What’s it all about?

To find out just what makes work meaningful, US team of researchers spent year interviewing people and came out with the following major themes.
1. Deep and meaningful
There’s huge distinction between ‘meaningful work’ and ‘job satisfaction’. For most people, satisfaction feels like conformance to standards. Meaning goes deeper. It’s about hopes, and fulfilment.
2. Fair pay, not high pay
People don’t cite incentives or high pay as key ingredients to meaningful workplace. However people do distinguish between “fair pay” which is critically important, and “high pay”.
3. Top shelf keys
Having sense of purpose tops the list of meaningful categories. The sense that what I’m doing as an individual, and what the organisation is doing collectively, makes difference. Also on the top shelf are ownership, fit, oneness, and relationship building. In the second rung are service, quality, validation, invention and personal development. For companies looking to foster greater sense of meaning, these are good starting place.
4. Fads are meaningless
Business concepts like reengineering, strategic planning, TQM and the like, weren’t mentioned. For instance, no one suggested “the recent reengineering initiative helped me find greater meaning in my work”.
5. Talking about meaning is cathartic
Researchers found “an almost desperate eagerness to talk about meaning in the workplace. People from all walks of work life participated with zeal.”