In the course of conducting this year’s Purpose Power Index study, which examines the level of purpose-guiding brands today, we added a new question. We asked employed respondents to rate their own company on higher purpose and whether they saw their company as being motivated by a purpose beyond profit.
What we found was troubling.
We identified what can only be described as a distinct “purpose gap” within a large number of companies, where each respondent’s answer was very much tied to his or her seniority within a particular organization.
Seventy-two percent of senior managers tended to believe their company projected a clear purpose and operated within the mandates of this stated purpose. However, when we asked the average employees within these organizations whether they thought their company was effectively communicating a clear purpose beyond profit, only 45% of middle managers, frontline workers, and junior staff agreed with their senior management counterparts.
The presence of such a substantial gap in perception between management and staff is clearly problematic. Having a purpose beyond profit has become an essential component of every organization’s branding efforts in today’s market. But if rank-and-file employees don’t feel empowered to become a part of these initiatives, such efforts are typically doomed to fail.
Empowering Employee Action to Improve Outcomes
The good news is that some organizations are getting it right, and they provide guideposts for the rest of us to follow. Take, for instance, health services brand LifeBridge Health. On the surface, the company takes care of sick and injured people by providing medical care. But looking deeper at its approach, the entire organization embraces a purpose of creating healthier environments for the people it serves.
When a patient (we’ll call her “Jennifer”) was repeatedly showing up at one of her emergency room facilities struggling to control her diabetes, LifeBridge employees tapped into their company’s purpose to create healthier patient outcomes. They realized that one of the root causes of diabetes is diet. So a nurse from the organization visited Jennifer at home and quickly identified that she didn’t have a working stove and that her refrigerator was filled with processed, unhealthy foods.
Taking matters into her own hands, the nurse used her personal credit card to buy Jennifer a new stove and restock her refrigerator with healthier foods. She did this without fear of being reimbursed by her employer because LifeBridge had a clearly defined and communicated purpose that empowered such actions. And the effect on the patient outcome was monumentally positive.
You might wonder how this can possibly be a sustainable tactic and why the company would allow and even encourage such actions. However, when you look at how the story energized and motivated other employees to go above and beyond with patients and how it improved patient preference for LifeBridge, these small costs are arguably driving an outsized return on investment and attracting top-tier talent during recruitment.
Bringing Respect to the Workplace
Mahindra is another company using purpose to its advantage in motivating its employees.
Through an initiative called “Rise,” employees are encouraged to think creatively about problems, while communication is flattened across operating units to give new ideas more of an opportunity to be fully realized.
For example, during the pandemic, a Mahindra employee took it upon herself to research solutions to personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages. She found that the materials used in sanitary pads were similar to those used in face masks. So her idea was to work with a start-up sanitary pad company to make PPE for frontline workers. All it needed was help with manufacturing to get the project off the ground. And thanks to Rise, her idea was quickly elevated to CEO Anand Mahindra himself.
This valuing of ideas over ego, respect for coworkers, and streamlining of communication led to the company’s quickly mobilizing to retool and start manufacturing PPE for frontline workers at a dramatically accelerated pace.
Breaking Free from the Past as a Team
Then there are the efforts by Verizon to shed itself of the “orthodoxies” that were holding it back from its full potential.
Verizon had a culture that tended to look backward when making decisions, trying to identify what worked or didn’t work last time. It wanted to instead embrace the new business realities it faced and redefine what success needed to look like in the future.
Out of this realization, the company launched its “Forward Together” movement that affirmed a new core idea: If the organization’s purpose was to move the world forward, then employees needed to feel empowered to break the obsession with the past. The result was both a shift in mindset among existing employees to tackle challenges with a fresh perspective and a shift in the values HR was using to identify employees who could enhance this new culture.
Escaping Your Own Purpose Gaps
Now all of this is well and good, but it’s clearly not easy to implement. You need to be willing to commit time, personnel, and funds to effect changes like these within a company. However, if you identify with these types of challenges and suspect you might have a purpose gap in your own organization, there are a few things you can do to begin your own course correction.
Reframe: Create an inclusive “us” within your organization, then confront it with a common enemy. People tend to band together more closely when there is a shared challenge that everyone can play a part in confronting.
Address barriers: Whether it’s organizational red tape or a surly individual who refuses to embrace the greater vision of the company, confront the problems immediately, and make changes if necessary.
Leverage networks: The hierarchical structures of the past rarely motivate creative innovation. Instead, leverage employee networks and word-of-mouth engagement to encourage multipoint communication and team-inspired motivation.
Pivot: Never rest on your laurels. Monitor employee sentiment and engagement constantly, and always be willing to implement changes as necessary to keep motivation high.
To read the full 2022 Purpose Power Index, you can download it free here.
Chip Walker, based in New York, is the head of strategy and a partner at StrawberryFrog and the coauthor along with Scott Goodson of Activate Brand Purpose. He is recognized for his expertise in brand creation and reinvention and has led the charge in transforming brands such as Goldman Sachs, Lexus, Bank of America, Jim Beam, and Heineken. Walker is a frequent speaker at some of the branding world’s major events, including the Cannes Lions Festival, the Advertising Research Foundation, Sustainable Brands, and the Conference Board. His writing and opinions have appeared widely in places like Adweek,The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and CNBC.