The job market may be weak, but that doesn’t mean CEOs can take their top performers for granted. People with high-demand skills will always be able to find new jobs. And, with the cost to replace high-value employees up to double their salary, attrition is expensive. If you’re not doing everything you can to keep your employees engaged, productive and loyal, you risk losing them.

But how can senior executives prevent people from quitting?

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Researchers Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta answer that question in Harvard Business Review. “To stick around and keep giving their best, people need meaningful work; managers and colleagues who value, respect, and trust them; and opportunities to grow, excel, and advance in their careers,” they write.

I’ve written about inclusive leadership and professional development in the past, detailing how empathetic managers and constructive feedback can boost performance and employee engagement. However, “meaning” isn’t something we leaders discuss often enough.

That needs to change. Because not only will cultivating meaning help you retain your most talented employees—it will ignite your entire workforce.

The financial impact of purpose

When work feels connected to a deeper purpose, people bring more energy, creativity, and resilience. They collaborate more effectively, stay longer, and produce higher-quality results. Consider these findings:

· McKinsey reports that employees who “live their purpose at work” are more productive, more loyal, and more likely to recommend their company to others.

· Studies show that many workers value purpose more than pay, with 90% of respondents in one survey willing to trade a portion of their income for greater meaning.

· In a SHRM survey, 86% of Gen Z and 89% of Millennials said purpose was important to their job satisfaction.

· Leaders with a strong sense of purpose are nine times more likely to be highly engaged, according to DDI research.

The challenge is that meaningfulness isn’t one-size-fits-all. What inspires one person might feel irrelevant to another. It is also dynamic. An early-career professional might want challenging growth opportunities, a mid-career employee might crave stability, and a late-career leader may be focused on mentorship and legacy. In addition, a health challenge or significant life change could temporarily alter someone’s career needs.

This complexity leads some executives to wrongly dismiss meaningfulness as “too personal to influence.” Leaders may not be able to dictate meaning, but they can create the conditions where it flourishes.

Consider this real-world example: Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy, describes in Harvard Business Review how leaders helped employees see how their day-to-day work connected to a larger purpose. “What we had done was create an environment where employees were excited to express their untapped individual and collective potential,” he writes. That sense of meaning helped increase workers’ discretionary effort and became the catalyst for a dramatic turnaround.

How to Inspire Employees and Foster a Sense of Purpose

The challenge for leaders is to cultivate meaning throughout the organization, not as an afterthought, but as a crucial component of workplace culture. The following practical strategies can help engage employees:

1. Define and communicate your mission. Your organization’s purpose should be more than a paragraph on your website. It should guide leadership decisions, strategic priorities and the company culture. When employees clearly understand how their work connects to that purpose, motivation and alignment grow.

2. Connect the dots between tasks and impact. Don’t assume employees see how their work contributes to the big picture. Share customer success stories, highlight team achievements and call out examples where someone’s effort directly influenced a key business outcome.

3. Recognize contributions. When leaders take time to acknowledge employees’ impact—both individually and as a team—it reinforces that their work has value and meaning. Recognition should be specific, timely, and tied to organizational goals, whether through public praise, handwritten notes, or performance-based rewards.

4. Support individual motivations. Meaningful work must be cultivated with empathy, curiosity, and flexibility—because no single strategy works for everyone. Use one-on-ones and stay interviews to understand what drives each employee, then identify projects and roles that align with their strengths and needs.

5. Embed inclusion in your culture. Employees are more likely to find meaning when the company’s values reflect their own. Use collective learning, metrics and transparency to demonstrate your commitment to equity, dignity and community impact.

6. Invest in growth. When people stop learning, meaning fades. Offer targeted development programs, mentorship and clear career paths. Growth signals a future with your company and deepens the employee’s commitment to it.

In addition, managers who have strong working relationships with their direct reports can directly influence meaningfulness. Through comprehensive career conversations, they can discover what inspires their employees. They can monitor temporary setbacks, give workers the space they need, and when the crisis is over, assign more challenging work.

Increase meaning or risk losing top talent

A strong balance sheet and a thriving business are built by people who believe their work matters. Meaningful work fuels focus, creativity, and resilience. Without it, you risk disengagement, mediocre performance and higher turnover.

The risk is real. If your top performers don’t see how staying with your company aligns with their values and goals, they’ll move on. They might join an organization that makes its mission central to its culture. Others will take a more entrepreneurial path, creating meaning on their own terms.

Your role as a leader is to ensure meaning and purpose are ingrained in your culture. Surface-level initiatives like clever slogans or free lunches aren’t enough. The only way to unlock motivation is to build organizations that put people at the center. That means aligning your leadership practices and internal communication so that every employee can see how they move the organization forward. It also means investing in employee development, so each person understands how the company can advance their individual aspirations.

When people connect their daily work to something personal, something that resonates more than a paycheck, they deliver in ways that exceed expectations. Meaningful work isn’t just about culture—it’s the key to employee engagement. When leaders understand what drives individual employees, they can address those needs and create a win-win for workers and the organization. Meaningful work is the engine behind discretionary effort, excellence, and innovation. That’s why it’s also the difference between companies that win, and those that don’t.

About the Author  

Donald Thompson, EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2023 SE Award-winner, founded The Diversity Movement, a Workplace Options Company, to fundamentally transform the modern workplace through diversity-led culture change. Recognized by Inc., Fast Company and Forbes, Thompson is author of Underestimated: A CEO’s Unlikely Path to Success, hosts the podcast “High Octane Leadership in an Empathetic World” and has published widely on leadership and the executive mindset. His latest book is The Inclusive Leadership Handbook: Balancing People and Performance for Sustainable Growth, co-authored with Kurt Merriweather, Vice President of Global Marketing at Workplace Options. Follow Thompson on LinkedIn for updates on news, events and his podcast, or contact him at info@donaldthompson.com for executive coaching and speaking engagements.