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Ask people what they want in a job, and meaningfulness looms large. For decades, Americans have ranked purpose as their\u00a0top priority<\/a>\u2014above promotions, income, job security, and hours. Work is a search \u201cfor daily meaning as well as daily bread,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Studs Turkel after interviewing hundreds of people in a striking array of jobs. Yet all too often, we feel that our work doesn\u2019t matter. \u201cMost of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.\u201d<\/p>\n What makes a job meaningless? After\u00a0more than 40 years of research<\/a>, 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. As important as these factors are, though, there\u2019s another that matters more.<\/p>\n Consider the following jobs. They all meet some of the criteria above, yet about 90% of peoplefail to find them highly meaningful<\/a>:<\/p>\n Why is meaning missing in these jobs? They rarely have a significant, lasting impact on other people. If these jobs didn\u2019t exist, people wouldn\u2019t be all that much worse off. By contrast, here are the jobs that are\u00a0highly meaningful to virtually everyone who holds them<\/a>:<\/p>\n They all make an important difference in the lives of others. Not convinced yet? Here\u2019s a taste of the evidence on the link between helping others and meaningful work:<\/p>\n Enriching the Meaningfulness of a Job<\/strong><\/p>\n Becoming a neurosurgeon isn\u2019t for everyone. The good news is that there are steps we can take to make jobs more meaningful\u2014for ourselves and others.<\/p>\n In many cases, our jobs do have an impact, but we\u2019re too distant from the end users of our products and services. Think of automotive safety engineers who never meet the drivers of their cars or medical scientists who don\u2019t see a patient. By connecting directly with these end users, we can see our past and potential impact. When university fundraisers\u00a0met a single student<\/a>\u00a0whose scholarship was funded by their work, they increased 142% in weekly phone minutes and over 400% in weekly revenue. When radiologists\u00a0saw a patient\u2019s photo<\/a>\u00a0included in an x-ray file, they wrote 29% longer reports and made 46% more accurate diagnoses.<\/p>\n This is why leaders at John Deere invite employees who build tractors to meet the farmers who buy their tractors, leaders at Facebook invite software developers to hear from users who have found long-lost friends and family members thanks to the site, and leaders at Wells Fargo film videos of customers describing how low-interest loans have rescued them from debt. When we see the direct consequences of our jobs for others,\u00a0we find greater meaning<\/a>. \u201cThe greatest untapped source of motivation,\u201d Susan Dominus\u00a0explains<\/a>, \u201cis a sense of service to others.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, some jobs are simply not designed to have a major impact on others. In these situations, people often make the mistake of treating their job descriptions as fixed, overlooking the fact that they can take initiative to alter their own roles. Wrzesniewski, Jane Dutton, and Justin Berg call this\u00a0job crafting<\/a>\u2014adding, emphasizing, revising, delegating, or minimizing tasks and interactions in pursuit of greater meaning. For example, hospital cleaners who lack patient contact\u00a0stepped up to provide emotional support<\/a>\u00a0to patients and their families, and technology associates began volunteering for mentoring, teaching, and training roles.<\/p>\n When people craft their jobs, they become happier and more effective. In an\u00a0experiment at Google<\/a>, colleagues and I invited salespeople and administrators to spend 90 minutes doing the\u00a0Job Crafting Exercise<\/a>\u2014they mapped out ways to make their tasks and interactions more meaningful and contribute more to others. Six weeks later, their managers and coworkers rated them as happier and more effective. When they developed new skills to support more significant changes, the happiness and performance gains lasted for at least six months.<\/p>\n Like all things in life, meaning can be pushed too far. As the psychologist Brian Littleobserves<\/a>, if we turn our trivial pursuits into magnificent obsessions, we gain meaning at the price of manageability. When the weight of the world is on our shoulders, we place ourselves at risk for burnout.<\/p>\n Yet most people are facing the opposite problem in their jobs, of too little meaning rather than too much. Against this backdrop, the chance to help others can be what makes our work worthwhile. \u201cSuffering ceases to be suffering once it finds a meaning,\u201d wrote Viktor Frankl inMan\u2019s Search For Meaning<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cBeing human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself\u2014be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself\u2014by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love\u2014the more human he is.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Adam Grant is a Wharton professor and the author of\u00a0Give and Take<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0andWall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0bestseller on the hidden power of helping others. Follow him here by clicking the yellow FOLLOW button and on Twitter\u00a0@AdamMGrant<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/today\/post\/article\/20140129133724-69244073-the-1-feature-of-a-meaningless-job The #1 Feature of a Meaningless Job January 29, 2014 \u00a0 Ask people what they want in a job, and meaningfulness looms large. For decades, Americans have ranked purpose as their\u00a0top priority\u2014above promotions, income, job security, and hours. Work is a search \u201cfor daily meaning as well as daily bread,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0Studs Turkel after interviewing … Continue reading On meaningless jobs<\/span> \n
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