How `Higher Purpose’ Can Help You Retain Employees
This morning, I read a post on LinkedIn, which said that more than salary it was office politics that made employees quit.
And I replied by saying that a deeper reason could be the lack of a higher purpose that an organization has failed to give its employees.
But, what is a higher purpose? Read…
Before answering this, let’s see how great leaders in history made huge followers stick around them. Look at Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Che Guevara — how could they all gather countless followers, who still draw inspiration from them after decades of their death? (Even Hitler mobilized millions, but that’s a different topic).
It was not a salary or perks. These leaders had higher purposes and attracted people towards them. The masses didn’t follow these leaders to get something in return but to contribute to their greater purpose.
Even today, if you look at some of the world leaders, when they share big goals — goals that potentially transform the lives of millions — countrymen respond with great support.
Why higher purpose is so attractive and appealing?
Each one of us, you and me, are moved by great accomplishments. Whenever something good happens in the world, it moves our hearts.
We respond to big events and achievements from the bottom of our hearts. We may not retweet, like or comment, but we all are adding to impressions. Even in silence, we make it count.
We all seek higher purposes. Because they are deeply fulfilling. When there’s no higher purpose, we tend to fall back into petty things.
The same is true for your employees too. They want to be part of the greater good. When you fill them with a sense of mission, you will see how they rise above office politics, jealousy and unhealthy competition.
So, how to create a higher purpose for your organization and for your employees?
I will write about it in another post.
For now, I want you to think about it: Is the lack of a higher purpose, a major reason for losing employees?
A personal experience of higher purpose
I never had a history of working for more than 2 years in any organization. I was bored at Indian Express, Google etc…
But something different happened at PhonePe.
They were the initial days. There was this talk of leading the digital payments in India, which echoed in town halls and meetings. The euphoria was visible everywhere in the office.
I remembered the school days when the Money Order that my father sent took days to reach me. Or when he took half a day’s leave for bank work.
That’s why the possibilities of digital payments truly excited me. The new system was going to save time and money for millions of people, from street vendors to large enterprises. And I was going to be a part of that revolution.
I was there for about 4 years and saw how PhonePe grew to be a leader in the FinTech market and changed the lives of millions.
I did the same localization work at Google, but at PhonePe, it was this higher purpose that held me for a longer period.
How higher purpose is defined
There’s a small incident in Mahabharata. Pandavas visited Varanavata and stayed in a palace, which was a wax house built to kill them. Sensing the danger, Vidhura, the chief minister, sends a skilled excavator to dig a secret tunnel for the Pandavas to escape.
At night, Bheema hears the digging sound and meets the excavator. When he offers to help him, the excavator asks him to go and rest. After an argument, the excavator tells Bheema: “Prince, I’m assigned with the job of protecting the future of Aryavartha. Please let me do my job”.
Now, look at his answer. He would have said that he was assigned to dig a long tunnel and was short of time. But he said that he was working to protect the future of an empire.
That higher purpose energized him to work tirelessly through the night.
