We all agree that having meaningful work is important for our wellbeing ̶  however, it also affects our productivity, and how we perform. Naturally, one would expect that creating meaningful jobs is on top priority in most organizations, but in reality that is not the case.

Shared services in particular have significant issues when it comes to creating meaningful jobs and keeping people on board for longer periods of time.

Why is meaning so important?

One experiment performed by Dan Ariely gives us good insights on the topic. The experiment was quite simple - there were two groups of undergraduates from Harvard University tasked with building Lego Bionicle sets.

Students were paid for each set they built - $2.00 for the first one, $1.89 for the second one, and so on. The students could stop at any time and get the money.

There was a single difference between the two groups: 

• In the first group, once having built each Bionicle, the student placed it on a table whilst being given a new box filled with new Bionicle pieces
• In the second group, once the student built a Bionicle, they had to begin working on the second. In the meantime, the experimenter would disassemble the first Bionicle and place the piece back into the box in front of the student.

 So, was there any difference in the result of the two groups? 

• Group 1 built an average of 10.2 Bionicles
• Group 2 built an average of 7.2 Bionicles

 Each individual was aware the Legos’ would be disassembled, but in seeing it happen right before their eyes, the students deemed their hard work as purposeless, having an immediate effect on group 2’s behavior and performance.

Roughly 30% of the productivity was lost, just because of this small tweak in the experiment that took away the meaning in the work.

So, how does Lego relate to Shared Services?

Working in the Shared Service Center (SSC) industry is different from building a Lego, yet there are still similarities.

 The SSC model of operation requires that the processes are fragmented in small pieces, with different people being responsible for the different parts of an overall process. It is common for those individuals to not know the end-to-end process, nor the final outcome.  A big part of daily work in SSC is repetitive, quite like building 10 identical Lego sets.

Additionally, SSCs’ environment often creates pressure as well as frequent conflicts with the existing organization, especially in the initial stages of SSC when not everything is working as expected.

All of this leads to the conclusion that creating meaningful jobs is difficult in a SSC environment as it requires extra effort, and the price of not doing so would result in productivity loss.

So what is the SSC reality then?

Within a couple of years in a SSC environment, people struggle to find a meaning in what they are doing- this is where they start leaving.

The reasons for this are varied; the SSC workforce is young, with generalizations being made about that generation’s behavior; or that the market is competitive, or due to internal conflicts affecting morale of workers. The list goes on.

Although these reasons are all  valid explanations, it is not enough to explain the dynamics, as the attrition rates in the SSC industry (between 20% and 40% pre-Covid) is higher than for other industries like Finance and HR services (around 10%).

One missing piece in the puzzle is people are leaving because they do not see or feel there is a meaning in what they are doing. This makes them bored, dissatisfied, unmotivated, and eager to make a change. Most of the companies are aware of that, but they rarely work on resolving it. Unfortunately, the topic of 'meaning of work' is seldom discussed in leadership meetings, instead, efforts are concentrated on dealing with the symptoms - high attrition, low satisfaction scores, internal conflicts, etc.

The topic surrounding the 'meaning of work' is not something a manager can communicate, nor convince, nor force unto others on a weekly basis. It is something that each individual must discover for themselves.

When discussing with fellow colleagues, they all share very similar stories:

First they get excited about the new job,  salary, and the nice perks in office; then, there is a fair amount of travelling and learning in the initial phases when taking over new processes ̶  life seems good at this point ̶  but then,  a year or two later, the same people get bored.

Travel is well behind, there is nothing new happening, and there are just the same processes being repeated day after day. Two to three years after, they are either getting promoted, moving on to another company to repeat the cycle, or leaving the sector entirely.

So why is this happening? Why is it so difficult to find meaning in our daily work in a SSC? A good starting point for the analysis is to see what actually gives us a meaning.

This is why I tried to come up with a short list of the most influential items:

• Accomplishing something that we are proud of.
• Social Relationships. Helping others.
• Learning something new.

What can we do?

1.    Purpose

People need purpose and they need to be able to see the end result of their efforts. It is not even about how hard and unpleasant sometimes the work can be if there is a feasible motivating achievement in the end.

Let’s take a look at the long distance runners. If you talk with them about their races, they always share some awful experiences - they fainted, got muscle pain, got dehydrated, vomited and sometimes barely survived. Their training is no different - long hours of repetitive running, more pain and sweat.

One would expect that not a single person in their right mind will be voluntarily involved in such an activity. However, the number of runners has increased significantly in the last few decades, with people love the sport regardless of the hardships involved. Even after a dreadful experience, it is the only thing they talk about, and how great their great achievement of winning over yourself is.

There are many other similar examples which they all confirm, should the achievement be meaningful, should a person be proud and recognized for it, you are capable of still being motivated despite the difficulties you may face.

Unfortunately, the majority of jobs in SSC are not able to provide goals that can make one forget the difficulties. The work is often transactional and the goals are short term. The inherited fragmented processes do not so not show the bigger picture,  and consequently lacks the possibility to feel pride from big achievements. 

However, there are certain steps we can put in place in order to improve.

Trust is one that we should put in the center. When we talk about trust it should come from the highest places in the organization. The HQs need to be able to forgo some of the control over the SSCs and give more trust and freedom to their SSCs. In practice that means the SSCs need to be able to define global policies and processes, to build solutions, and to have the independence to make decisions in predefined, but rather wide scope much like a center of excellence.

Giving the opportunities to build something valuable, sustainable and that longer term creates purpose and pride in achievements. People working in the centers should be able to take the responsibility and calculated risk in order to use their knowledge and experience to deliver world class solutions.

It is something that each individual must discover for themselves, and is only achieved through trust building the foundations of creating meaningful and purposeful jobs.

2.    Social Relationships

Another example as a source of meaning is social relationships - the feeling of belonging, and being part of a team.

When discussing how colleagues feel about their work, they respond with, “I do not like my job, but I like my team, so I do not want to move for now”.

Most SSC companies properly recognize the importance of team spirit and spend resources in building a thriving environment that fosters good social relations. Managers often have an open door policy, with regular meetings with staff and share information and insights about the organization. These are all good practices that should be kept.

In the last year and a half, the COVID outbreak had quite a negative impact on social relationships, making the lives of managers even more difficult and requiring some creativity from their side. However, as things begin to return to normal, it is important that some practices are revived from the pre-COVID times.

In reality, a good environment, team spirit, and enjoyable colleagues are vital aspects of our work, but they cannot substitute the lack of purpose. If organizations try to replace this, the reality is that, eventually, someone will leave, with the whole team will following soon thereafter, putting operations at risk.

3.    Learning

Learning is another source of “meaning”. Naturally, when starting a new job, people are learning quite a lot as they face challenges for the first time. However, in the SSCs industry, the learning curve goes down progressively after the first two years.

Most learning is done  on the job while doing daily routines or working on different projects. Thus, when faced with repetitive work, people lose the sense that they are learning something fairly quickly. This could lead to another type of issue where people become overconfident and have aspirations for quick career growth, eventually becoming a source of disappointment.

One of the tools companies are using to address these issues is the opportunity for horizontal movement in the organization. This consists of giving an individual the same position, but in a different team, so that they get exposed to new processes  and restart their learning experience. That, in theory, should also have a quite good impact on one’s career.

In reality , this is not working. People rarely switch from one job to another that has the same amount of repetitive work. They don’t see any added value in doing so, and if they have already built a strong relationship with the rest of the team, something that companies are nurturing, the motivation for such a change becomes even lower.

It is clear that we cannot fully take away the repetition of the job, but automation could be used as a tool to decrease the share of it.

Automation projects give individuals opportunities to learn new skills and to analyze the daily job from a more general and systematic perspective. By involving people in building new processes and solutions, this can impact not only on their learning experience, but also reignite their sense of purpose and achievement within their role.

Conclusion

It is quite difficult to create and keep a meaningful job in the SSCs industry. If left unaddressed, the natural response is to leave. This creates numerous other issues.

In order to resolve this, organizations need to focus on one main element - trust. Trust allows for creating interesting, viable and long-term projects that drive creation of meaningful and purposeful jobs. By adding trust, a good social environment and learning opportunities, companies will be able to unlock the full potential of their shared service centers, and ultimately keep people happy while achieving high productivity levels.