“A big challenge for leaders now is that employees are becoming even more disengaged than before.”
Isaac Getz, Author, Speaker, and Professor at ESCP Business School (Paris, London), thinks that motivating employees is a big challenge for CEOs. As an organization, attracting and retaining talent is often top of the agenda, but people are no longer willing to work for any company – they want to work for a business that has meaning and that they feel a connection to.
“It’s a big challenge to make sure that people are not coming to work because they must but because they want to. And once there, how can a company get them to do their best, not just the minimum required?”
Inspiring and motivating employees has been a common challenge in the five years we’ve been running the CEO Purpose Report.
This year, our report showed that employees have overtaken customers and shareholders to become the most important stakeholder. This demonstrates a big shift away from shareholder primacy and highlights that leaders are starting to acknowledge that a motivated and engaged workforce will pay more dividends in the long run.
The best way to engage employees, according to Getz, is for them to have a single, inspiring purpose in mind, and most importantly in their heart.
“Employees have to share in the dream in order to be engaged in the company’s journey that they want to be part of.”
This year, 89% of CEOs surveyed told us that they have a purpose. But many are struggling to use it to align leadership, motivate employees and drive business growth. The number one challenge for CEOs in relation to purpose is making it relevant and actionable.
In order to properly embed purpose in organizations, businesses must answer the question, “Why do your employees come to work?” says Getz.
Getz explains that a purpose must have an aspirational quality that people can adhere to.
“If everyone cares about the purpose, everyone in the business pulls in the same direction. It’s very different from the traditional caring about ones department goals, often at the expense of the whole company.”
To have a strong purpose that resonates with everyone, it must come from the top down. The whole leadership team needs to be aligned and the team needs to buy into it for it to be embedded effectively. It also must be authentic.
“The worst case is a business simply virtue signaling. It becomes all talk and no action. And that happens because it's not driven and not led by the CEO or the leadership team. Without them embodying the purpose in their daily actions, nothing will happen.”
Purpose needs to be far from lofty; a powerful purpose is as inspirational as it is practical if it is to be embraced by employees. If CEOs aren’t using their business purpose to guide strategic decision making, then that purpose seems ingenuine and therefore cannot create long-term value for the organization.
“This is what’s called purpose washing. It’s much easier, of course, to do things on the surface than to do a real transformation,” says Getz.
And businesses who are authentic about their purpose often outperform those that are solely profit-driven or only communicate their purpose for the good of their public image.
“Purpose-driven companies are outperforming their competition without trying to be profit maximizers. The financial results are the byproduct of being purpose-oriented.”
And according to Getz, CEOs need to be the biggest driver of purpose in their organization.
“Running companies based on purpose will radically change our world. Beginning with the lives of people who work within the company, who now have meaningful activities, but also the lives of all the stakeholders, clients, suppliers, and the local communities.”
As purpose has shifted to take on certain meanings beyond the ‘why’ of a company, in particular how it relates to environmental and social benefits, businesses have a real opportunity to drive a positive change in the world.
“Among the forces for good, business is the most powerful. The power of businesses is stronger than that of governments and of NGOs. If businesses can master this way of operating, then the world around us will look very different.”
Read the Brandpie CEO Purpose Report to see how CEOs are using purpose to motivate and inspire employees.
Brandpie CEO Purpose Report 2023
Find out what CEOs think about the evolving role and importance of purpose.
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