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A McKinsey survey asked employees if their job helped them live their broader purpose in life. The results were telling: while 85% of executives and upper management agreed that they could live their purpose through their jobs, only 15% of practitioners and middle managers did. 

Source: McKinsey (2021)

Needless to say, this poses a serious challenge for organisations: employees who don’t find purpose at work will not only be less invested in your company mission than those who do, they’ll ultimately look for opportunities better aligned with their sense of purpose. 

So, what can HR do to close the purpose gap? There are two broad areas of focus:

1. Define an authentic company purpose. Employees are 5x more likely to be excited to work at a company that has a clear vision about its impact on the world. HR can hold executives accountable in defining an organisational purpose that rises above corporate-speak, and help employees feel part of this process. 
2. Help employees connect their personal sense of purpose with their day-to-day work. Employees who have a chance to reflect on their own sense of purpose and how it connects to that of their organisation are 3x more likely to find fulfillment at work. HR can help employees better understand and relate to your organisation’s mission. It’s critical to ensure that middle managers are committed to this process: only 7% of employees reporting to managers who didn’t allow for reflection felt fulfilled at work.

Here, we focus on the second area. Specifically, we’ll explore how accounting for the purpose gap in your L&D strategy will lead to a workforce that finds a deeper alignment between their professional work and their personal values and purpose.

How an effective L&D strategy can create purpose-driven organisations

Training programs are especially well-suited to create a space for your employees to reflect on how their own sense of purpose maps to that of your organisation. But this entails rethinking what ‘training’ means, based on a few principles:

1. Training is not a cure-all. Changing your approach to training will likely be ineffective, unless you also align it with your company goals and broader people strategy. Not doing so will likely lead to wasted resources, disengaged employees and poor results, even if you adopt ‘cutting-edge’ training models based on VR, AR, AI and the like.
2. Training is (part of) a dialogue. This works on two levels: firstly, a long line of research (arguably dating as far back as Socrates) shows that dialogue is a far more effective training approach than one-way lectures, exercises or videos. Secondly, employees don’t experience training in a vacuum, but as a reflection of your investment in their development. The quality and effectiveness of training will go a long way in determining the level of trust employees place on the HR function.
3. Managerial inputs. Accounting for managerial inputs ensures that your training addresses real-world needs and challenges in your workforce.
4. Managers should embody organisational values. More often than not, managers will also be employees’ first recourse when it comes to raising questions of purpose, fulfilment and connection to work. They ought to be effective ambassadors of your company values.

Training is about getting leaders to talk to each other, if they learn something it’s a bonus

Head of Learning, Major European Telecoms provider

Kiin’s solution to the purpose gap

At Kiin, we partner with organisations to reimagine training along each of these areas:

1. Strategic, measurable training: We first develop an understanding of your broader people, culture and L&D strategy. We also define a rigorous, science-based framework to help you measure the impact of training.
2. Immersive training enables learning by feeling: VR helps us produce training that’s immersive and interactive. By its very nature, VR gives you a level of interactivity and dialogue that’s far deeper than traditional formats. In our most recent tests, VR training led to 4x the level of intended behaviours in employees than traditional training.
3. Debriefs: Debriefs immediately follow the VR training and help facilitate meaningful reflections about the training, including how learners can bring its insights into day-to-day practice. We partner with expert facilitators, psychologists and coaches to design effective debriefs tailored to the specific learning being deployed.
4. Evidence-based training for employees and managers alike: We conduct onsite research and lived experience interviews to ensure that our training is based on inputs and recommendations from your own staff. Furthermore, we design bespoke training that helps managers and employees alike understand your organisational values and purpose. 
5. Training that facilitates embodiment. Again, VR allows us to design training that helps them embody your values in a far deeper, more direct way than traditional approaches.

This isn’t training for training’s sake. Its underlying objective is to help you breathe life into your organisational purpose and values in a way that does justice to both, them and your employees.

In our newly published case study, we show how we partnered with a Fortune 500 company to address increased reports of sexual harassment in their blue-collar workforce that led to a multi-million dollar lawsuit. By designing VR training that placed learners in the shoes of victims and created a safe space for practicing effective bystander interventions, we helped the workforce become 4x more likely to intervene effectively than before.

At a time when workforces are far more prone to polarisation, miscommunication and a lack of purpose, an authentic, well-designed L&D program can go a long way in rekindling your employee’s sense of connection with your organisation. The rewards are here to be reaped, for those who seek them.