Chapter 5
When the Workplace Works for Everyone

At Great Places to Work For All, all employees are able to bring the best of themselves, even as they enjoy healthier, more fulfilling lives.

I look forward to coming to work every day. I do my best to recognize and do what needs to be done without being told. I do these things because Matrix has made an investment in me and my future. It is a friendly environment and is conducive to learning. They teach me core values that help me to live a better life and be a more positive person.

— EMPLOYEE, MATRIX SERVICE COMPANY

I love coming to work and interacting with my team and other employees. The policies are fair and we are always treated respectfully. We are given tasks that are meaningful, rewarding, and, for the most part, can make us feel like we are making a difference. I don’t feel like I’m coming to a job; I feel like this part of my life is an extension of my family. It really makes it easy to come in and put everything into my work here.

— EMPLOYEE, SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL

This organization is more than a job to me, it’s my life. My coworkers are my family. I identify as an O.C. Tanner employee and if I were to lose that I would lose a piece of myself.

— EMPLOYEE, O.C. TANNER

These are actual quotes from employees who work at recognized great places to work.⁷⁹ These people are having the quintessential experience of a great workplace, meaning they trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do, and enjoy the people they work with. And this experience clearly has an impact on their broader lives in a powerful way. Notably, these people genuinely enjoy their jobs—contrary to the reported experience of most people on the planet. Each year since 2000, Gallup has famously reported that just under one-third of U.S. employees are engaged at work.⁸⁰ This number drops to a mere 15 percent on a global scale.⁸¹

Simply put, for most people, the way we work just isn’t working, and as we have seen in the previous chapters, when employees do not experience a great place to work, it has a negative impact on the bottom line. But what is the impact on employees as people? Given we spend such a large amount of time at work (about one-third of our waking lives, assuming a 40-hour workweek), this poses a huge risk. Not just for the business, which leaves a lot on the table when employees are less than engaged, alive, and ready to contribute. It’s also a problem for people. Over time, if the scale of bad days to good days at work tips in favor of the bad days, that can have a real impact on our overall quality of life—both in and out of the workplace.

Our experiences at work help shape who we are: our sense of self-worth, our overall enjoyment of life, our ability to reach our full potential. Our sense that we are making a difference with our time, that we can give the best of ourselves to something that matters. As Studs Terkel wrote in his seminal book Working, in which he interviewed people across professions from taxicab driver to washroom attendant to business executive: “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”⁸²

Our research into the best workplaces over the past 30 years proves that work can indeed be a place where people have a consistently positive, fulfilling experience that brings out the best of who they are. At a Great Place to Work For All, this is the primary experience of all people who work there—regardless of who they are or what they do for the company.

A Human-Centric Workplace

In Chapter 2, we noted that business is in the midst of a shift from a “knowledge economy” to a “human economy,” where success relies on human traits that can’t be programmed into software—traits such as creativity, passion, character, and a collaborative spirit.⁸³ And though it may seem obvious, it’s worth noting that organizations can’t benefit from the human economy if they ask their employees to check what makes them human at the door. People won’t bring their passion, creativity, and character to work if their true nature is stifled; they can’t offer a collaborative spirit if they’re not part of a community that welcomes and respects them.

Often, the idea of “perks and benefits” is confused with a workplace that treats people well. Back to the quotes above, note that there’s no mention of perks. Bringing dry cleaning services or a taco truck in on Wednesdays are nice ways to show employees you care, but these sorts of surface-level gestures don’t define what it means to build a human-centric workplace. Rather, workplaces are better for people when they meet deeper, more fundamental needs that help to elevate who we are as people and as professionals. Because we spend so much time at work, the workplace is the one place in our lives where these needs should be met with gusto.

Here, we’ll look at some of the ways great workplaces for all help elevate the human spirit: by treating all employees with a deeply rooted sense of respect, enabling everyone in the organization to reach new heights of achievement, building a caring community for employees, where all are welcomed and supported in bringing their full selves to work, and inspiring a sense of meaning.

For a human economy to thrive, we need to embrace the fact that first and foremost, all employees are human beings—nothing more and nothing less.

Where Housekeepers Are Heroes

What do you believe about your employees? How do you truly believe they deserve to be treated—each and every one of them?

Before you answer this question, stop and take a close look in the mirror: at your life’s experience, at the steps you took to get where you are today, at what you believe to be true about leadership and about work. If you are a leader who believes you trust employees, do your company’s policies, practices, and behaviors communicate that? For example, are there multiple levels of approval for a manager who wants to buy a laptop, even though that laptop is in their budget? Is there anything holding you back from treating every employee with the same level of respect you want for yourself? Your honest beliefs about your employees, for better or for worse, shape your actions toward them. And as a leader, your actions shape their experience of the workplace.

A great place to work for all is built on trust-based relationships with all, and there’s nothing more fundamental to trust than a real sense of respect between leaders and employees—no matter who they are or what they do for the company. We know this based on three decades of research on companies of all sizes, industries, and corners of the globe. When respect is at play, the workplace can work for everyone.

Merriam-Webster defines respect as “high or special regard.”⁸⁴ Looking at the word’s etymology, “to respect” historically has meant “to treat with deferential regard or esteem.”⁸⁵ At Great Place to Work, we define the respect employees feel at work as one of the three dimensions of trust (the other two being credibility and fairness) and describe it as how employees believe leaders treat them—as people and as professionals.

Given these definitions, we can see how the idea of “respect” can present challenges in a work setting, where competition, boundaries, hierarchy, and status are all real factors to contend with. To cultivate an atmosphere of constant respect at work across employee groups is far easier said than done. A mutual sense of respect between employees and leaders takes a certain mindset on the part of leaders—a mindset that starts with the genuine belief that all employees deserve to be treated with respect. This means all job roles, all levels, all genders, all ethnicities, all ages. Everyone needs to believe they are respected.

Take Marriott International as an example, the hotel company that employs some 408,500 associates globally at its headquarters, regional offices, and managed properties. Founder Bill Marriott espoused the company’s cornerstone credo that puts respect for employees at the center of their guiding philosophy: “If you take care of associates, they will take care of the customer.”

In 2017, with a portfolio of 30 brands and over $17 billion in annual revenues, Marriott International was recognized as a FORTUNE 100 Best Company to Work For Legend, having been named to all 20 lists since they started being produced in 1998. When it comes to guiding principles, it looks like Bill Marriott chose a good one.

At the 2017 Great Place to Work For All conference, Marriott’s CEO Arne Sorenson noted that society often places great value on higher-profile jobs, such as those in the tech sector, and the contributions of people in the service industry are often considered less dignified. Sorenson has a different belief. He believes that service jobs deserve “extraordinary dignity.”⁸⁶ At Marriott, employees in service roles such as door attendants, front desk agents, and housekeepers are revered.

“The housekeepers are a group that I talk about most frequently,” Sorenson said. “They are my heroes. They are usually women; they’re often immigrants. They work extraordinarily hard. They come in and they do what is really selfless work, over and over. They do it for years, and they do it with pride.”

At Marriott, service employees that are traditionally confined to the unseen “back of the house” are given a place of honor as the “heart of the house.” With this slight turn of a phrase, thousands of employees are suddenly elevated to a place where they are both vital and visible—and a third dimension of the word “respect” comes into play, which is to “look back at, regard, consider.” In any organization, a critical element of respect is that employees know they are seen, that their work matters . . . that they matter.

This level of respect—that is, truly holding each worker in high regard, and even deference—comes straight from the top at Marriott, and it lives up, down, and across the enterprise. As one associate from The Ritz-Carlton, a Marriott-owned brand, shared:

I work in housekeeping, and we all treat each other as a family. We share each other’s successes, pain, grief, and happiness. When someone is severely sick, has lost a loved one, and is going through severe personal crisis, we pull together, take a monetary collection, and share in the person’s pain.

I lost both of my parents in 2015. They died two months apart, and my superiors, colleagues, and peers helped to make an unbearable pain and my experiences more manageable. Recently, two of our members needed chemotherapy due to cancer, and two others held a company-wide raffle that yielded $4,000, which was divided between the two who had cancer.

We are also treated with exemplary professionalism by management, and everyone treats each other with dignity and respect. We go out of our way to treat the guest in a special manner (above and beyond what is expected), and we support each other with dignity, humanity, and respect.

The one thing that I would like to change to make this place a better place is myself. I’d like to speak better English and support my Ritz-Carlton family even better. I love my work, my coworkers, and our wonderful guests. This is the truth.

—Employee, The Ritz-Carlton⁸⁷

In this single associate’s remarks, we can begin to see the impact that Marriott’s leaders’ beliefs have on literally thousands of lives. We also see the positive impact on the business, as the associate who is treated well wants to give the very best of herself back to the company. And it doesn’t stop there.

Respect’s Ripple Effect

Being respected on the job (or not) is ultimately about a feeling. It’s the feeling people have about themselves and about their self-worth. This feeling has the remarkable power to transcend the workplace, rippling out to the farthest corners of our lives.

While positive experiences at work inspire high levels of self-esteem and confidence, as we have seen above, negative experiences can thwart our ability to thrive in the workplace. Even more disturbing, they can create a toxicity that spills over to other areas of life. Even small acts of disrespect can occupy our minds for days, as we replay the situation—and experience the associated negative feelings—again and again.⁸⁸

Research also shows particularly egregious treatment from supervisors, such as being put down in front of others, can result in psychological distress and dissatisfaction with life. These actions have the tendency to “flow downhill” via displaced aggression, as employees vent their frustration on less-powerful family members at home.⁸⁹ This fact alone should be enough to give any manager pause the next time they feel like making someone feel small at work.

However, the sad truth is it’s very common for employees to feel disrespected at work. A 2014 study of more than 20,000 employees around the world showed that over half (54 percent) experience a basic lack of respect from their leaders.⁹⁰

On the flip side, the same study found employees who felt respected by leaders also reported 56 percent better health and well-being, and 89 percent greater enjoyment and satisfaction with their jobs. And, according to our research, employees who reported they were respected in key ways, such as being included in decisions that affect them, were 5.3 times more likely to experience a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace.⁹¹

These results on employees’ mental and physical well-being are critically important. Research from Stanford and Harvard Business Schools shows “health problems stemming from job stress, like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and decreased mental health, can lead to fatal conditions that wind up killing about 120,000 people each year.”⁹² And as Paul Zak found in his studies on the neuroscience of trust, “Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report: 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 50 percent higher productivity, 13 percent fewer sick days, 76 percent more engagement, 29 percent more satisfaction with their lives, 40 percent less burnout.”⁹³

Respecting an employee also means understanding they have commitments outside of work. When work and life commitments collide, employees, especially those who are caregivers, are at risk of tremendous levels of stress and overwhelm—a phenomenon that is only increasing. However, at the 100 Best Companies to Work For, 83 percent of employees say they are actively encouraged by their managers to balance their work and personal life, and 91 percent say they can take time off from work when they need to.⁹⁴

Let’s face it: through actions both big and small, leaders and managers wield enormous power over the general happiness, health, and well-being of their employees. If you’re in this position, use your power for good by treating all of your employees with a high level of respect—in the true sense of the word. They’ll thank you, their families will thank you, and your company will thank you too.

Empowering All to Achieve Their Personal Best

Beyond being treated with respect, another way that work “works” is when a person has opportunities to learn, grow, and shine.

This starts with organizations investing in employees’ development. And in this regard, the Best Workplaces have led the way. While some organizations have cut learning and development budgets over the years amid recessions or for fear that their trained talent will jump ship, the 100 Best Companies to Work For have increased their commitment to boosting employees’ skills.^95,96 The average company on the 1998 100 Best list offered employees approximately 35 hours per year of training. That number has grown to more than 58 hours for hourly employees and 65 hours for salaried—a 76 percent increase.

Enabling employees to progress professionally also means getting out of their way. It means giving them the freedom to flourish at work, without micromanagement. Here again, the Best Workplaces have improved. At the 100 Best Companies, the percentage of employees who say “management trusts people to do a good job without watching over their shoulders” has climbed 6 percent over the past two decades, to the point where nearly 9 in 10 employees experience a healthy level of autonomy.

This sense of autonomy is critical to the feeling of “flow” that humans long for—the state, sometimes called being “in the zone,” when we lose ourselves in a task even as we find ourselves advancing our abilities.⁹⁷ The Best Workplaces recognize that this heightened state often involves working with others, who can challenge and teach us. Recall the Matrix Services employee quoted above who appreciated “a friendly environment” that was “conducive to learning,” and the Synchrony Financial staffer who loves “coming to work and interacting with my team and other employees.”

Working independently and interdependently, individuals at great workplaces often accomplish more than they thought possible. Just as amateur runners and other athletes love setting PRs (personal records), people at great workplaces are empowered to reach new heights professionally. Here’s what one employee at the email marketing firm Return Path told us:

I’ve had tremendous opportunity to grow my career here and contribute to the organization in a very meaningful way. I can honestly say that I’ve seen similar opportunities for many of my peers. If you step up to the challenge and take ownership, you are not limited in what you can achieve.

Opening the Doors Wider to Create Opportunities For All

Empowering people to become their best has great benefits for employees themselves but also for the company, as employees broaden and deepen their capabilities. However, this area presents unique challenges in building a Great Place to Work For All. Organizations often identify “high-potential” employees and focus development efforts on this group, or provide training only for certain roles that are more valued, such as managers or engineers.

And unfortunately, when it comes to demographic groups, the fact remains that some are more likely than others to be passed over for these opportunities, simply because they are female, or darker-skinned, or in a role that is not as valued. Research and direct testimonies from employees themselves continue to uncover many ways these groups are treated inequitably in the workplace, especially during performance reviews, promotions processes, and other career-advancing activities.

As a result, these employees are not well positioned for success, and they’re less likely to achieve all they’re capable of. Worse still, they lose out on advancement opportunities that put them in leadership positions, sending a clear message to employees who look like them that positions of power are not meant for them, furthering the inequity. We can see this at play by taking a simple look at the ranks of corporate America: 47 percent of the workforce are women but the same can be said of just 6.4 percent of FORTUNE 500 CEOs.⁹⁸

Within science, engineering, and technology (SET) industries specifically, the Center for Talent Innovation reported that though approximately 80 to 90 percent of SET women love their work, a sizable proportion feel stalled and are likely to quit their jobs within a year. This is due in large part to workplace cultures that are exclusionary or even hostile to women, a scarcity of effective sponsors, and other barriers to leadership roles.⁹⁹

The good news is, leaders at some of the best workplaces are working harder to set a higher bar and overcome these challenges so all employees can thrive.

As an example, GoDaddy, the world’s largest tech provider to small businesses and a recognized great workplace, conducted an in-depth examination, in partnership with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, of the company’s promotions and other advancement-related practices. The goal was to identify inequities. Driven by an unwavering belief that male and female employees deserve to be treated equitably, then-CEO Blake Irving was one of the forerunners in signing the Federal Equal-Pay Pledge and even wrote a book on the topic called Decoding the Gender Bug.¹⁰⁰

Even still, GoDaddy found while pay was often fair between men and women at the company, there were hidden inequities across processes for selection, promotions, reviews, and rewards. For example, male engineers were promoted at a faster clip than women, and an audit of performance reviews showed that male engineers were measured on the quality of their code, while female engineers were more likely to be measured on “style” factors, such as how they worked on a team.

GoDaddy leaders have taken dramatic steps to improve. Immediate steps have included completely removing “style” as a measurement of success in the review process, and automatically flagging people based on how long they’ve been in their role, so people aren’t required to “raise their hand” when they might be ready for promotion. As a result of these and other efforts, women and people of color are being promoted more effectively, and employees report a fairer experience of the workplace overall. They’ve also seen a decrease in voluntary turnover rates across the company—with the greatest improvement among women.¹⁰¹

Another example of offering opportunities more ubiquitously in the tech world comes from WP Engine, an Austin company and recognized Best Workplace that helps customers build and run websites on WordPress, the open source software. Here, the shared philosophy of “opening the door wider” drives recruitment and development efforts.

When CEO Heather Brunner joined WP Engine in 2013 and the company was taking off, she ended the practice of requiring job applicants to have a four-year college degree. It was a risky decision, since 69 percent of U.S. employers make college degrees mandatory for entry-level jobs, which presents a major barrier to entry for underprivileged, and often minority, swaths of the population.¹⁰² Brunner wanted all people to have a chance at being part of the tech industry regardless of this requirement.

And it worked. In four years, WP Engine grew tenfold. Now, 5 percent of web users visit a WP Engine site every day, and the company is closing in on 100,000 customers in 140 countries around the globe. During the same time, the company has expanded its workforce to 475, of whom one-third don’t have a college degree. New employees have come, in part, from coding academies and non-degree training programs.¹⁰³

“We can let a lot more people come to the table and basically change the trajectory of their careers,” Brunner says. “If you have the work ethic, if you match our culture, if you want to be a servant leader in terms of your style of how you work, and you’re willing to come in and work hard and do the training that you need . . . we’re willing to invest in you and bring people in. This has been game-changing for us.”

The company also trains all employees to be financially literate and uses open book management. This starts in the new-hire orientation, where CFO April Downing teaches all new employees how to read the company’s financials, what the key performance indicators are, and more. From then on, all employees receive monthly financial updates and have a clear understanding of how their efforts directly impact key metrics such as growth and customer retention.

“Young people [are] getting the light bulbs turned on around how their work impacts customer satisfaction and therefore customer satisfaction leads to an opportunity to retain, get advocacy, and grow,” said Brunner.

By opening the doors wider and providing financial literacy training for all employees, WP Engine is creating opportunities for people who were otherwise blocked from the tech sector. In doing so, they’re changing their small corner of the tech landscape. And as they boldly lead by example, they’re paving the way for others to do the same.

Living a Life in Full Color

Opening the door wider allows workplaces to become rich communities that include people from more diverse backgrounds and varied walks of life. And the people we work with make up one of the most dominant communities in our lives. These relationships are real, and at many of the best workplaces, people report that their colleagues are akin to a second family. Though this feeling is not always the norm at work, it should be. As social creatures, having an authentic connection with the people we spend much of our waking lives with is something we need.

“I Can Be Myself Here”

Creating meaningful connections at work starts with welcoming all employees to bring their authentic selves to the table, every day. While employees at great workplaces have stated “I can be myself here” for decades, the idea of adopting an alter ego at work is becoming an increasingly unrealistic proposition. As more employees have public social media profiles and running online commentaries about their lives in and out of work, the boundaries between our “work” selves and our “real” selves are far fuzzier.

And this is a good thing. When people feel they can be themselves at work, they are experiencing psychological safety, which also allows them share their unique perspectives, their diverse experiences, and their most creative ideas—without fear of criticism that may otherwise stifle them.¹⁰⁴ This is good for business, as these elements clearly lead to more innovation and collaboration. On the spectrum of broader human development, it also lays the groundwork for enabling people to achieve their full potential, because they can “activate and interact in the world around them” in the most authentically meaningful ways.¹⁰⁵

Beth Brooke-Marciniak, global vice chair of public policy at EY, a Big Four accounting firm and 100 Best Company to Work For, publicly shared what she believes is being left on the table when people can’t be their authentic selves at work. Not only has Brooke-Marciniak been named nine times to the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list, but in 2011, she publicly came out as gay—and in that moment, became the most senior “out” female executive in the world.

At the Great Place to Work For All conference, she said, “I went from . . . living my life in what felt like in black and white, to life in full color. I had no idea how much the world and EY was not getting the best I had to offer. I would have argued with you five years earlier that they were getting everything I had to offer. I had no idea what was being left on the cutting room floor.”¹⁰⁶

Simply put, by creating an environment where employees can be themselves, they are positioned to be the very best they can be.

“I’m thankful that more of our employees in our workforces around the world are feeling free to be who they really are,” said Brooke-Marciniak. “Nobody should have to live their life in black and white, because if they are, we’re not getting the best of them.”

The New Frontier of Care

Part of building authentic connections at work is caring for employees—both in and out of the workplace. While this includes encouraging work–life balance, it goes far beyond practices like giving employees a generous number of PTO (paid time off) days.

Rather, building a caring community at work means celebrating people during the good times and supporting them when the going gets tough. In fact, how a company supports its employees in times of need is a key indicator of a great workplace, which we have studied in depth as a part of identifying great workplaces around the world. Most of us will, at some time in our lives, face a major challenge that can be eased tremendously when our colleagues care, as illustrated earlier by the housekeeping associates at The Ritz-Carlton. In any strong community, when someone needs help, the troops rally around in support.

Some leaders are courageously bringing the concept of supporting employees in times of need into a new realm, because sometimes the support employees need isn’t about money, or time off, or creating another HR policy. Sometimes, what’s needed is to openly acknowledge and bear witness to an employee’s—or group of employees’—experience.

And sometimes, that’s the most difficult support to provide.

In July 2016, Tim Ryan was in his first week on the job as chairman of PwC when the national news was flooded with coverage of interracial police shootings in Dallas, Texas. In the wake of the tragedy and several preceding police-involved shootings of black men across the United States, Ryan shared that although leaders at his company knew employees were hurting, “the silence was deafening” when people showed up to work the next morning. “No one knew what to say,” he said.¹⁰⁷

In response, and against the advice of many of his peers and advisors, Ryan bravely decided to open up a company-wide dialogue about race that he knew would be uncomfortable but necessary. He framed the conversation to employees as “trying to gain an understanding of how we all feel; what it was like to be black in our country at that point in time; what it was like to be white, and trying to understand.”

Once it began, the dialogue revealed powerful, previously unspoken truths facing PwC’s black employees. For example, some colleagues shared that they felt safe when they were wearing a business suit to work. It served as a sort of superhero “cape” that, when removed after hours, left them vulnerable. Other colleagues shared that they taught their kids “how to get pulled over,” keeping business cards in their front pockets to prove they were professionals who had purchased the cars they were driving.

So, this is real life. This is where the going gets tough, and it’s where a forum for dialogue can help people. By having the conversation, employees’ challenges and struggles are made known, and knowledge can lead to empathy. Knowledge can lead to support. And knowledge can lead to change.

Nancy Vitale, senior vice president of human resources at Genentech, noted how even small signs of support by way of dialogue can go a long way. A Muslim employee at Genentech shared with Vitale that her team member had simply asked her how she was doing, given some of the negative rhetoric about Muslims in the U.S., and wanted to know what they could do to support her. With tears streaming down her face, the woman shared that just having that question asked—how she was doing and what someone could do to help support her—made all the difference. “Those individual, one-on-one interactions are incredibly powerful,” said Vitale.¹⁰⁸

If we’re talking about being authentic, and supporting employees through thick and thin, then we also need to start expanding what’s traditionally been accepted as the way we support employees. Fortunately, change is afoot. Since 2016, Tim Ryan has secured the participation of more than 275 CEOs of some of the nation’s largest corporations to join the “CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion,” where CEOs publicly pledge to create a safe workplace environment for dialogue, mitigate unconscious bias, and share best—and worst—practices.¹⁰⁹

While the results of these efforts remain to be seen, the fact that these conversations are happening at the upper echelons of corporate America to this extent is a new and promising turn. The tides may just be turning toward a future where all employees who make up our workplace communities are fully supported and embraced.

Our Shared Quest for Meaning

In this chapter, we’ve looked at the many ways employees can be treated at work that will both honor and bring out the best of their human spirit.

The final topic in this chapter is not about how employees are treated but rather, whether they believe their work has meaning. Ultimately, all people—not just millennials—need to know their efforts make a difference in the world. Returning to Terkel’s timeless observation: “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread.” The need for meaningful work is one that rings true across people and professions.

Indeed, the desire to feel connected to the outcome of our work appears to be hardwired into us. Most of us know this intuitively, because we feel it. The MIT Sloan School of Management found that even for futile tasks, such as identifying consecutive instances of the letter “s” on a piece of paper, people were more productive—and willing to repeat the task for incrementally less money—when they felt their work had meaning. In the case of matching the letter “s” the condition of “meaning” was simply that people were asked to write their name on the paper and were told their work would be examined by an experimenter and then placed into a file—as opposed to being ignored or shredded.¹¹⁰

This may be why, in our study of the 2016 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For, we found a striking connection between employees’ intent to stay with their company “for a long time” and their belief that their “work has special meaning; this is more than ‘just a job.’” Of the more than 50 factors associated with a great workplace (including fair pay and profit sharing, opportunities for professional development, special benefits and perks, a fun workplace, and much more), it was a sense of meaning and purpose that tracked most closely to employees’ desire to stay with the company for the long term.¹¹¹

The sky is the limit when it comes to ways to help foster this feeling among employees. At 100 Best Company W. L. Gore & Associates, the manufacturing company that invented Gore-Tex, associates gear up with the customers who use their technical fabrics, such as law enforcement and military professionals. This way, associates can hear feedback on the difference the product makes in the real-world environment in which it’s used.¹¹² Or take outdoor retailer Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), whose mission is to “inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.” Despite being a retail environment, there are also programs that get employees outside, including classes employees deliver to customers to teach outdoors skills.¹¹³

The bottom line is that people, no matter their age or their role in the company, want and need to be connected to a sense of meaning at work. Whether it’s a simple “thank you” from their manager or a shared vision about the company’s reason for being, all employees should know that what they did that day at work meant something. Because, over time, a life filled with meaningful days at work equates to a lifetime of meaning.

Better For All

For most people in the world, the workplace lacks the elements that make us thrive as human beings—basic things like respect, opportunities for personal growth and achievement, a caring community, and a sense of meaning. However, by approaching each employee as a person who is worthy of all this, it is possible to create a work experience—and by extension, a life experience—that enables us to thrive. One employee at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories summed it up perfectly:

SEL values guide every individual employee-owner to pursue the vision of life and get closer to fulfilling that vision every day. Personally, at SEL, each day I contribute my best, I learn a lot, I get social with diverse people, I donate to help others. What else could be better in life than this?

So treat your employees well. It’s better for them, and it’s better for your business. And as we’ll see in the next chapter, it’s better for the world too.