Imposing ‘meaningful work’ leads to staff burnout

Imposing 'meaningful work' leads to staff burnout. Strategies to boost staff performance and morale by manipulating our desire for meaningful work often achieve the opposite - damaging organisations and alienating employees - a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that important and meaningful work is the single most-valued feature of employment for most of us, bringing a range of benefits for individuals and employers. This is borne out by the so-called 'lottery test', which shows that most people would continue to work after landing a windfall. Managers have recognised this and employ a range of techniques to harness this natural motivation, such as encouraging us to adopt organisational values, supporting good causes, and linking work to a wider purpose. But when employees view these strategies as self-serving, not genuine or incoherent - say, if the employer says one thing but does another - then they fall flat and can actually have negative consequences, according to a new paper in the journal Human Resource Management Review . The lead author, Professor Catherine Bailey in the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex, says that the mismanagement of meaningfulness in the workplace is giving rise to what she describes as 'existential labour'.