4 Small Changes We Can Make to Reconnect with Our Jobs

Engagement with Our Jobs

With all the emphasis our society places on achieving a successful career, it continues to be astounding how unsuccessful many of us really are in attaining one measure of career success. Job engagement is a difficult quality to evaluate, yet it is one of the most vital to excel in to truly have an effective career. While income and social status receive the lion’s share of what our society places value on in assessing success in a job, there is so much more to a job than that.

As a technology professional with more than 15 years of experience in leading global consulting projects, and as the owner of employee engagement consulting firm, I’ve had the unique opportunity of witnessing various workplace cultures.  Through this experience, I’ve been inspired to distill a few insights on job engagement that I would like to share here.

Engagement with our jobs – or should I say a lack of it — is a far more serious issue than we realize. Engagement can be defined as the commitment and motivation to contribute to organizational success.  A recent Gallup report, State of the America Workplace, found that only 30% of American workers are engaged. Worse, this disengagement is estimated to cost corporate America $450 to $550 billion annually.

I think that whatever we do, we work our best when we know we make a difference in others’ lives. We want a purpose when we get up in the morning, and I think that is what’s missing at today’s workplace. You may be one of those who has lost passion for work but has continued to stick it out at your job to meet various financial obligations. These obligations, however, should not prevent you from seeking purpose at work. And with some small changes, you can come to see something deeply meaningful in your mundane tasks. A touching blog post I came across recently reinforced this to me.

One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

Humans of New York is a popular photo blog that captures the personal stories of New Yorkers from all walks of life.  Recently two images from a post caught my eye. They were portraits of two men who lead totally different lives – a Times Square custodian and a traffic policeman.

One bitterly says of his job, “It’s a job. Somebody’s got to do it.” The other one is proud of his job and proclaims, “You know what product I’m selling now? Myself.”

Can you guess which statement is from the custodian and which one is from the policeman?

Intriguingly, it’s the custodian who is engaged and proudly sells himself as a product. Prior to his current job, he spent six years in jail for selling drugs. However he managed to make a turnaround, today he is seemingly in a completely different place in his life. He has found new purpose by truly making other people’s trash a treasure, and making a positive difference in his own way.

In contrast to such an engaged worker, the traffic policeman seems to be indifferent about what he does. “I don’t even represent myself when I’m working,” he says. Where is his pride as a public servant or a member of NYPD, one of the most famous police departments in the world? Unfortunately, his sentiment seems to be becoming more of the norm for many people’s workplace attitudes.

The difference between these two men’s career viewpoints led me to reflect on some of the simple things that can affect the way we perceive our jobs. I crystallized four insights related to the connection between our work and our purpose.

Four Small Changes

Here are small changes that I think can transform our frame of mind and help to reconnect purpose with our work:

1. Write down what you like about your job: Evaluate your current situation by jotting down exactly what you like about your work. Although you may think you have a good idea of this all in your head, there is nothing that will bring this into sharper relief than writing it down so you can see it. This will go a long way toward helping you to reconnect with what originally attracted you to your job.
2. Set a personal mission: Set a personal mission that aligns with what you like about your work. For instance, if you like giving good investment tips to clients, why not expand that to “nurture clients’ well-being by educating them about making sound financial decisions.”
3. Tell your mission to colleagues who are not in your circle: When I set my personal mission at work, many colleagues who supported my idea were surprisingly outside of my circle. You may feel awkward at first doing this, but talk about your personal mission to colleagues outside of your circle when appropriate. You never know what encouragement and inspiration you will get !
4. Be grateful about the small stuff: This simple but powerful practice can be translated to “celebrate one thing every day that you are grateful for at work.” This can be the opportunity to re-evaluate your colleagues’ contributions, or to show your appreciation in different ways.

I urge you to try making these small changes and see how they help reconnect purpose with our job. I would also love to hear about small changes you’ve made that have transformed your work.