Harnessing Personal Purpose to Enable Employee Experience

As talent continues to reshuffle across the economy in rapid numbers, more and more businesses are realizing that they need to build a work culture that attracts and retains great people. What’s clear from the latest labor trends is that employees are leveraging power in new ways — and companies must focus on besting their competition when it comes to employee experience.

When pursuing an employee experience that engages workers, companies too often make the mistake of looking only at one-size-fits-all solutions. They vow to provide more flexibility, opportunities, and an inclusive culture. While these factors matter, they don’t cover what is often the most important one that’s missing: a personal sense of fulfillment. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that for people leaving or looking to leave their jobs, the biggest driving force involves values — and within that category, the top reason is that they want more personal fulfillment from work.

As McKinsey notes, people gain a sense of fulfillment from finding purpose in their work. But that purpose is not all about the company’s mission statement. Instead, it’s unique to each individual, according to McKinsey: “People who find their individual purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.”

One of us (Aaron Hurst) researched the role of purpose in the workplace for his book, The Purpose Economy. He found that because purpose involves complex emotional and social factors, people need tools to uncover their own unique sense of purpose and discover how it can be applied to their work. Now, through his peer coaching software, which guides pairs of colleagues through structured, thoughtful conversations, he helps organizations do this.

Hasbro, where Kathrin Belliveau works, introduced this peer coaching method to its employees last year. The program proved so transformative in addressing the employee experience that, for the first time ever, four units all volunteered to fund it together: brand, learning and development, purpose, and employee engagement.

Discover Personal Purpose Through Guided Reflection

Companies benefit when they create frameworks for employees to find their own purpose drivers. That’s why peer coaching starts off with guided questions to help people think through three central components that contribute to their sense of purpose: Whom do they most wish to impact? Why do they want to make a difference? And how do they ideally wish to do so?

This kind of reflection is essential. Research shows that identifying one’s calling — that is, “the work one was meant to do” — requires introspection, reflection, and meditation. But most people have never taken the time, or been given the opportunity, to consider these types of questions as they relate to work.

When your employees do this, they gain clarity into what they need in order to feel fulfilled. For example, some Hasbro employees became aware that they are most driven by a desire to contribute to the team rather than to have a broad impact on society or the company. They then began to reframe their goals and markers for success.

Dedicate Time for Peer Coaching and Reflection

Through hourlong sessions with a partner twice a month, Hasbro employees explore how fulfilled they are feeling and discuss what they can do to help themselves feel more fulfilled. They do this by asking each other questions that are prompted by the software, such as, “When was the last time you felt our work made an impact that was personally meaningful to you?” and, “Tell me about the last day when you left work feeling energized.”

The dedicated time commitment for this coaching means that each participant has the other’s ear with no interruptions. It also proves to be an opportunity to build empathetic, meaningful relationships — another staple of fulfillment at work.

In feedback obtained immediately after these sessions, employees told us that they were left with “a sense of direction, purpose, and energy” and had “reconnected” with their purpose. One said, “Reflecting on the impact that I have had over the last few years has made me realize the value of my contributions and makes me excited and motivated to continue making an impact for my team.”

Imperative routinely collects survey data from participants in its peer coaching programs at companies across the country. Overall, 85% of participants say they are successfully connecting their work to their personal sense of purpose. Seventy-eight percent say the process has made them more successful in their jobs. And on average, they report a 240% increase in positive emotions.

Concrete Actions, With Accountability

A best practice for peer coaching is that at the end of sessions, peer coaches should set action items that will help them advance their sense of purpose at work. It might be to approach a manager to ask to join a new cross-functional project. It might be to apply for a different role at the company. Or it might be to have a difficult conversation with a colleague whose behavior has been making work life difficult.

Because they know they’re going to report on the results to their peer, people actually take these actions the vast majority of the time (about 83%, by Imperative’s latest count). At Hasbro, people have developed new skills, helped colleagues who are struggling, and taken time off to address burnout. After several peer coaching sessions, one participant told us, “I hadn’t realized that, through the incremental steps we were taking, I was making significant changes in the way I work.” It’s no wonder that 97% of participants told us that peer coaching improved their employee experience.

With so many day-to-day challenges, it can be difficult to dedicate scarce time for peer coaching. But our experience shows that this time is critical. When people get a chance to pause, think, and metabolize their emotions, they make sure that they are aligning their work to their sense of purpose. This can help revolutionize the daily experience for employees — and make them want to stay with the company.