Purpose isn’t just a “nice to have.”

Studies have shown that companies that give their employees a sense of purpose reap economic benefits as well. Having a sense of purpose at work drives engagement, increases discretionary effort, and improves retention. This is particularly true for Gen Z, but resonates across all ages and demographics.

According to Harvard Business Review, employees who feel a sense of purpose in their work are 93% more engaged at work and 2.8 times more likely to stay in an organization than employees who don’t report deriving meaning from their work.

Purpose isn’t just about the products or services your company offers and it doesn’t have to be part of your annual goal planning. Instead, purpose can be found in the everyday flow of your workplace culture. Perhaps you give employees time off to volunteer for causes that matter to them or match employee donations.

Tools for Infusing a Sense of Purpose

We evaluated several tools that claim to infuse organizations with a sense of purpose. Of those we reviewed, we would recommend employers look into the following tools:

Catchafire

Unless they work in the social impact space, few people are lucky enough to find a true sense of meaning in their everyday work. That doesn’t mean their professional skills can’t be put to use for the greater good.

Catchafire can help.

Catchafire helps companies find ways for their employees to contribute their skills to meaningful causes by matching them with nonprofits looking for aid. In short, it allows employees to give back on their terms and schedule while helping them find meaningful ways to engage with their communities. 

Catchafire also helps companies support professional development, community engagement, and corporate philanthropy by providing them with tools for employees to collaborate with nonprofit partners for a variety of initiatives. Adjusting to the needs of busy professionals, Catchafire offers dozens of volunteer opportunities for every skillset, time frame, and cause. The platform has matched volunteers on over 40,000 skills-based projects, making the world— and working professionals— better. 

Pingboard

Purpose can be found in the bonds you build with the people around you. This is equally true at work as it is outside of the office. One way companies can encourage employees to build bonds with each other, and thus a greater sense of purpose at work, is through recognition. When employees are recognized, they have a deeper sense that their efforts are worthwhile and thus a deeper connection to the work.

While there are dozens of employee rewards platforms out there, Pingboard is one of our favorites for a few reasons.

First, Pingboard is much more than just an employee reward program— you might just see it on another one of our lists. We like that it populates employee profiles with each piece of recognition they’ve received. This is valuable not just for the employee to reflect on past recognition, but also to help colleagues and new hires gain valuable context into that employee’s past accomplishments. It also notifies managers whenever someone on their team receives recognition.

Selflessly

Corporate social responsibility is understood as a company’s efforts to improve the world beyond their business. While its intentions are good, CSR can be hard to effectuate and even harder to track. Selflessly was created to help. The platform exists to make corporate giving simple and thus more achievable.

Selflessly does this by empowering users to coordinate, measure and celebrate their CSR initiatives. Moreover, it gives companies the ability to integrate their values into their giving by allowing companies to choose exactly what causes they will (or won’t) financially support. We also like that even though Selflessly is comprehensive it is still one of the more affordable Corporate Social Responsibility platforms we reviewed.