Employees seek sense of purpose

This is not the text of a corporate advertisement, but one of the recommendations of Richard Barrett, a North Carolina-based Yorkshireman and a leading advocate of spiritual health in the workplace.

Barrett says: 'A sense of meaning is one of the most powerful motivators. People are drawn to organisations where they can satisfy their need for meaning they will work there for less money.'

Barrett is well equipped to comment on such matters. He founded the Spiritual Unfoldment Society at the World Bank in 1993 and, through his consultancy Corptools, has advised organisations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young on nourishing the corporate soul.

He proposes seven levels of corporate and individual consciousness. The first, and lowest, is physical survival. The seventh, and highest, is service to others and the planet.

Barrett says that most companies in the financial services industry fail to pass level three, whose values include being the best, ambition, professional growth and determination. Banks' websites bear testimony to this accusation. Goldman Sachs aims to be the 'best rather than the biggest' Deutsche Bank intends to be global number one.

Merrill Lynch appears more enlightened, being one of the few to publicly state an intention towards 'responsible citizenship', including community involvement and care for the environment.

Merrill may prosper as a result. 'Our research shows that the most successful companies care not only about making money, building relationships, productivity and efficiency, but about learning, community spirit, the external environment and society at large,' says Barrett.

He has yet to count an investment bank among his clients, though he has advised fund managers. But at least one bank appears to have been following the spirit of his advice.

Last week, a team from a leading European investment bank stayed at Douai Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Berkshire, in southern England. There they took part in monastic prayers and contemplated work, life and leadership issues.

The Abbey's Father Oliver Hunt says: 'They were very interested in the idea that work can offer spiritual meaning. They liked the idea that a job is not just a means of making a living.'

Embellishing work with spiritual meaning can do more than make poor bonuses easier to tolerate. It also makes individuals more efficient. Professor Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School has undertaken research at a leading US investment bank. The results, as yet unpublished, indicate that the most efficient bankers are those who believe in shareholder capitalism and globalisation as a force for good.

'It helps to align individuals' values with those of the organisation,' says Ghoshal.

One company seeking such alignment is the coaching firm The Change Partnership. Unfazed by its acquisition by the listed headhunter Whitehead Mann, The Change Partnership embodies a set of spiritual values that are also commercially sound, says partner Lee Brice.

It helps that all coaches at the company are paid the same amount. As a result the incentive to maximise personal gain is removed, Brice says. Instead, the coaches are liberated to use their gifts for the good of all.

Performance-related pay encourages financial services employees to use their gifts to boost their bonuses. But attempts are apparently being made to align individuals' values with those of the company.

Bill Quirk, managing director of Synopsis Communication Consulting, says he has worked with several City of London banks to this end.

'The idea is to get the organisation's agenda and the individual's agenda to overlap as much as possible. We look at what employees want from a job - a sense of purpose and a sense of community - and where the organisation is going. We try to derive a set of values that can be embedded in the way that individuals go about their work,' he says.

Aligning values is all the more important in a downturn, says Quirk. 'After lay-offs have been made, everyone will be looking at the top team with suspicion. It is very important for them to rebuild trust and show that they have the same values as everyone else in the organisation,' he says.

Unabashed by the firm's failure to list community and environmental concerns among its values, Quirk nominates Goldman Sachs as a model of success.

'Values at Goldman Sachs are not mere corporate puffery. They are closely aligned to how they succeed. Goldman is like a group of crack marines: the bottom line is, let's stick together and fight for each other when we're under fire,' he says.

The idea that banking can be invested with values, spiritual or otherwise, does not sit well with everyone, however.

A spokesperson for a European bank says: 'People believe in what they are doing simply because it pays so well.

'Everyone likes working at Goldman Sachs because they are given the opportunity to make a lot of money for the company, and in the process they get to keep a lot of money for themselves.'