In 2025, ‘millennials’ make up three quarters of the working population. Above all, they want meaningful work. Work with a ‘purpose’. The challenge for employers is to get a grip on this rather vague concept. And to measure how employees experience their work.
A quarter of employees question the usefulness of their job. Quite a lot. ‘Purpose’ (a sense of meaning) at work is an interesting topic. After all, how can you make it tangible, substantiate it and measure it? Anyone looking to make demonstrable progress in this area will soon find the Perma model (from 2011). According to this model, experiencing meaning in your work is one of the five foundations of happiness at work. And that is what many working people strive for, especially millennials (also known as Generation Y, born from around 1980 onwards). They want: meaningful work, autonomy, flexibility and connection.
Measure regularly
How an employer can ensure sufficient purpose at work depends on various factors. These range from the organisation's strategy and the work you can offer to the employee(s) involved. Unfortunately (?), there is no universal ‘meaning pill’. In any case, you need to regularly measure how employees experience their work and its usefulness.
A modern employee satisfaction survey (MTO) makes it possible to do this in a highly targeted and regular way (with very short, focused measurements at the right time). Purpose can certainly be a theme within it. In recent years, we have clearly seen that, alongside the established HR themes in a modern MTO (such as leadership, collaboration, perceived workload or personal development), there is also a growing need for measurements relating to purpose.
Let meaning grow
By regularly asking a few short questions and discussing the results in, for example, performance reviews, you can work with employees on their sense of meaning in a meaningful way. This embeds measurement and improvement in the organisation's DNA. Above all, this allows the sense of meaning at work to grow.
Leading Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler demonstrated roughly how this works. He became successful (and immensely rich) by making his employees happy. He built a global empire around the simple question: what will truly make my employees happy?
