Wharton’s Adam Grant has an excellent piece at The Huffington Post reviewing research that seeks to uncover what makes a job meaningful to employees. “After more than 40 years of research, we know that people struggle to find meaning when they lack autonomy, variety, challenge, performance feedback, and the chance to work on a whole product or service from start to finish,” writes Grant. “As important as these factors are, though, there’s another that matters more…A comprehensive analysis of data from more than 11,000 employees across industries: the single strongest predictor of meaningfulness was the belief that the job had a positive impact on others.”
A lot of interesting research in this one. Managers take note.