What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless?

Meaningful work is something we all want. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl famously described how the innate human quest for meaning is so strong that, even in the direst circumstances, people seek out their purpose in life.

 A recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review showed:

 Meaningfulness was more important to employees than any other aspect of work, including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, or working conditions. Meaningful work can be highly motivational, leading to improved performance, commitment, and satisfaction.

 Researchers anticipated that the data would show that the meaningfulness experienced by employees in relation to their work was clearly associated with actions taken by managers. Instead, the research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness.

 The research aimed to uncover how and why people find their work meaningful. The study showed that meaningfulness was often associated with a sense of pride and achievement at a job well done, whether they were professionals or manual workers.

 “Those who could see that they had fulfilled their potential, or who found their work creative, absorbing, and interesting, tended to perceive their work as more meaningful than others. Accordingly, receiving praise, recognition, or acknowledgment from others mattered a great deal.”

The Five Qualities of Meaningful Work

The study also revealed five unexpected features of meaningful work; in these features might explain the fragile and intangible nature of meaningfulness.

 1. Self-Transcendent

 Individuals tended to experience their work as meaningful when it mattered to others more than just to themselves. Their work was meaningful when it showed the impact and relevance of their work on the individuals, the group or the community. 

 2. Poignant

 The experience of meaningful work can be poignant rather than purely euphoric. The experience of coping with challenging conditions led to a sense of meaningfulness far greater than they would have experienced dealing with straightforward, everyday situations.

 3. Episodic

A sense of meaningfulness arose in an episodic rather than a sustained way. It seemed that no one could find their work consistently meaningful, but rather that an awareness that work was meaningful arose at peak times that were generative of strong experiences.

 4. Reflective

 Meaningfulness was rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect and on reflection when people were able to see their completed work and make connections between their achievements and a wider sense of life meaning.

 5. Personal

 Other feelings about work, such as engagement or satisfaction, tend to be just that: feelings about work. Work that is meaningful, on the other hand, is often understood by people not just in the context of their work but also in the wider context of their personal life experiences.