When it comes to what workers desire, the existential crisis and change in routines brought about by the pandemic and the Great Resignation that followed have put purpose front and center. A recent survey led by the Purpose Center of Excellence found that 86 percent of employees said that having meaningful work is more important than ever before in their lives.

The big shift post-pandemic, according to purpose-centric workplace consultant Carol Cone, is that workers are overwhelmingly prioritizing a sense of belonging in their professional lives. It’s not just about money anymore. It’s also about meaning. Whether they must leave their beloved pets or children behind or spend time in frustrating traffic or on never-ending video calls, Cone says the modern worker wants to feel like they “belong to something greater than a spreadsheet.”

While finding purpose at work could involve securing a new job, it doesn’t necessarily need to lead to starting over. Studies show that “job crafting,” the term for proactively customizing and reconceptualizing your role, can make work more meaningful without the stress involved of moving to a new workplace.

Yale University psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski, a pioneer in the study of job crafting, illustrates the benefits of the practice with an anecdote about hospital janitors. One group essentially described their role as dirty work. They didn’t enjoy it, but they needed the compensation and benefits. A second group, however, saw their work as critical to patient healing. They didn’t just keep rooms clean and sterile. They were instrumental in patients’ well-being.

On Purpose

On Purpose

On Purpose

$25 at Bookshop

Feeling a sense of purpose at work can also provide a buffer against burnout, adds productivity expert and On Purpose author Tanya Dalton. “I truly believe that burnout is not caused by overwork,” she says. “It’s caused by not finding meaning in your work. When we have that underlying understanding of why we’re doing what we’re doing, it creates this satisfaction and fulfillment not just in our jobs but also in our lives.” Beyond searching for a new job, here’s how experts suggest finding purpose at work:


Define your concept of success

Begin with introspection. Knowing your strengths, interests, and personal definition of success is the first step to making your job more meaningful, Dalton advises. Do you love mentoring? Team building? Working with numbers? Consider how you can incorporate more of whatever those skills are for you into your daily work.

“Can you have a conversation with your boss to lean into some of those gifts of yours so you are doing more of those things?” Dalton suggests. “When we go to our boss and say things like, ‘This is what I’m really passionate about. Here’s where I see I could do some things that would benefit our company,’ a lot of times, our managers haven’t even thought about [them]. They’re so busy looking at their plates, they’re not looking at your plate.”

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Reconceptualizing your role can boost your well-being.

It’s also important to ask yourself what success looks like for you. Is it the size of your paycheck? The number of people you impact? Having work-free nights and weekends? Being an exceptional parent? “There are a thousand different ways to define success,” Dalton says. “If we all fit this narrow definition of what success is — and who knows who set that for us as a society? — we are never going to measure up because it really doesn’t tick the boxes of what we truly want.”


Consider the big picture

While some jobs have obvious, inherent purposes — health care or education, for instance — others require a deeper dive, according to Columbia Business School professor and The Long Game author Dorie Clark. “In a capitalist society, the businesses that prosper really do have to fill a need,” she notes. “Otherwise, they would have been driven out of the market.”

The Long Game

The Long Game

The Long Game

Broaden your perspective to consider your work’s larger purpose by examining what need it satisfies in the world. Selling insurance, for example, might feel like a yawn. However, seeing that role as essential in helping someone rebuild their home after a disaster or repair their car after an accident can infuse the work with meaning.

“Some needs are more acute than others,” Clark notes. “Say I work for a film studio, and they make movies that, in a really dark time, keep people laughing and having fun. It’s two hours of escapism that made people feel good about their lives. That is something that can actually be quite purposeful, if you look through that lens.”

Understanding your employer’s values can also provide a sense of purpose, adds Cone, whose research finds that a business’ purpose can make employees feel more connected to their work. Some companies, such as Toms, Patagonia, and Bombas, integrate support for social and environmental causes into their business models. Others reflect their values through charitable donations and encouraging employee volunteerism. If your workplace has no such initiatives, you could increase your own feeling of purpose at work by helping to create one.


Take the pressure off

Our cultural narrative implies that if we don’t find our purpose, we’re doomed to a life of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. But that’s just not reality. “The way we talk about [finding purpose], it feels sometimes like a thing a regular person can’t even do,” Clark says. “We need to lower the bar because, yes, you need to feel purposeful and enjoy what you’re doing, but it doesn’t mean that one person has one purpose in life, and that is it.”

Many employees will discover different avenues to meaning throughout their lives, and what provides purpose may change as they grow. “Your purpose can evolve just like you do,” Dalton says. “You’re not the same person you were 10, 20 years ago, and we shouldn’t expect our purpose to always be the same.”

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Your purpose at work will evolve over time.

Changes in life circumstances can also affect where purpose is derived. A parent might find great meaning in working at their child’s school, whereas that wasn’t on their radar before having children. A medical diagnosis could inspire helping others affected by that same condition. Or a travel experience could open someone’s eyes to an issue that needs support.

Clark says a singular quest for purpose can even be counterproductive because it feels too daunting. Instead, she suggests that workers “optimize for interesting.” Clark notes that simply asking yourself, “Do I find this interesting?” automatically lowers the stakes. “It feels easier to answer,” she says, “and if you continually move in the direction of things you find interesting, you are highly likely to find something that you feel both passionate about and find purpose in.”


Sandy Cohen is a Southern California-based health and wellness coach, host of the Inner Peace to Go podcast, and writer of the Shondaland series A Path to Well-Being. Follow her on Twitter @YouKnowSandy.

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