How purpose fuels performance: 4 ways to galvanize your workforce

Companies need to invest in culture as a competitive advantage, and employee engagement as a performance-driver. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2024 report, highly engaged companies tend to outperform those with low engagement, with as much as a 23% difference in profitability. What's more, the study estimates low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, or 9% of the global GDP. 

At Manulife, we're proud to have maintained our top quartile positioning against Gallup's financial and insurance company benchmark for engagement. Recently, however, we decided to take things a step further and ask colleagues to get personal about their connection to our purpose and mission: help make decisions easier and lives better for the customers and communities we serve around the world. 

Our prompt — "What does 'Better' mean to you?" — was answered by over 200 employees across the world, each with a unique story to share. What started as a way for our people to connect to our culture has now become a transformative force for our organization, bringing more than 34,000 people closer together, and more connected to our mission.

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Here are four things we learned that can fuel better performance through a renewed sense of purpose at your organization: 

1. Ask your workforce what makes them feel connected to, and inspired by, their work
We rarely take a step back from our work to consider our personal ties to it. When a company's mission is told repeatedly to colleagues without their feedback, the message becomes routine, pedestrian…dare I say, boring. Why not dig a little deeper to the heart of what fuels performance at your organization? 

You can invigorate your workforce with a cultural movement, sparked by a simple yet powerful question. Ask colleagues what their work means to them — how they are connected to it, what inspires or energizes them — and most importantly, encourage participants to get personal in their submissions with a story or anecdote to bring it to life. 

Giving employees the chance to share their unique take on the purpose of their work is a welcome detour from the typical, one-sided corporate narrative. At the most basic level, asking colleagues to get personal about work is a provocative way to not just engage but empower them through the art of storytelling. 

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2. Encourage everyone, at all levels, to participate and remind leaders to engage their teams
Ensure your efforts reach everyone, from the C-suite to junior levels and everything in between. Further Gallup research shows key factors influencing employee engagement are whether they feel their opinions matter at work (only three in 10 in the U.S.), or has someone at work encouraging their development (just 31%). More broadly, managers are found to account for 70% of the variance in team employee engagement. 

Galvanize your leadership team for an "all-hands-on-deck" engagement effort, with key messaging tools to encourage participation from their respective teams. Work closely with leaders to cultivate personal stories of how they are fueled by purpose at work, and cascade those examples to colleagues as inspiration for their own submissions. 

There is arguably no better way to unite an organization than a call to action that centers on vulnerability. If you want to make an impact on culture, you have to push boundaries; it may be daunting at first for team members to come together in a more personal way, but the experience will break down bureaucratic lines and create stronger bonds. Colleagues will also learn new things about each other or resonate with the stories that are shared and connect on a deeper level.

 3. Give colleagues a once-in-a-lifetime experience to share their personal story of purpose with fellow colleagues, and empower them along with way    
To ramp up excitement, make it a competition and offer colleagues with the most impactful stories a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share them live on stage at a company-wide event or forum. This unforgettable experience will put colleagues in the spotlight for a change to inspire peers on a grand scale. 

Speaking before a large audience live is no easy feat, so empower winners along the way with tools and resources to match the occasion, such as top-of-the-line speaker training.

You'll raise the stakes while providing a unique professional development opportunity for colleagues — an added bonus! 

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4. Launch creative content programs to continue promoting stories of inspiration tied to your mission and values
Capitalize on your momentum with a steady drumbeat of storytelling across colleague channels. You can even weave in outside examples of inspiring stories to feed your creative content machine and encourage teams to integrate this storytelling exercise into their work routines, like hosting quarterly brainstorms or adding an open-ended "show and tell" discussion item on meeting agendas. 

Even the best initiatives come to a halt as things get busy, but empowering colleagues to tap into their personal purpose at work is just as crucial as the work itself. If people at your organization are simply going through the motions to meet deadlines and check a box, something needs to change.  

So, how do you avoid it? Keep asking employees to get personal about work. Remind them that what they have to say is worth sharing. And promote stories that reinforce exactly why your company does what it does, showing your own people as the true stars behind it all.