Across U.S. organizations, employee engagement is leveling off even as leaders heavily invest in pay, perks, and technology. New U.S. data highlight a more powerful and underused driver: purposeful work. When employees can clearly see how their daily efforts support a meaningful mission and help others, their energy, focus, and commitment increase—and so do retention and performance. Recent national studies show that employees who feel a strong sense of purpose at work are much more likely to be engaged and less likely to experience burnout or seek a new job. Meanwhile, only a small fraction of workers say their current roles feel genuinely purposeful. For leaders and managers, the lesson is clear: treat workplace purpose as a system to design and manage, not just a slogan.
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This Leadership Brief highlights the business case, what makes purposeful work a unique engagement driver, and how to implement it—through mission translation, job design, and manager skills—using U.S. case examples and current evidence. Throughout, we emphasize outcomes that middle managers and executives care most about: employee engagement, retention, and well-being at work.
The State of Employee Engagement in the U.S.
After a decade of progress, U.S. employee engagement declined in 2024 and has only slightly increased in 2025. By mid-2025, about a third of employees reported being engaged; in 2024, the figure reached an 11-year low. Beneath these averages, there are ongoing gaps in key factors that influence performance—such as clear expectations, development opportunities, and connection to the mission. Along with increased job-hopping intentions, these patterns pose risks for turnover, productivity, and customer satisfaction. The overall well-being climate at work has also worsened since the pandemic, with multiple studies showing a decline in mental and emotional health. Notably, the U.S. Surgeon General’s framework highlights “Mattering at Work” and “Opportunity for Growth” as critical elements of a healthy workplace. These trends emphasize the importance of a lever that enhances both engagement and well-being: purposeful work.
Why Purposeful Work Is Different
Purpose does not mean lofty rhetoric. It means that individual employees can confidently answer three questions: Whom do we serve? What difference does my work make? How does my role advance our mission? When employees strongly endorse these statements, their outcomes change in ways that most benefits programs do not achieve. In current U.S. data, workers who say their job has a strong purpose show significantly higher engagement—and substantially lower burnout and job-search intent—than their peers. The retention signal is equally clear: in a large U.S. dataset, employees who describe their work as meaningful are much more likely to stay with their company long-term. Participation in well-designed corporate purpose programs (e.g., volunteering, skills-based pro bono, or employee-led giving) is also linked to considerably lower turnover among newer employees. At the firm level, a multi-year study of U.S. companies found that “purpose with clarity”—i.e., a mission that middle managers and professional staff can translate into daily decisions—correlates with stronger future accounting results and stock performance. In short, purposeful work is a key driver of engagement, with significant effects on both retention and performance.
Translate Corporate Mission into Day-to-Day Work
Many organizations have clear, credible missions. Fewer turn these missions into daily routines at work. The difference is visible in one key factor that reliably predicts outcomes: whether employees feel their work is meaningful because of the company’s mission or purpose. Employees who agree strongly with this statement are much more likely to report a strong sense of purpose in their work. This often happens in small moments managers control, such as explaining the “why” behind priorities, showing how tasks impact customers or the community, and linking successes back to the mission. Leaders can help by defining what mission-driven performance looks like in each area—how finance, compliance, operations, or IT contribute to the purpose as directly as sales or service. This clarity helps close the “purpose gap” seen in national surveys, where more people want meaningful work than currently experience it.
Design Jobs for Meaning, Not Just Efficiency
Job design is a powerful (and often overlooked) way to create meaningful work. Two evidence-based strategies are most effective. First, reduce obstacles and increase the importance of the task. People are more engaged when they spend time on work that clearly benefits customers or colleagues, rather than on low-value administrative tasks. Removing unnecessary steps, automating trivial tasks, and consolidating approvals frees up capacity for mission-critical activities. Second, allow job crafting within set boundaries. Research indicates that when employees can shape aspects of their tasks, relationships, and perceptions of their work, engagement improves—especially when these changes enhance perceived meaning. Practically, this could mean giving experienced individual contributors and frontline leaders the freedom to own a customer problem end-to-end, mentor peers, or pursue process improvements aligned with organizational goals. Managers should define boundaries (such as service levels and controls) and then coach for impact; employees should suggest small “experiments” to make their roles more purposeful and measure the effects on service, quality, and cycle time.
Equip Managers as Purpose Translators
Managers remain central. Across thousands of U.S. teams, management quality explains most of the differences in team engagement. The most engaging managers do a few key things consistently: they set clear expectations, hold regular one-on-one meetings that combine performance and development, recognize progress specifically, and coach strengths toward business results. Their role is intentional: translating tasks by framing them around who benefits and why it matters, asking purpose-driven questions during team huddles (“Who specifically did we help this week?”), and creating space for employees to share customer impact stories. Managers also need organizational support. If mission language appears only in executive speeches but is missing from goals, reviews, project charters, and dashboards—managers can’t sustain it. Provide them with simple prompts, examples of mission-related KPIs, and impact-driving artifacts (such as customer letters, patient stories, and student outcomes). Then measure and coach these behaviors as you would any other performance standard.
Case Examples from U.S. Organizations
Salesforce (U.S. headquarters; technology) promotes workplace purpose through a formal Volunteer Time Off (VTO) policy and a longstanding “1–1–1” model. Each employee is granted seven paid days annually to volunteer, including opportunities to apply technical skills to nonprofits. This isn’t viewed as charity on the side; it is integrated into the company’s identity and performance narrative. Internally, VTO fosters shared experiences that strengthen a sense of meaning and community; externally, it enhances reputation with stakeholders. Leaders highlight manager participation to normalize the practice. The system becomes recognizable: simple rules, local autonomy, and visible stories link individual actions to a larger mission.
CVS Health (U.S. headquarters; healthcare/retail). In 2014, CVS became the first national pharmacy chain to remove tobacco from its shelves, aligning a core business decision with its purpose of helping people on their path to better health. Follow-on research documented changes in cigarette purchasing behavior consistent with the policy’s intent. Beyond public health impact, the decision clarified purpose for over 300,000 employees. When a company takes a costly stand to align its operating model with its mission, managers further down the line gain credibility to make smaller, everyday decisions with the same logic. That coherence is the foundation of purposeful work: employees can see that “how we win” and “why we exist” point in the same direction.
Zappos (U.S. operations; retail/service) built its service model on agent empowerment: no call-time targets, no scripts, and the authority to take the time needed to solve a customer’s problem. The famous 10-hour call is not a metric to copy; it symbolizes the company’s choice to prioritize relationships and resolution over throughput. For employees, this design increases task significance (solving real problems for real people) and autonomy (crafting the interaction), two factors strongly linked to engagement. The case also demonstrates why purpose must be operational: it is embedded into the process (how performance is defined and recognized), not just posted on the wall.
Cleveland Clinic (U.S. headquarters; healthcare). The Clinic’s “Patients First” ethos is reflected not only in its values statements but also in the Office of Patient Experience, with programs like Communicate with H.E.A.R.T., which train and coach caregivers to provide empathy and service excellence. The system formalizes tangible, mission-related behaviors and publishes patient experience resources and outcomes. For clinicians and staff, the connection to purpose is clear: individual interactions, documentation quality, and team coordination are viewed as ways to reduce suffering and improve outcomes. The Clinic’s approach shows how a large, complex U.S. organization can promote mission clarity at scale by investing in role-specific practices, tools, and measurement.
Altar’d State (U.S. specialty retail) has a “Mission Monday” program that donates 10% of net Monday proceeds to local nonprofits chosen by each store. Associates receive paid volunteer time to participate. This approach localizes purpose—employees see the direct impact of their work in their community—and fosters pride, which boosts retention in frontline retail. The program’s weekly schedule and simple rule (local choice) are essential for maintaining engagement, rather than relying on annual events.
How to Make Purpose Work in Your Business Unit
The mechanics are straightforward, but they require discipline. Start by defining purpose in operational terms: which stakeholders you serve and what outcomes you commit to producing for them. Translate that into 2 or 3 mission-linked performance indicators that any team member can explain. Next, examine workflows to remove friction that prevents people from spending time on mission-critical work. If analysts spend hours reconciling three versions of the truth, or store associates chase approvals for trivial exceptions, they will not experience purposeful work—no matter how inspiring your town halls are. Build room for job crafting: invite each team member to propose a small change that would make their role more helpful to customers or colleagues, implement a 30-day trial, and measure results. Finally, institutionalize the cadence: a weekly one-on-one that links goals to purpose; a short team story in every stand-up about whom you helped; and a visible link between recognition and mission impact. Over time, these routines build a culture where workplace purpose is something people feel, not just hear.
Measure What Matters and Govern It
Treat purposeful work like any other performance system: define, measure, and improve. At the enterprise level, track the percentage of employees who strongly agree that the mission makes their job feel important. Add a simple, validated “work purpose” index to your engagement or pulse survey—a short set of items that capture perceived contribution, positive effects on others, and purpose in daily tasks. Pair these with tangible outcomes: regrettable attrition among high performers, internal mobility rates, customer NPS/CSAT during mission-critical moments, and safety, quality, or error rates depending on your industry. For well-being at work, align with the U.S. Surgeon General’s Five Essentials, including “Mattering at Work,” and use your listening tools to detect early signs of burnout or detachment. Governance is equally vital. Ensure your purpose appears in budgeting (what you fund), incentives (what you reward), and post-mortems (how you learn). Hold managers accountable for the behaviors described above, and provide them with training and tools to execute effectively.
Conclusion
In a year when U.S. engagement has been flat and many employees remain in a cautious, “wait-and-see” posture, purposeful work provides a practical, evidence-backed path to better results. The business case is no longer theoretical: purpose that is integrated into daily work correlates with higher employee engagement, stronger retention signals, and improved organizational performance. Leaders’ work is practical, not superficial. Clearly connect roles to the mission. Redesign jobs to add meaning and reduce obstacles. Equip managers to incorporate purpose into their coaching and daily routines. Measure the impact and hold people accountable. Consistently doing these things turns purpose from a poster on the wall into the way your business operates—and why your employees choose to stay.