Recently, public remarks by a tech company executive have sparked heated discussions online, leading to controversies about the company’s values. The executive’s opinions included a dismissive attitude towards employees resigning and the belief that the relationship with employees is solely that of employer and employee, which has raised questions about the company’s regard for humanity. In the modern workplace, employees are not just simple characters in an employment relationship but are individuals with personalities, family backgrounds, and emotions. Only by treating the staff as a whole can a company develop better and retain talent.
According to a survey by ADPRI, after studying questionnaires from 50,000 workers worldwide, employee retention, performance, and engagement are not just linked to factors such as salary, relationships with colleagues, work location, or alignment with corporate mission. While these factors are influential, answers to the following three questions are even more critical predictors:
- Did I feel excited about my work each day last week?
- Do I have the opportunity to use my strengths every day?
- Do I have the opportunity to do things that I am good at and love in my work?
The results of the survey, neuroscientific research, and years of organizational experience have shown that combining employees’ passion with their work is key to enhancing performance and engagement and reducing turnover. To attract and retain top talent, job design needs to be based on a simple but powerful principle: a love for the work itself. Although the word “love” may sound exaggerated, employees’ feelings for their work can and should reach this level.
To make employees love their jobs, organizations should act according to the following three principles:
- Value employees, viewing them as the organization’s most important stakeholders, not just customers or shareholders.
- Recognize each person’s uniqueness, with each employee having their own hobbies, interests, and skills.
- Build on trust to promote employee growth, to find and invest passion in their work.
This article will explore how forward-thinking businesses can implement these three principles. First, we need to understand why loving work is essential and the potential losses of neglecting it.
When employees are engaged in work they love, work does not become a source of stress but rather provides energy and resilience. Research data show that employees who find passion in their daily work, play to their strengths, and experience joy and excitement are not only more efficient and stay longer but also remain resilient in the face of life’s inevitable challenges. Therefore, the love for work is not just personal satisfaction but also a catalyst for outstanding performance.
A study by Mayo Clinic pointed out that if the love for one’s job is less than 20%, there is a high likelihood of experiencing professional burnout. Conversely, if this love exceeds 20%, there seems to be no significant enhancement in one’s ability to adapt.This indicates that even a little bit of affection for the job can significantly boost our work efficiency. For most people, finding even a hint of passion in their work can be quite challenging.
Management often, out of concern that employees might find satisfaction elsewhere or doubts about their loyalty and passion for work, and even with the prejudice that “no one really likes their work,” designs work environments that are difficult to love. Such environments are typically characterized by standardized processes and capability demands, and measure success by employee compliance, akin to jobs in logistics distribution centers and courier services.
To fundamentally improve this situation, we need to start at the organizational level and design jobs with love as the guiding principle. If leaders value these perspectives and strive to build an organization armed with the philosophy of “love + work,” enabling employees to find at least 20% of their job content enjoyable, what would the outcome be? Employees who find joy in their work and can self-regulate will inevitably provide excellent service and products to customers, and contribute more sustainably to the community as well.
Many organizations have begun to follow these core principles, investing in employee growth and gradually establishing the foundational importance of employees within the organization. “Love + work” organizations do not see employees as just one of many stakeholders, but as the core of all stakeholder integration. Employees are where work actually happens, creating products and customer value. In such organizations, every employee is treated as a whole person, not just a simple machine part.
“Love + work” businesses have a series of specific practices:
- They value the introduction of employees as individuals, not just the recruitment of labor. These businesses’ recruitment processes focus on the individual, clarifying why each candidate was chosen and the value they can add to the organizational goals.
- They support lifelong learning. These businesses are willing to invest long-term in employee education, such as Amazon and Walmart funding degrees, Geico, Starbucks, and UPS offering tuition reduction or student loan reimbursement, and Google allowing employees regular time to work on their own projects.
- They provide support for departing employees. These organizations have comprehensive exit support plans, reflecting not only the recognition of the personal value of employees but also practical benefits such as customer growth and referrals.
Finally, recognizing that brain science research reveals the complexity of human thought and emotion is far beyond our imagination, this means that every employee is unique, with individual differences, and organizations need to respect and adapt to this diversity.
Even within the same field and position in the workplace, individuals often show significant differences in their passion for and approach to their work. To adapt to this reality, organizations focusing on employee autonomy and satisfaction typically adopt a humanistic approach to HR practices. Such practices encourage employees to guide their own emotions, identify what they love and dread in their careers, and how to transform personal hobbies into contributions to the organization. In addition, these organizations emphasize empowering teams and their leaders to fully utilize the personality and strengths of each employee.
To tap into employees’ potential, modern workplaces must discard standardized and generic tools and models like competency models, conventional feedback mechanisms, and rigid career path planning. Conversely, “passion + work”-oriented organizations employ fewer, more specific assessment criteria to define each position, such as a hotel manager’s success may be gauged by room occupancy rates and customer satisfaction; a nurse’s by patient recovery rates and satisfaction; and a salesperson’s by sales volume and client growth. Such assessment systems aid employees in accurately identifying their interests and strengths, achieving personalized advantage.
In terms of career development planning, modern workplaces should focus more on individual interests and skills, rather than skills and abilities based on fixed ranks. In fact, there is no definite academic research showing that all excellent employees possess the same skills and abilities. Everyone might find a unique path to success through different passions for their work. Current AI-based software products such as Gloat, Fuel50, and Flux are leading the trend in career planning tools, providing platforms for personalized career development.
Moreover, organizations in development need to pay more attention to teams rather than individuals. Teams are collectives of diversity and complementarity, capable of creating a synergistic effect among members. If managers and teammates understand and support your passions and strengths, it will help you engage in the work you love. This stimulates employee enthusiasm and creativity more than organizations pursuing standardized management and overlooking the individuality of team members. Regrettably, many organizations have not yet fully recognized the importance of team building.
Ultimately, trust is the crucial foundation for fostering organizational growth. Research shows that trust is closely related to employees’ passion for their work, inspiring them to pursue personal interests and contribute better to their job. For example, why the cleaners at Disneyland love their jobs is because the trust the organization puts in them gives them space for creativity and autonomy. Some cleaners enhance customer experience in unique ways, like arranging plush toys into interesting scenes or checking the comfort of the rooms from guests’ perspectives, tasks that cannot be achieved simply through checklists. This trust and support for professional autonomy allows them to excel in their jobs in ways that a simple task list cannot accommodate.
To cultivate a culture of mutual trust within organizations, it is necessary to eliminate daily practices that destroy trust and introduce new rituals. Those unchanging management practices, such as top-down goal setting, performance grading, and 360-degree evaluations, are often considered methods to enhance organizational consistency and performance, but they actually convey a message: the organization lacks trust in its employees.
Top-down goal setting makes employees feel passive and hinders them from independently reflecting on their interests and how to make better contributions. In contrast, “passion + work”-type organizations trust employees to set their own goals and discuss and adjust them at any time during the year based on actual needs.
The article “Reinventing Performance Management” (published in “Harvard Business Review” in April 2015) discusses the unreliability of performance ratings. In fact, nobody truly believes in the effectiveness of the system, including those who receive the highest scores. Once employees are reduced to a string of numbers, the organization can no longer see the whole person. Similarly, data derived from 360-degree feedback is often questioned for its reliability and does not truly reflect an employee’s overall contributions. Such performance management practices make employees feel surveilled and lead them to believe that the company does not trust them to know how to work effectively.
If team leaders want to build trust within the organization, they need to genuinely care for their employees. This means empowering leaders, reducing their managerial responsibilities, and allowing them to focus more on the personal circumstances of each employee.
Organizations that effectively build trust view weekly communication between employees and team leaders as an important human care ritual in the workplace. In such exchanges, team leaders are not there to check or evaluate task completion, but to discuss the employee’s recent past and upcoming work, asking questions like “What did you enjoy/dislike about your work this past week?” and “What are your main priorities for the upcoming week?” as well as “How can I help?”
Consistently asking these questions every week, year-round, helps build a solid trust between employees and team leaders. Such interactions can be face-to-face or through phone, email, or mobile apps, without losing their effectiveness. The key is sincere communication.
This communication process gives both parties the opportunity to discuss specific work content, potential challenges, and the support leaders can provide. Each round of discussions on challenges and provided support lays the foundation for trust building.
Furthermore, organizations should explicitly focus on and emphasize the details of the activities that employees truly enjoyed the previous week, prioritizing a passion for work and closely associating it with daily work demands.
“Passion + Work” centric organizations deliberately limit department sizes to ensure that team leaders can effectively communicate with each member without being overwhelmed by too many subordinates. A leader responsible for too many employees might save expenses, but it doesn’t help build trust.
Wise organizations recognize that if work functions are redesigned starting from passion, and if there is a sincere commitment, it is more likely to attract and retain talent over the long term. Such organizations will undoubtedly become talent hubs.
In the second half of your career, please remember these five core concepts:
Why are good ideas difficult to implement? Where is the problem?
