Without a definition of ‘meaningful’ work we may might never find it

When hapless education secretary Gavin Williamson narrowly defined the purpose of education as getting a good and "meaningful" job it sparked an understandable backlash and a long-overdue debate on a scarce commodity: job satisfaction.

In a recent snapshot of the "old normal", an Investors in People survey captured the micromanaged misery of employees trapped in overly specialised, high frequency and high volume work. Half of the 12,000 UK workers surveyed wanted to leave their jobs, citing stress, boredom, and the sense that their work was "inconsequential".

Work woes were worst for employees who felt like cogs in large machines, cut off from their organisation’s ‘big picture’ purpose. In The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith attributed financial rewards with greater specialisation, but he couldn’t have foreseen the workforce splintering into roles like logistic supply manager, desktop support analyst, and web administrator. Modern employees clearly don’t need to work on Henry Ford’s assembly line to know what division of labour feels like.

When it comes to future jobs, quality and quantity will go hand-in-hand, believes Andreas Schleicher, OECD chief, who in 2018 emphasised that repetitive cognitive tasks make some jobs so demoralising it makes them vulnerable to the first wave of AI automation. He reminded schools of their duty to produce "first-class humans, not second class robots".

Even the Office of National Statistics acknowledges that it could do better in tracking job satisfaction and work-related happiness. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to question the complex trade-offs between remuneration and fulfilment?

Happiness researchers agree that meaningful work has distinctive characteristics: self-directed decision making, some degree of creative flow, meaningful collaboration and challenge, plus a sense of contributing to a broader purpose that transcends the self.

That’s why occupations like landscaping and hairdressing regularly top job satisfaction polls, but fail to register with aspirational young people, who are trained to conflate success with prestige and wealth. The exam system further "vocationalises" away their status and the DfE institutionalises this bias through a curriculum weighted in favour of academic qualifications.

Research also suggests an unconscious bias against jobs with a strong public service ethos because 'worthy' occupations are seen as modestly paid and off-brand. But teachers, nurses, physiotherapists, and counsellors are routinely rated among the most fulfilled professions.

The quest for meaningful work will mean challenging the conventional career wisdom that has traditionally overstated the significance of social status and income at the expense of job satisfaction. Daniel Kahneman Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, concluded that beyond the threshold of a secure lower-middle-class income, higher salaries do not correlate with increased happiness.

Finding happiness means rewiring ourselves, because we have internalised the logic of neoliberalism to such an extent that when it comes to career choices, free will is an illusion.

Oliver James, a British psychologist, popularised the term "affluenza" to describe the unhappiness of those in a relentless pursuit of material wealth, who are prevented from being able to relax and enjoy their lives. He identified a generation trained to accept anxiety and low-level depression as normalised prerequisites for career success.

Social media and conspicuous consumption combine affluenza into history’s most potent peer pressure: our entrepreneurial selves make career and life choices to promote our personal brands while minimising reputational risk.

Perhaps only an economic shock on the current scale can save us from the working-to-consume treadmill. In an era of national ovations for key workers, we can expect people to be more receptive to the concept of meaningful work. Guiding young people towards jobs where the work is creative, absorbing and satisfying on a human level will not only help them find professional fulfilment but is also likely to keep them in work and out of the robots’ reach