Are your employees operating at their peak performance? While HR often points to leaders as the sole drivers of employee performance, HR actually has the power to initiate organizational changes that directly influence it. Well-being, driven by purpose, is one of those levers.

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

In one of the largest studies on burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was unfair treatment at work, followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support, and unreasonable time pressure. What Ken Garner, executive leadership coach, describes is a perfect setup for organizational well-being work.

Garner points to three key drivers that influence well-being and fuel employee engagement: purpose, belonging, and feeling valued. These are most effectively instilled as early as the recruiting process. For this reason, HR may be the best positioned function to drive both personal and organizational purpose.

Garner, a former CEO of a major magazine printing company, says his key to growing that company to more than 30 million in revenue with 200 employees was creating a healthy and supportive work environment. 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 practical tips on how to use organizational purpose to re-engage employees.

Younger workers in particular are demanding a different organizational culture, but purpose can feel elusive to many employers. It can be challenging to understand how to foster it for the organization and why it is a fundamental requirement for well-being.

Tim State, Enterprise Vice President at Humana, has more than 20 years of experience in strategic HR solutions and has led the initiative to unify Humana around an organizational purpose centered on personal well-being and the health of the communities they serve. At Humana, leaders wanted their values to 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 action, he asks them to consider how their decisions move them toward Humana’s purpose or ultimate goal. When there is a unifying purpose, it drives decisions and choices. State says, “How we define success has developed over time to orient around purpose.”

Imagine if employees were deeply connected to your mission and how much farther that connection 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 search for that outside the company.

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

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

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

Humana measures this by hosting a company-wide walking challenge so employees can track their physical activity. They also use the Healthy Days metric from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which looks at physical and mental or emotional health across the group. Through this activity, employees build a stronger sense of belonging.

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

Employees want to know how they fit into your company and what their next career steps are. Leaders who understand your organizational purpose are naturally more inspired and equipped to have these purpose-focused conversations with their teams.

State also recommends setting multi-year goals so teams can see how they are performing across the four pillars. Teams should feel inspired as drivers of the culture. This prompts them to discuss action plans for meeting team goals.

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

Centering the organization around purpose at Humana has resulted in high engagement from employees, an 18% improvement in healthy days for employees, and 1.8 million healthy days extended to customers.

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

Understanding personal purpose helps you take the leap toward crafting an organizational purpose that influences the key drivers of your culture. Clear mission and purpose are powerful forces. When you focus on employee health and well-being, you improve organizational performance and strengthen engagement and client satisfaction.

Garner lays out the critical role that purpose plays in personal and organizational peak performance. Because purpose can feel so vague, he explores the myths surrounding it, what it is and what it is not, then walks through a six-step guide to discovering and crafting your personal purpose. Creating a personal purpose statement can be a game-changer for HR professionals who are facing burnout because it can play a strategic role in driving key career and life decisions.

Watch Ken Garner HR-certified “The Critical Role of Purpose in Personal and Organizational Performance.” on-demand now.