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The paper argues that while thinkers and writers have long wondered at the value of work to human beings beyond providing a living, the notion of 'meaningful work' is a relatively new phenomenon that would have made little sense to our forbears of a couple of centuries ago.

Rise of individualism and identity 

Author Stephen Overell says that the way people talk about 'fulfilling their potential' in a job could only happen in the modern world of work and adds that it is simply not something that would have been said a few generations ago.

“Meaningful work rests on the rise of individualism and identity as pressing concerns for large numbers of people. It speaks of huge and perhaps excessive expectations of working life - the historically unusual sense that fulfilment occurs, or should occur, in the everyday, ordinary business of going to work,” Overell explains.

He points out that what is meaningful to one person may not be meaningful to another, and what someone finds meaningful at the age of 23 may not be how they feel at 43.

Nevertheless, meaning is unmistakably in the air of the 21st century culture of work; this essay marks an attempt to describe what is going on.

“The raising and dashing of hopes around meaning has become one of the major psychological forces within working life. What goes on inside workers' hearts and minds about work has become profoundly important to what they produce and how they do it,” Overell says.

Moral motives and compensation 

The essay argues that the discovery of meaning in work relies on balancing three sets of motives.

They are moral motives - the idea that the 'ends' of work are worthwhile; compensation motives - including money, but also including status, authority, responsibility and the appropriate use of skills and abilities; and craft motives - the desire to do a good job for its own sake.

Meanwhile, the work that people do today has changed in such ways as to prompt more questions about meaning, fulfilment and rewarding work.

Relatively well-paying, highly skilled professional and managerial jobs now account for over a third of all jobs in many advanced democracies.

Work is more about intellectual problem-solving and how people communicate and relate to each other than it used to be. This does not make work more meaningful, but it helps create the conditions in which issues of meaning and identity arise.

Balance between effort and reward 

The paper argues that employers have a role in enabling the search for meaningful work by providing high quality jobs for people.

It defines these as jobs with autonomy, security, variety, a reasonable balance between effort and reward, and between skill level and demand.

Employers cannot create meaning, however, and should not try to. It is up to individuals to find work that is meaningful for them.

The Work Foundation paper finds that employers are capable of destroying meaning through exploitation, disrespect, and poor organisation of work.

Social values that affect work have changed: a basic psychological orientation towards maximising income and status is today being balanced by a stress upon self-expression, diversity of view, aesthetic concerns and issues of self-fulfilment.

Bureaucracy and market forces 

Meaning, identity and individualism at work have risen at the same time as traditional collective institutions such as trade unions, communities and corporate hierarchies are seen has having declined.

Doing excellent work for no other reason than its own sake is intrinsic to the notion of meaningful work. Increasing bureaucracy and market forces, however, may undermine the search for meaning.

Having a sense of vocation is very similar to the idea of doing meaningful work. The difference is that meaning is more self-conscious than vocation: the service of others as a personal experience rather than a 'calling'.

'Inwardness: The Rise of Meaningful Work' is available from The Work Foundation.  

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Related links

• The Work Foundation