innovation
Personal Meaning
(identity, purpose)
experience in Self-worth
Sense of Vocation
(meaningful occupation)
Engagement with Work
Career Direction
Value Contribution
Recognition
Figure 1. Linking personal meaning and work/engagement
AODA - IASR & the Code
v i d e o D V D K i t
Did you know that organizations across Ontario must comply with
several additional requirements of the Integrated
Accessibility Standards Regulation (IASR) under the AODA?
Our AODA – IASR video DVD kit comes with:
• 15-minute video DVD
• Substantial Leader Guide (Word format)
• Reproducible Participant Guide (Word format)
• Professional PowerPoint Presentations
• Human Rights Reference Tool (HTML & Word format)
• Plus much more to help you train your
employees and be compliant…
Special pricing available if bundled with the
AODA Customer Service video DVD kit.
$399.99
Call 1-888-552-1155 or Sales@hrproactive.com
www. h r p r oacti v e inc.com
This essential linkage of the desire for
personal meaning through vocation to
engagement with work does not function
in isolation but rather is embedded
in its environment. The relational nature
of personal identity drives our impulse
toward belonging (Weinreich & Saunderson
2003; Baumeister & Leary 1995).
Our sense of vocation or meaningful occupation
is contextual; we feel called to do
something in the world. And our application
of that calling to work is situated in a
work environment of some kind. Finally,
our work activity is linked to the world in
which we are embedded through our work
contributions.
As organizational development literature
has suggested (Collins 2001; Wheatley
2005), organizations will truly engage
their people with the work that needs to
be done, to the mutual benefit of organization
and individual, only so far as leaders
honour the personal sense of meaning
that people strive to know and experience,
and facilitate this to find expression in the
work environment. This requires a deeper
appreciation of this linkage than that
which underpins much current management
practice.
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
ORGANIZATIONS
The deeper appreciation for personal
meaning and its power to drive engagement
suggests different approaches to
many organizational challenges and practices.
For leadership, this means:
■■ Championing the building of common
meaning in the organization through facilitating
true participation in building
strategic direction and vision (e.g., giving
voice through emergent, bottom-up
planning processes);
■■ Mediating meaning by helping others
to connect and align individual purposiveness/
vocation with organizational
direction, goals and brand;
■■ Providing meaningful work and careers
through opportunities and parameters
for meaningful occupation;
■■ Ensuring enabling environments that
allow individual expression in the organizational
context, through structures
and cultures that encourage access, networking
and dialogue; and
■■ Appreciating the deep power of recognition
to demonstrate to people that
what they do matters, and in turn reinforce
their self-worth and nourish their
passion.
In other areas of organizational practice,
this means new depth in:
■■ Working toward person-centred organizational
design;
■■ Building culture from truly shared
meaning;
■■ Using orientation to start the process of
connecting and unleashing, rather than
socializing/conditioning;
■■ Approaching succession management
primarily as mediating the intersection
of organizational needs and individual
aspirations (i.e., meaningfully supporting
career planning);
■■ Focusing performance management on
nurturing engagement; and
■■ Taking a strengths-based approach to
disability management to focus on what
the individual can do, and affirming
their sense of vocation.
applied in
creates
reinforces
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ FEBRUARY 2014 ❚ 69