are people really looking for this level of purpose in their jobs? my job is so i can pay for the things i actually want to do. if the things i wanted to do were free i wouldn’t be working.
Yeah, the fact is there are just some jobs that need to exist but don’t have a great sense of purpose. Very few peoples “purpose in life” is garbage disposal, but we’d be screwed if everyone gave up sanitation to seek out art or stem fields. If it pays the bills and the workplace culture is good, I’m fine with sacrificing “purpose” in my job so I can bettwr achieve purpose outside of it.
Frankly the crappy jobs nobody wants to do should be the ones that pay the best and offer the most benefits.
Construction, farming, salon workers, landscaping, garbage collection, cleaning, hospice care, meat packing, the people that cleaning port-a-potty’s and airport bathrooms. The crappy menial jobs where companies hire immigrants who speak little to no English and are paid $14.50 an hour.
My family stayed at a hotel during a house cleanup for a month. The hotel cleaning people spoke no English and immediately pulled out the phone to translate. I felt absolutely awful that I could not communicate with them. I felt bad that they had to cleanup after us. We ended hand the person who took our towels and changed the bed at least $10 a day as tip.
When I go to a nail salon to get a pedicure I give at least a 30% tip, closer to 50% as they have to deal with my disgusting feet.
When landscapers come I give them cold water.
My grandmother (lives in Toronto) had a care worker come to her house daily for over a year when she needed help putting on her blood pressure socks. The care giver was an immigrant from Jamaica. She was paid $19 per hour. Her rent skyrocketed during covid and she and her 4 roommates couldn’t afford to live. My grandmother grew up in a small town in Canada where all the money made was used to bring over any family that survived the holocaust. She said she knew what it was like to not to have so my grandmother gave her a few thousand dollars.
My dad is also an immigrant who grew up broke. He said to one of his buddies he tipped extra because an extra $5 would mean a lot more to someone else than him. I don’t know how he is today though (he’s a male Karen/ demands everything and usually it works out/ immigrat poverty mindset). What I do know is he had a business trip to Aparth South Africa once and the clients were pissed off that he had the audacity to pour his on Diet Coke instead of the “servant”.
That doesn’t prevent your work from having meaning. Over the years I’ve had the full range, from purely physical mindless labor to earn a paycheck, to projects that meant so much to me I once responded to a salary requirement with “Hell I’d basically do this for a ham sandwhich”.
It took a lot of effort, time, training, and sheer stubbornness on my part, but here I am in middle age, having finally found a work life balance that is just about perfect.
The work I do is interesting, challenging, unique, and has benifit for the entire company and more importantly, my fellow employees.
I could make more by taking different job, but the added stress, hours, and lack of meaning to me doesn’t make it worth it.
I could find a more fulfilling job, but likely at a pay cut that would lower my standard of living too much.
The important part to me is, I look forward to my work. I’ll work in the evening or on weekends a bit just because I’ve thought up a solution and the problem solving is fun for me.
Even when I have to do the shit parts of my job, it never wears on me since it’s part of a greater whole. While making money is obviously important, and a big part of why I have a job at all, just making money can’t be all of it.
Getting home at the end of the day from backbreaking labor, doing work that feels shady, takes advantage of people, or supports an industry that I don’t agree with, leaves me feeling a sense of dread about going back the next day. I can’t enjoy the time that is mine as much when I know I have to go back to that tomorrow.
As with all things this can be taken to extremes, but I think it’s great that young people care about the wider implications of their work, and the value it brings to them.
This can only lead to better working environments, and hopefully, more ethically minded buisnesses.
I have activity not applied for jobs in health insurance since I know my job would be to find the best way for the company to make money. Which I knew would be fine the best method to reject claims.
I'm working for a job now that works makes medicine for pets. I activity did consider how "evil" the company was while looking. I know with corporate life there's a little evil but trying to minimize it
But have you considered how much Return on Investment you can provide shareholders by denying people life at the click of a finger? /S
Honestly, I applaud you: more people should deny these morally bankrupt jobs. But it’s sad because some don’t have the choice because pressures put on them by our shared reality. This system shakes our humanity, and in turn makes people numb to denying others humanity.
This completely makes sense. People should reject assignments if they are unethical! It’s almost like the young generation is doing the right thing. The horror!
I stopped reading at the phrase "purpose and people officer". I suffered from toxic levels of corporate bullshit when I was younger and I have a strong averse reaction to it now. Someone is getting paid six figures to have a bullshit title like that and it is ABSOLUTELY proof of what is wrong with the corporate class.
Hi! I’m Linda, an AI representative from your HR department!
I heard you’re unhappy with your organization’s new Subject Matter Office for Lifestyle, People and Purpose, or SMOLPP.
It’s natural to be afraid of something new like your SMOLPP, but companies big and small across the planet are happy with their SMOLPP! I’ll send you some world class research material from Deloitte (your organization’s SMOLPP innovation partner, and industry leader) for you to read later!
I’m happy to listen to your comments and concern, or answer any questions you might have about your SMOLPP!
I’m an AI language model and don’t have access to specific information about your company’s payroll schedule or policies. To find out whether you will be paid before or after the holiday, I recommend reaching out to your human resources department or payroll administrator. They will have the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding your company’s payment schedule. They will be able to provide you with the details you need about when you can expect to receive your payment.
I don't even think that actually touches on the point here. People want purpose, meaningful purpose out of the thing they spend most of their lives on. Unionizing isn't going to give you job satisfaction if you're a data entry operator unless that's something you find fulfilling.
I work in IT and used to be passionate about computers and the internet but now I want to do something else and get away from the grind of IT work, where nothing is ever completed or provides a sense of accomplishment. There's no meaningful purpose in it for my life other than a paycheck.
Unionizing might help with getting better pay for work but in terms of actual purpose, fulfillment and job satisfaction unions are as useful as advocating for a car club when I'm changing my oil. Completely unnecessary and unrelated and doesn't address the goal at hand.
This is something that's an individual pursuit beyond days off and pay.
I agree with what you’re saying, except I think it touches on that unionizing is the path to being able to say no to additional work (with impunity) and get the most fulfillment from your craft. To feel the familial support of the people you spend 1/3rd of your life around. Your well-being is all tied together. Purpose might not be the right word for it. It was just the word that came to mind. I think it is the right path for most workers.
To defend the rights of your colleagues and your class is a purpose per se (but in the US unions work differently than in my country so I may be missing the point).
Transitioning to a system where companies are owned by the workers would help, but ultimately I think this is just a natural consequence of industiral society. We get modern medicine and air conditioning, and in exchange we give up our ability to self-actualize through our work.
Ditto. I know someone who actively shudders when they hear the name. He repeatedly thanks me from saving him from what he said was actively destroying his soul.
Deloitte staff don’t act totally dead inside (from my experience). EY staff, though, act like they’ve looked inside the abyss and it stared right back at them. That place must be one soulless meat grinder of a business factory.
Probably, but the article is not wrong, these are huge factors that drive my decisions, and I have flat out told employers in interviews that I take issues with aspect of how companies run. Im sure some roll their eyes, but honestly I dont care, im not going to devalue myself or my ethics just to make them more money.
Without naming the firm, I’m a refugee from public accounting.
Back when I was a staff accountant, and we were all making roughly $60k a year, they brought us all into a meeting in the middle of busy season to discuss work/life balance and mental health.
The solution they offered?
Simply hire a full-time live in housekeeper who does laundry and cooks!
When the government is expected to provide such generous benefits (half his salary in Spain, per the article) it seems that something has to change. It’s even good that some people are working past that age, and continuing to pay into it for others. It seems inappropriate to ask the people who are depending on the pension to reduce benefits or pay more- why not ask more of the true beneficiaries of their labor?
My US-centric view is less rosy, as we get WAY less in pension and limited healthcare…all the while there are literal billionaires who pay no taxes. Keep the benefits, tax the rich.
Ok retirement used to be the last 5-10 years of your life - retire at 65, average life expectancy was 70 to 75. As average life expectancy goes up, it’s now closing in at 20 years - retire at 65, live to 83 which I think is new life expectancy.
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone we can’t maintain this. It was only doable for that brief period of cheap energy. (And yes, we should tax the rich in case anyone doubts my sentiments.)
The problem is less to do with personal goals and more to do with how your company or manager implements them.
My team has their org goals, which is what our bonuses are based on, and each person’s individual goals that they set with me. Those goals have the boilerplate reviews, and we keep it metrics based. Did we miss, meet, or exceed our goals? There’s a formula, which everyone knows before the year starts (because we wrote them as a group and them got board executive sign off on them) that tells us what our bonus metric will be. We sink or swim as a group, myself included. Each person has individual goals related to their unique role, but those are largely “Did you perform at the level expected of your title and salary?” No fluff. No BS. Some of my people write sentences, some give concise bullets, some write 3 word answers. This isn’t the SATs, so it doesn’t matter how the info is provided.
Then we have the personal goals, which are 100% rooted in the question “what do you want next?” For some people, it’s to move into a more Sr role, for others to break into a new discipline (expertise in a particular area, management, or something completely different), and sometimes it’s as simple as “make $30k more per year” or “have more time with my kids in the evenings.” (For the last one, it’s usually easy - we are remote with few mandatory hours so it’s easy to modify a schedule to have free hours when needed) We set personal goals and I coach them to achieve them, but the only person they answer to if they don’t achieve them is themselves. It has zero impact on their performance metrics, bonuses, or raises.
I want to see everyone have the life and career they want, and we use these goals as way to work towards that. Our 1-on-1 meetings are NOT about their tasks. We have the task board and team syncs for that and I can schedule a 1-off chat if we need to address something. Instead we spend the 1-on-1 more or less on whatever topic they want to address. If something is stressing them, annoying them, etc, they have that time to bring it up and we can try to find a solution. One of my people has a goal to move to a city 9 time zones away. They also highly values their work/life balance, so flexing their schedule is likely not going to solve this so instead I’m helping them leave the team for a new job. Ideally I’ll keep them in the company, but if that doesn’t work out and they have to leave, so be it. It’s what’s best for them and everyone else here sees it - that shit goes a long way.
If you’re doing bullshit personal goals and nonsense 1-on-1 meetings, that’s the manager and culture at fault, not the concept as a whole.
Ever notice how “personal goals” are supposed to be focused on work? That’s because companies are using it to extract more productivity from the same number of employees for the same price. They’re trying to exploit human nature through gamifying your workload for a dopamine rush. When this is realized it often feels condescending, because it is.
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