Are your employees operating at their peak performance? While HR often points to leaders as the sole driver of employee performance, they actually have the power to initiate organizational changes that can have a direct impact on that issue. Well-being, driven by purpose, is one of those initiatives.

Since the pandemic, we have watched stress levels and burnout rise across industries. Turnover is at an all-time high and the average employee engagement is low. Individuals and organizations are experiencing a wellbeing crisis.

In one of the largest studies of burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was “unfair treatment at work.” That was followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure. What Ken Garner, executive leadership coach, says is a perfect case for organizational wellbeing.

Garner says the key drivers that influence well-being and drive employee engagement are purpose, belonging, and value, which is most effectively instilled as early as the recruiting process. For this reason, HR is perhaps the only appropriate role to drive personal and organizational purpose.

Garner, a previous CEO of a major magazine printing company, says his key to success in growing the printing company into over 30 million with 200 employees was creating a healthy and supportive working environment for his employees. His executive coaching practice centers on organizational leadership with a specific focus on personal and organizational well-being through purpose.

Garner’s goal is to enable organizations and individuals to build lives of vitality, purpose, resilience, engagement, and success. He provides tips on how to use organizational purpose to re-engage your employees.

Younger workers especially are demanding a different organizational culture, but purpose is one of those illusive things to most employers. It can be challenging to understand how to foster it for the organization and why it’s a fundamental requirement for wellbeing.

In our upcoming webinar, Garner lays out the critical role that purpose plays in personal and organizational peak performance. Since purpose is such an elusive topic, Garner explores the myths related to purpose, what it is and what it isn’t, followed by a six-step guide to discovering and crafting your personal purpose. Crafting a personal purpose statement can be a game-changer for HRs who are facing burn out because it can play a strategic role in driving critical decisions.

Tim State, Enterprise Vice President at Humana, has over 20 years in strategic HR solutions, and has led the initiative to unify Humana around the organizational purpose of personal well-being and the health of the communities they serve. At Humana, they wanted their values to best reflect the passion of their employees and the DNA of the company.

State says, a purpose-driven organization shows up in strategy and decision making. When leaders take certain action, he asks them to consider how their decisions move them towards Humana’s purpose or ultimate goal. When there is a unifying purpose, it drives our decision and choices. State says, “How we define success has developed over time to orient around purpose.”

Imagine if employees were connected to your mission and how much farther that would drive their motivation and dedication. When you have organizational purpose, you attract employees who are driven by something bigger than themselves, instead of requiring them to look for that outside of the company. 

The first place to start when forming your organizational purpose is to ask what your people are passionate about in the company. Since well-being is central to Humana, employees share personal stories of their own health and the health of their customers. Your company’s purpose should be evident to employees and the larger community because the customer can’t exceed that of the employees. 

You’ll also want to assess how your purpose is being received by the customer by developing a feedback loop to ensure the company is meeting those goals. This strategy allows you to create accountability for leaders when it comes to culture. Since Humana’s purpose is helping to achieve lifelong well-being personally and in their communities, their goal is to help their communities be 20% healthier by 2020. 

Employees are looking for a sense of purpose, a sense of health, a sense of belonging, and security. These four pillars capture total well-being for Humana and their goal has been met with a 25% increase in all four pillars which positively affects the company’s bottom line.

Humana measures this by putting on a company walking marathon so employees can track their level of physical activity. They measure their success with the healthy days metric by The Center of Disease Control (CDC) which looks at physical and mental/emotional health in the group. Through this activity, employees build strength of belonging.

“When teams have a high-level of well-being, there are fewer reports of lower stress, they are less likely to look for another job, and there are less missed days on the job.”–Tim State, Humana

Employees want to know how they fit in your company and what their next career steps are. Leaders who have a sense of your organizational purpose are also naturally inspired and encouraged to have these purpose-inspired conversations with their co-workers.

State also says it’s helpful to set multi-year goals for teams to see how they are doing based on the four pillars. Teams should be inspired as drivers of the culture. It prompts them to discuss an action plan for meeting these team goals.

Inspiring and aligning the entire company around a shared purpose diminishes stress and builds resilience. Ninety percent of Humana’s employees are inspired by Humana’s purpose, which builds a sense of commitment to their clients every day.

Driving around their organizational purpose at Humana resulted in high engagement from employees, 18% improvement of healthy days for employees, and 1.8 million healthy days, extended to customers.

A purpose-driven organization makes great business decisions, attracts and retains the best people, and provides top service to the customers and communities it serves. Plus, purpose reaches beyond business hours by helping employees and customers alike achieve optimal well-being.

Understanding personal purpose helps you to make the leap towards crafting organizational purpose that influences key drivers of your culture. Clear mission and purpose are a driving force because focusing on employee health improves organizational performance and results in higher engagement and client satisfaction.

Join us for our upcoming webinar on January 23, 2025 at 12p EST with Ken Garner on The Critical Role of “Purpose” in Personal and Organizational Performance.