Finding meaning at work
This HR Network paper considers the impact of meaningfulness interventions in facilitating positive psychological experiences and behaviours at work.
New member paper: Finding meaning at work
Summary of IES HR Network paper on the impact of personal development interventions that are focused on meaningfulness.
Published:
The concept of ‘meaning at work’ has recently gained a great deal of attention in the business world. This is in a context of many working people feeling increasingly under pressure to work harder and in tighter budgets. Faced with this problem, organisations have traditionally turned to interventions which aim to increase employees’ resilience. These interventions might involve providing employees with knowledge about stress, its causes, and techniques about managing stress. In our most recent HR Network paper, Luke Fletcher and Dilys Robinson consider an alternative approach, one that, instead of focusing primarily on the prevention of negative emotions and a decline in performance, focuses on promoting positive wellbeing and optimising performance.
Finding meaning at work: the impact of a personal development intervention therefore presents the findings of a study which aimed to gauge the impact of personal development interventions that are focused on meaningfulness, and whether these interventions can help to facilitate positive psychological experiences and behaviour in the workplace.
The study analysed the impact of meaningfulness interventions on teams in two organisations, in comparison with both control groups and teams that took part in stress management interventions. The impact of the interventions on several key areas, such as personal initiative, meaningfulness in and at work, and job management were measured.
The report encourages the view that stress management interventions fail to facilitate the positive psychological experiences and behaviour in the workplace that are generated by meaningfulness interventions. The study therefore offers valuable insights for those in performance management roles as well as those working in health and wellbeing and HR more widely.
The paper is available exclusively to HR Network members.
Related publications
The Drivers of Employee Engagement
Engagement is a frequently used and fashionable term. Research into engagement, however, is almost non-existent. It appears that 'engagement' is not a recognised academic construct, yet all of us feel intuitively that we understand what it means. The work in this report is built on in 'Engagement: The Continuing Story', an IES report which tests our enagement measure and drivers tool in different settings and sectors.
The Engaging Manager
All of IES's work on employee engagement to date has pointed to the importance of the relationship between the employee and the line manager. These findings led to this research, which aimed to identify how, in practice, engaging managers behave. We visited seven organisations and interviewed 25 managers, their teams, and their own managers, about their management style.