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Money cannot permanently compensate for work that people find pointless. Some take the plunge.
Does the head doctor have a more meaningful job than the roofer? No, says industrial psychologist Theo Wehner. The professor emeritus at ETH Zurich has been researching meaning in work for decades.
An important finding is that jobs cannot be divided into more or less meaningful ones. The meaning is an individual matter. Theo Wehner says: “Satisfaction, even happiness, is even easier to define than meaning. It is highly subjective.”
However, studies show that those who do not see meaning in their work are more dissatisfied, have more absenteeism and are more at risk of suffering burnout.
Away from the big bank
Attila Baumgartner no longer found meaning in his previous job. He started his career at the major bank Credit Suisse. There he was responsible for financing loans.
The team was good and he learned a lot there. Nevertheless, he got out. “Over time, I noticed that I was less and less able to stand behind the financing that I made there,” he says.
Legend: Less wages, but more meaning: Attila Baumgartner at Alternative Bank. SRF
As a rule, he gave loans to large corporations that did not attach great importance to sustainability. He has been working for the Alternative Bank (ABS) in Olten for three years. Here too, he is responsible, among other things, for loan financing. However, the bank consistently aligns its activities with sustainability. That suits him more.
The freedom of design is also significantly greater: “Because we only have 150 employees, we have much more extensive jobs. It is also a major concern of the ABS that the opinions of employees flow into the decisions of the entire bank.” At Credit Suisse you are “a small cogwheel. There it is very clearly regulated what your job is.”
Work with “eclipse of meaning” is becoming more common
Theo Wehner’s research supports this. The evaluation of more than 100,000 data sets from employee surveys in Swiss companies has shown that it is not so easy to generate meaning in corporations. This is easier in SMEs. Another finding: Production jobs are perceived as more useful than service jobs.
David Graebers «Bullshit Jobs»
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The US anthropologist David Graeber described work in which those who carry out it see no meaning as bullshit jobs. The now deceased scientist, who also represented anarchist positions, sparked a discussion in 2018 with the book of the same name. His thesis: These works have no social benefit and are dispensable.
Graeber did not mean low-paid unskilled work. On the contrary, “bullshit jobs” are usually well paid and show that it is socially more desirable to do meaningless work than to do no work.
He located such dispensable jobs in administration, sales, business and finance as well as executives.
He notices a change in the search for meaning: “Unfortunately, I have to say that the proportion of those who describe their work with the darkness of meaning is becoming larger and larger.” Today people are less willing to accept that.
Social envy of the boys
This attitude is often attributed to the younger generation – and criticized. Theo Wehner doesn’t accept that: His generation, the baby boomers, were also looking for more free time and less stress. «Generations Y and Z represent this with more self-confidence. This is very provocative for many older people at the moment. But I would say it’s very necessary.” To dismiss this as laziness is ultimately social envy on the part of older people.
The criticism of young people is old, very old. The following quote has come down to us from the Greek philosopher Socrates, who died in 399 BC: “Youth today love luxury. She has bad manners, despises authority, has no respect for older people and gossips about where she should work.”
Volunteering is pure meaning
There is a form of work that is all about meaning: volunteer work. It is unpaid, and yet, according to Theo Wehner, loyalty is greater than to organizations that reward their employees financially.
Kristina Sin is one of these volunteers. In Aarau, she regularly removes invasive neophytes with a group: plants that are not from there and can harm the environment and animals. She also does this activity in her free time or picks up litter on hiking trails. “For me it’s a given,” she says. “If I thought like most people: no, it’s none of my business, then – someone has to start somewhere.”
Volunteer work in Switzerland
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On average, the Swiss resident population does 1.6 hours of volunteer work per person per week – women do slightly more than men. This is shown by the figures from the Federal Statistical Office.
According to the Benevol association, 4 out of 10 people work on a voluntary basis. They perform 660 million hours of unpaid work every year.
Volunteer work is often done in the social sector and in environmental protection: for example, to support senior citizens or in youth and asylum work. But volunteer work also extends into the administrative and cultural areas.
The trained businesswoman soon turns her closeness to nature into a career and takes up a position in a dog hotel.
Legend: “Someone has to start.” Volunteer Kristina Sin. SRF
It doesn’t bother her that she doesn’t receive any additional money for volunteer work. A thank you is enough for her. And the belief in protecting nature. She says: “If I can make a small contribution to this, I would be happy to do it ten times more for free.”
Attila Baumgartner accepts a significant reduction in wages at the Alternative Bank. There are no bonuses there. He doesn’t want to give numbers. But the wages are still sufficient. And he can stand behind his work again.