the HR department. For example, podcasts, HR guides on various topics (e.g., employee experience or how to design a good HR strategy), or Interviews with leading HR executives. In addition, we have a Psychosocial Risk Factors Template, which you can use to comply with the requirements of the Labor Inspectorate.
We hope you found this post on how to foster employee purpose interesting. If you would like more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
