A University call center team, when connected to the scholarship holders, discussing delightedly how the scholarship funds had eased their life and made their dreams come true, doubled their calls resulting in the hike of around 400% of the weekly revenue. This happened in just over a call of a few minutes. The sudden increase in profit and productivity was because they came to know about the positive impact of the job.
We often undergo the Sisyphus effect in our work, where we are constantly doing the tasks on repeat mode and are in turn loaded with a number of unending demands which are meaningless. We fail to understand the depth of the work we do and its impact on the people who are at the other end receiving the outcome of our work like Sisyphus who as a punishment kept rolling a boulder up the hill. Everytime the boulder reached up, it rolled back again. And there went Sisyphus against rolling the boulder up the hill for eternity.
As per a survey conducted on 100,000 plus employees across 47 countries 8% people consider their work to be meaningless socially while 17% are unsure if their job does any good to the society.
We can make our work meaningful by understanding the “What” of our work, here the what emphasizes on the impact of the outcome (product or service on others life). Going back to the University call center team, knowing how their fundraising changed students’ life was what made them more interested and productive in their work. Followed by the what, we can understand “Why” we are the work, analyze if we are good at it. If it makes us happy. Based on our understanding we can chalk a plan based on improving at our work by upskilling with the latest required skills, software, language or seek mentorship to understand the scope of our work and how we can make it significant as the workplace growth ratio is proportional to the personal life growth.
Leaders, being the supervisors of work, play a crucial role in making people’s work meaningful. They can partake in it by:
1. Analyzing Work and Employee:
Looking into the work that people do and understanding how purposeful it is, will enable the leader to improvise things for the Software Development Companies. Simultaneously, making employees understand the impact of their daily tasks will help them get an in-depth view.
2. Helping Employees Explore:
Letting employees learn how they can make their work more impactful by improvising their work through planning, upskilling, prioritizing etc
3. Motivating with Testimonials:
Getting senior employees who have been successful in making their work meaningful and sharing their experience with the rest, will motivate employees in moving out of their comfort zone and pursuing growth .
4. Providing Support & Appreciation:
Helping employees to self analyze and learn new skills and ways of managing and improvising their work along with appreciation will act as a catalyst for employees growth.
5. Promoting Social Responsibility:
Knowing the potential impact of their tasks before undertaking it will encourage the employee to put in extra effort and focus, resulting in better work quality.
(Author: Alisha Fernandes is an inquisitive learner & content writer at TechDoQuest)