Employees Expect Purpose: Why Increasing Meaning for Your Teams at Work Matters
Workplace culture assessment data tells us that employees expect more than a paycheck or a title. They expect work to matter. People want roles that contribute to a clear sense of personal and professional purpose. The upside is significant: employees who find meaning in their work consistently outperform — and stay longer than — those who do not. Purpose fuels higher performance, deeper commitment, stronger engagement, and greater retention.
The real question isn’t whether purpose matters. It’s how you define — and deliberately design — meaningful work in your organization.
Lenses to Help Create More Meaning for Your Teams at Work
Admittedly, meaning — or purpose — is in the eye of the beholder. What feels deeply meaningful to one person may feel transactional to another. That said, patterns do emerge. Drawing on people manager assessment center data, we consistently see four primary sources of purpose in professional life that cut across roles, industries, and career stages.
- The Individual Impact Lens
When people feel capable in their role and experience success, work becomes more meaningful. Competence creates confidence. Confidence builds pride. And pride in doing a job well is a powerful source of purpose. As a leader, your job is to make that possible.
That starts with regular one-on-one check-ins to understand whether team members feel a genuine sense of accomplishment. When they don’t, resist the urge to label it a motivation issue. More often, something is missing — the right skills, the right assignment, or the right support. Address the gap through targeted development, smarter role design, or a shift in responsibilities that better aligns with their strengths.
Then add autonomy. Help individuals gain appropriate control over what they do and when they do it. When autonomy is layered onto competence, meaning increases dramatically. People feel trusted, capable, and invested.
The question worth asking: are you intentionally setting each person up to succeed by leveraging what they do best — and what they care about most?
- The Team Lens
Meaning at work often emerges not just from individual accomplishment, but from the collective power of a team. Whether on the field or in the office, there’s an unparalleled sense of purpose when a group operates at its peak together. Team members feel energized, confident, and supported — knowing they can rely on one another to deliver.
When tasks require diverse skills, judgment, and experience, the right team consistently outperforms any single individual. High performing teams thrive on collaboration, tackling complex decisions faster, smarter, and more efficiently than any one person could alone. Work becomes not just a set of tasks, but a shared team mission that people are excited to engage in every day.
The critical question for leaders: are you providing your teams with the clarity of goals, accountabilities, roles, and processes they need to operate at their absolute best?
- The Customer Lens
Meaning at work also comes from the impact your team has on customers — both internal and external. When employees see firsthand how their efforts benefit others, their work gains purpose and significance. Whenever possible, create opportunities for your team to engage directly with customers.
A customer focused culture unites people around a shared mission: delivering exceptional experiences every time. The closer your team is to the outcomes of their work, the more tangible the results become, and the stronger their sense of pride and self-worth grows. Seeing the real-world difference they make reinforces meaning in ways that metrics alone cannot.
The question for leaders: are your teams positioned close enough to their customers to experience the true impact of their work?
- The Company Lens
Organizations invest significant effort in defining their vision, mission, and corporate values — the guiding principles that shape strategy and culture. When these elements are clear, authentic, relevant, consistently modeled, and reinforced, employees understand what the company stands for and why it matters. When strategic drivers feel misaligned or disingenuous, engagement quickly erodes.
Leaders must ensure that the company’s purpose resonates at every level. The aim is for every employee — from front-line staff to the C-suite — to see a clear line of sight between their daily contributions and the broader impact on the team, the organization, and society at large. When people understand how their work connects to something bigger, meaning naturally follows.
The critical question: are you intentionally leveraging your vision, mission, and values to cultivate deeper purpose for your teams at work?
The Bottom Line
Purpose at work is not abstract — it can be actively cultivated through the individual, team, customer, and company lenses. Leaders who intentionally design roles, teams, and experiences around these sources of meaning unlock higher performance, stronger engagement, and greater commitment. The more employees experience their work as meaningful, the more invested they become in driving success — for themselves, their teams, and the organization as a whole.
To learn more about increasing meaning for your teams at work, download Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement
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