The Future Leader

6Purpose and Meaning

Mindy Grossman is the CEO of WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers), which employs around 20,000 people around the world. In our discussion, Mindy echoed what many other CEOs have told me: “Brands of the future are going to have to understand what their purpose and meaning is, no matter what business they're in. Purpose and meaning will be even more valuable in the future.”

For decades, the business world has been under the assumption that in order to attract and retain the best people, you simply need to pay them more. This was the greatest lever that organizations could pull, but now it's becoming evident that employees care about more than just making money. A recent study conducted by BetterUp surveyed 2,285 American professionals across 26 industries and found that 9 out of 10 workers would trade money for meaning. How much would they trade? On average 23% of future earnings, which comes to $21,000 per year in order to have work that is always meaningful. The same study showed that employees with meaningful work stay at the company longer, take fewer paid leave days, and are more inspired (BetterUp, 2018). Another survey run, by Imperative, looked at 26,000 LinkedIn members across 40 countries and found that 74% of candidates want a job where they feel like their work matters (Vesty, 2016). Wrike, a work management software company, recently put out ...