How to Retain Your Members by Giving Them a Sense of Meaningfulness

Using Organisational Psychology to Improve Member Retention [2]: Increasing Variety, Identity, and Significance to Inculcate Meaningfulness

Role characteristics associated with meaningfulness, and strategies to embed each one in your community

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” — Mark Twain

Something that defines us as humans is our drive for meaning. We all want to engage in roles that are in service of something greater than ourselves. Or at the very least, in roles that are interesting in and of themselves.

The first critical psychological state in the Role Characteristics Model (RCM) deals with how to cultivate this sense of meaningfulness among your social sector organisation’s or community’s members.

To briefly summarise what I’ve laid out in the first part of this series, the RCM is a framework I’ve constructed to understand member engagement with insights from organisational psychology. It presents a roadmap for activating the 3 psychological states associated with high member motivation, engagement, and retention. Each psychological state is cultivated through understanding and embedding 3 core role characteristics in your…