Making work meaningful - simple ways to bring purpose to jobs

In this edition of the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Podcast, Professor Sara Connolly from the University of Leicester speaks with Professor Ying Zhou from the University of Surrey, where she is Director of the Future of Work Research Centre. Her research is focused on job quality, occupation and employee wellbeing and in this podcast she shares findings from her latest work on the Skills and Employment Survey, focusing on meaning and purpose at work. She explains that when people are able to use their skills at work, take initiative and count on supportive managers, they are far more likely to think their work is meaningful. 

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:18

Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free, evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research team at the University of East Anglia in the UK

00:00:16:18 - 00:00:28:00

You can find the resources on www.EvolveWorkplaceWellbeing.org

00:00:28:02 - 00:00:51:16

Sara Connolly

Hello, I am Professor Sara Connolly from the University of Leicester and I've been part of the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing team from the beginning. In today's podcast, I'm speaking with Professor Ying Zhou from the University of Surrey, where she is director of the Future of Work Research Centre. Her research is focused on job quality, occupation and employee wellbeing. Hello, Ying. Welcome. 

00:00:52:20 - 00:00:54:08

Ying Zhou

Hello. Thanks for inviting me.

00:00:54:14 - 00:01:04:15

Sara Connolly

Thank you very much. So to start off, I wondered if you could tell us a little about your career journey and what has led you to be interested in workplace wellbeing?

00:01:04:17 - 00:01:28:17

Ying Zhou

Yeah, sure. I was trained in economic sociology. As you have mentioned, my research is focused on job quality, occupation and employee wellbeing. I did my PhD on employees’ organizational participation. So I looked at how much control people can exercise over their job tasks and how much say they have over wider organizational issues that affect their work.

00:01:28:19 - 00:01:55:13

Ying Zhou

And this turned out to be one of the most important determinants of wellbeing at work. The reason why I'm interested in employee wellbeing is that we spend so much time at work. On average, we spend a third of our waking hours at work. So what happens in the workplace has a massive impact on our wellbeing overall. If you have a bad job, you probably not only feel miserable at work, but also feel unhappy outside of working time.

00:01:55:15 - 00:02:19:04

Ying Zhou

So after my PhD, I continued to research employee participation, but I also expanded into other aspects of job quality. An example is whether you have the opportunity to use and develop your skills at work. This is quite important. For example, if you are in a dead end job where you just repeat the same thing every day, you probably will not feel very happy.

00:02:19:06 - 00:02:39:18

Ying Zhou

We need a sense of growth, a sense that we are getting better. So these are some examples of what affect wellbeing at work. And job quality is quite a broad concept. There are many other dimensions. In short, my research is focused on how we can create a work environment in which people can live happy and fulfilling lives.

00:02:39:24 - 00:02:41:21

Ying Zhou

That's what interests me.

00:02:41:23 - 00:03:01:24

Sara Connolly

That's absolutely fantastic. And I know that that will interest our listeners. So thank you. Thank you very much for explaining that so clearly. I wondered, if we could now talk about some of the research that you've undertaken over over the years, and perhaps you could give us a flavour of that research and the findings?

00:03:02:01 - 00:03:28:03

Ying Zhou

Yeah, sure. Over the last few years, I've done quite a few papers on how job change affects our wellbeing. This research question is actually coming from real life experience, although I don't change my job very often. I've seen many colleagues leaving the Surrey University in the last few years. Some move to other universities in the UK, some moved to other countries, and some left academia altogether.

00:03:28:05 - 00:03:52:15

Ying Zhou

For example, one of my colleagues left, took early retirement and became a landscaper. So after teaching at university for many years now he's helping people design beautiful gardens. Just seeing all these kind of job change made me wonder, does job change make our lives better? So my first paper on job change came out in the Journal of Vocational Behavior in 2017.

00:03:52:17 - 00:04:17:12

Ying Zhou

In that paper, I compared to a kind of job change, one is moving to a different employing organization like but continue to do the same kind of work. The second type is changing occupation. Moving to a different field of work. So I found pretty dramatic effects with occupational change. Basically, changing occupation has much stronger impact on wellbeing than changing employer organization.

00:04:17:14 - 00:04:36:16

Ying Zhou

And then I was intrigued by those findings. I did the follow up paper. I compare people who move to better occupations and those who move to worse occupations. Better or worse, is defined by the skill level of the work using standard occupation classification. So what I found was when people moved to higher occupation class, they experienced a honeymoon effect.

00:04:36:18 - 00:04:59:24

Ying Zhou

Their job satisfaction was really high when they first entered the new job. But it doesn't last long. After a year or two, they return to their baseline wellbeing. What's really interesting is when people move to worse occupations, when they move to a lower occupational class, what we see is a large decline of job satisfaction that lasts for several years after the transition, even four years after the job change.

00:05:00:01 - 00:05:17:16

Ying Zhou

People are still not back to their baseline. They're still unhappy with the new job. So I think this study tells us it's easy for people to adapt to positive career changes, but it's not so easy to adapt to downward mobility when people move from a better to a worse job. It's really quite tough.

00:05:17:18 - 00:05:39:14

Sara Connolly

That's so interesting. Of course I've read your papers on job change and used them for some of some of my own own work in this area. And, actually, this asymmetry that you pick out is, something that we discovered in the European Commission that where people's job changed and there were more resources given to them, more people in the team.

00:05:39:16 - 00:06:07:23

Sara Connolly

Yes. They had much higher job satisfaction, much, much higher levels of loyalty to the organization. But that gain for those people wasn't as big as the loss for the people who found the changes meant they were in smaller teams with less, less importance within the organization. So absolutely, change, within organizations and change in, in work is a really important dimension of people's wellbeing.

00:06:07:23 - 00:06:37:11

Sara Connolly

Thank you. So what I'd like to talk about now is your most recent work, which has been, around, the collecting of the data, of the latest version of the Skills and Employment Survey and then in particular, the analysis that you've conducted on meaningful work. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your, you know, history with the Skills Employment Survey and the data that you've recently collected, and then we'll move on to meaningful work.

00:06:37:13 - 00:07:04:16

Ying Zhou

Yeah, sure. I'm very happy to talk about that. The Skills and Employment Survey is a very unique survey series. I will say this is probably the longest running and most detailed study of skills and job quality in the UK. The first survey was carried out in 1986. Since then it has been repeated about every five years. A nationally representative sample of workers, on average, between 3000 and 4000 people.

00:07:04:18 - 00:07:29:21

Ying Zhou

So this is to try how skills and job quality change over time. So far it has been conducted eight times. Last one was done in 2017. And we just completed the latest eighth Skills Employment survey in 2024. So using this data I have looked at again employee wellbeing, but this time,I’m focusing on a slightly different aspect of wellbeing called eudaimonic wellbeing.

00:07:30:00 - 00:07:52:06

Ying Zhou

So basically there are two types of wellbeing: hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing. Hedonic wellbeing is mainly about positive emotions or happiness. For example, if we smile a lot and rarely feel sad or angry then we have high hedonic wellbeing. But eudaimonic wellbeing is quite different. It's about having a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.

00:07:52:08 - 00:08:21:16

Ying Zhou

It's the feeling of doing something useful, significant and worthwhile. So far most research on wellbeing has been focused on hedonic wellbeing, possibly because we have more data and measures on that. And eudaimonic wellbeing is getting increasing recognition, but many large surveys don't have the measures. So this time we put in measures of meaning and purpose for the first time in the 2024 UK Skills and Employment Survey, and now we are able to look at on a nationally representative sample.

00:08:21:18 - 00:08:45:06

Ying Zhou

So my study was particularly focus on the question of what kind of jobs are most likely to provide a sense of meaning. This is an interesting issue because anthropologist David Graeber argued, many people work in bullshit jobs that add no value to society. So he said between 30 and 60% of workers have useless jobs, which is quite alarming figure.

00:08:45:08 - 00:09:16:08

Ying Zhou

So when I look at the 2024 skills employment survey, I found, actually bullshit jobs are quite rare. On average, only 5% of UK labour force doubt the meaning of their work. Most people find their work motivating and useful. Then I look at what kind of jobs are most likely to provide a sense of meaning. I compared many factors and I found what is is what's key is intrinsic job quality, in particular skills, participation and social support.

00:09:16:10 - 00:09:29:14

Ying Zhou

So when people are able to use their skills at work, take initiative and count on supportive managers, they are far more likely to think their work is meaningful. Interestingly, pay doesn't make much difference.

00:09:29:16 - 00:09:33:18

Sara Connolly

Now that is interesting.

00:09:33:20 - 00:10:04:15

Ying Zhou

You know, another key finding is, meaningful work is highly concentrated in health care, education and construction. So these are the jobs that deliver tangible benefits for other people. And these are the jobs where you can see the impact of your work. So our conclusion is work is most meaningful when it benefits both the individual and the wider society. So we need policies to enhance intrinsic job quality, particularly in terms of skills, participation and social support.

00:10:04:17 - 00:10:11:12

Ying Zhou

And we also need policies to protect the jobs in sectors that directly contribute to public health and wellbeing.

00:10:11:14 - 00:10:25:22

Sara Connolly

Well, that's really very interesting. I really like that combination of intrinsic and extrinsic value. Did you find any difference, you know, by gender or by age at all?

00:10:25:24 - 00:10:43:21

Ying Zhou

Yes. We found women, reported higher levels of meaningfulness than men. And that's consistent across all three indicators of meaningful work. And there's also a clear age gradient. Young people are less likely to find their work meaningful than older workers.

00:10:43:23 - 00:11:10:24

Sara Connolly

That's interesting. And what what do you …? I mean, obviously, women are also more likely to be employed in two of those key sectors, the health sector and the education sector. Do you think that that's part of the, part of the issue? I'm thinking of the that evidence base about women, even in part time work, which we know it tends to be low, low pay and low status and, you know, report high levels of job satisfaction.

00:11:11:01 - 00:11:35:03

Ying Zhou

Yes, I think that's a key factor, because women, are much more likely than men to be employed in health care and education. When I was looking at a more detailed industry classification code, you see the most meaningful jobs are in residential care and social work. Again, these are big employers of women. So that's probably why you see the distinction between men and women.

00:11:35:09 - 00:12:03:03

Ying Zhou

And for age. I think part of the reason, between the meaningfulness gap between young and older workers is probably also job quality. On average, older workers have better quality jobs than younger workers because career progression requires skills and experience, which take time to develop high quality jobs which provide significant decision making responsibilities and financial rewards. Less likely to have young workers

00:12:03:05 - 00:12:05:20

Ying Zhou

Yeah, that will be part of the reason. Absolutely.

00:12:05:20 - 00:12:23:17

Sara Connolly

And do you find any regional variation at all? I'm just thinking, I mean, obviously education and health we see across across the country, but things like construction probably more heavily, represented in more prosperous areas in the South East.

00:12:23:19 - 00:12:29:13

Ying Zhou

I haven’t looked at the region yet, but that's a really interesting idea for my next research question.

00:12:29:15 - 00:12:55:15

Sara Connolly

Yeah, you’re welcome. It I mean, it is very interesting the, the gap between what people expected in terms of the bullshit jobs and what you find, because that does suggest that actually organizations, employers, managers can make or create meaningful work across the board.

00:12:55:17 - 00:13:05:19

Ying Zhou

Absolutely. There's a lot managers can do to promote meaningful work. I'm glad that that means bullshit jobs are relatively uncommon. That's good news.

00:13:05:21 - 00:13:31:02

Sara Connolly

Yes, absolutely. And also the link with pay because, when Helen, did a very locally based project in, in, in Norwich on good jobs, one of the things that employers were reluctant to sort of consider was whether the way in which the way in which they made their jobs good was by paying more. That was their concern that the project would just be you've got to pay people more.

00:13:31:05 - 00:13:57:09

Sara Connolly

But it really wasn't. The elements of good jobs were were absolutely, about, you know, those elements of autonomy that you identified, but also, you know, treating people with respect, looking after your employees, you know, these these were all, you know, elements of a good job in retail, in hospitality, you know, which are which are not high status or well-paid jobs.

00:13:57:11 - 00:14:22:07

Ying Zhou

Yes. I think one of the most important lessons we learned from this study is meaningful work depends on what you do rather than how much you earn. The correlation between pay and meaningful work index is close to zero, is 0.03 it’s the least important factor on my long list of top quality variables. So it doesn't need to be expensive if the employers want to promote meaningful work, intrinsic job quality is the key.

00:14:22:07 - 00:14:33:13

Ying Zhou

They have to create a positive social environment, make sure employees feel supported and recognized, and give them enough opportunity to exercise, control and develop their skills. That's the key. 

00:14:33:15 - 00:15:04:03

Sara Connolly

Absolutely. And and that point about the positive community, when, when we were very first working with the What Works Wellbeing Centre, we had public dialogues, asking people what they thought job satisfaction and wellbeing would look like. And we were very surprised that the workplace community came out very, very strongly as, as an important factor for wellbeing.

00:15:04:05 - 00:15:09:14

Sara Connolly

I mean, maybe not surprising, as you say, people spend most of their lives at work, so…

00:15:09:16 - 00:15:24:04

Ying Zhou

I think having meaningful relationships with your colleagues, your workmates, is an important source of meaning for a lot of people. Even if you don't enjoy the nature of your work, if you really enjoy the people you work with, that's an important source of meaning.

00:15:24:06 - 00:15:53:08

Sara Connolly

Yeah. No. Absolutely. That's absolutely, absolutely fascinating research. I wondered, you know, because a lot of our listeners are going to be working in HR or in managerial capacities, or maybe they're wellbeing leads within organizations. So I wondered if you had any real life examples which would show how these findings are important to people working in organizations?

00:15:53:10 - 00:16:20:04

Ying Zhou

In real life, actually, it's quite easy for people to tell when they feel their work is meaningful, when they feel feeling meaningless. Quite a lot of time work feels meaningless. Not because it doesn't have objective value, but because people, in poor quality jobs, for example, when they don't feel their effort is recognized and they are doing tedious and monotonous work when they don't have control over their work.

00:16:20:04 - 00:16:47:13

Ying Zhou

So these are the things that make work feel meaningless. But on that ground it is actually a bit disappointing that one of the long term trends in UK revealed by the Skills Employment Survey, is the decline of job autonomy over time. Since 1992, job autonomy has declined steadily in UK, so people have less and less control over how they do their job tasks, and they also have less influence over broader organizational issues.

00:16:47:14 - 00:17:12:06

Ying Zhou

For example, in 1992, over 60% of employees had high level of discretion over their work. By 2024, this is only the case for 34% of employees. That's a big decline, and we know from research when people lose control over their work, work will become less meaningful. So that's something we have to address if we want policy to promote meaningful work.

00:17:12:08 - 00:17:39:11

Sara Connolly

That's super interesting, but particularly revealing that longitudinal element of why the Skills and Employment Survey is so important that it's able to track and trace these, these, these trends over, over time. And, you know, there are obviously different dimensions of job autonomy. Was this across all dimensions or was there one particular dimension, that has declined?

00:17:39:13 - 00:18:09:12

Ying Zhou

It's actually cross the board. This gloomy news, Duncan Gallie did a detailed report on changing trends, the trends in employee participation at work. So there is the element of individual task discretion. So even this element is a combined index asking people four questions: how much control they have over how they do their work, how fast they work, the quality standard of their work, and the [inaudible] that they use to accomplish the work.

00:18:09:12 - 00:18:31:01

Ying Zhou

So if you look at individual task discretion, that's declining. But if you look at people's voice over wider organizational issues, which go beyond their immediate job tasks, that's also declining. And if you look at people who work in teams which are semi-autonomous, like able to make decisions about their work allocation, team membership and so on, that's also declining.

00:18:31:04 - 00:18:35:15

Ying Zhou

So whichever measure you look at, it's a decline in control.

00:18:35:17 - 00:18:36:06

Sara Connolly

That’s interesting.

00:18:36:06 - 00:18:47:03

Ying Zhou

And that's not universal across all countries - that's the case for UK. But when you look at European working conditions survey, you don't see the universal trend in many other countries.

00:18:47:05 - 00:19:04:03

Sara Connolly

Okay. So that's obviously something different about our sort of worker representation, worker protection. That that explains that. Would you say sort of trade unions, the role of, dialogue within workplaces?

00:19:04:05 - 00:19:14:14

Ying Zhou

Is probably a mixture of different influences, managerial practices, policies and so on. We are still trying to figure out what is accounting for that trend. It's not easy.

00:19:14:16 - 00:19:35:24

Sara Connolly

No no no no. Well we look forward to hearing more. Yeah. Okay. So, I wondered then, I mean, you've just picked up on a main challenge, but I wondered what you thought the main challenges were for people who want to learn for your from your research, put the findings into practice.

00:19:36:01 - 00:20:01:18

Ying Zhou

The the main findings from the research points to the importance of intrinsic job quality. But the challenge of improving intrinsic job quality is that this is invisible. It's not like extrinsic job quality wages and working hours. You can increase or decrease those metrics, and you can see that. Intrinsic job quality is more subtle if you take control and autonomy, for example, how do we improve that?

00:20:01:20 - 00:20:29:13

Ying Zhou

You can introduce formal employee participation schemes but there's no guarantee they work. Actually, this is what we have seen in our data, the Skills Employment Survey ask a lot of questions about formal employee participatory practices like staff meetings, briefing groups, suggestion schemes and so on. What we see is over time, these practices increased. But when you ask people how much control they have over their work, it is declining.

00:20:29:19 - 00:20:47:10

Ying Zhou

So these two trends do not go hand in hand. I think what is key is not just formal schemes, but actually give people control and influence. And that probably that probably giving back control to employees is not something that comes naturally to managers, but that's a skill that needs to be learned.

00:20:47:12 - 00:21:06:10

Sara Connolly

Really, really interesting insight there. Thank you very much. So thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us today. So we've been looking at the past, what about a little bit of looking at the future? What do you think are the pressing workplace wellbeing issues for the next decade?

00:21:06:12 - 00:21:31:24

Ying Zhou

One of the major trends in a moment is the fast spread of artificial intelligence technologies. Everybody's wondering how this is going to transform workplace. No doubt it will have big influence. One aspect is job loss. Technologies will take away jobs from humans. There's no consensus over how many jobs will be lost because the range of estimate is very wide.

00:21:31:24 - 00:21:59:09

Ying Zhou

Some studies predict 47% of all jobs will be replaced in the next 2 to 3 decades, and other studies are 7%, so we don't know. But it's almost certain that some jobs will be lost to technologies. And we know that unemployment is really, really bad for wellbeing. It's one of the worst life events for wellbeing when people enter unemployment, what you will see is a decline of life satisfaction that lasts for really long time.

00:21:59:09 - 00:22:21:04

Ying Zhou

Five years after job loss, they are still below their baseline, so it's a depressing life event. We need policies to protect people's livelihood in case their jobs are taken by technologies and for other people the issue is not so much about job quantity, but job quality. Even for people who remain in their work, technologies can still affect them.

00:22:21:06 - 00:22:46:13

Ying Zhou

It will probably replace some job tasks and create other new job tasks, and that has implications for skills, training and careers. So I think we need research to monitor the impact of technologies on job quality, particularly not only pay and hours, but also intrinsic job quality like skills, participation and social support because these are really important for wellbeing at work.

00:22:46:15 - 00:23:13:16

Sara Connolly

Thank you. I like I like that that you've offered some practical suggestions on how we could think about the impact of, technology, on employment. But also you've called for more research which researchers always like to hear! So I thank you very much. So if the listener takes one simple message from this podcast, I'm sure they're going to take many, but if it was just one, what would you want it to be?

00:23:13:18 - 00:23:31:09

Ying Zhou

I'd say wellbeing is important and it's not incompatible with productivity. We can be both happy and productive. And this is the foundation for sustainable development and prosperity. That's the future of work I'd like to see.

00:23:31:11 - 00:23:39:10

Sara Connolly

Thank you very much, Ying. Thank you very much for speaking with us today on the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. Thank you very much.

00:23:39:12 - 00:23:41:00

Ying Zhou

Thank you. It’s a pleasure talking to you.

00:23:45:05 - 00:23:56:01

Helen Fitzhugh

Please do visit www.EvolveWorkplaceWellbeing.org  We look forward to seeing you next time.