Purpose Deferred
In such a tough job market, more workers are taking any job they can find—regardless of their interest in it. How that can corrode a firm’s culture and mission.
Remember a few years ago, in the heady days after the pandemic and before AI, when people took jobs for values and purpose as much as for compensation? That era, dubbed the “purpose movement,” has suddenly become a thing of the past.
HR leaders and recruiters have grown increasingly concerned that in this tough job market, workers are taking roles regardless of their interest in the company’s or industry’s mission. Candidates will move from a creative field into healthcare administration, or from a marketing position in consulting to a sales gig at a commercial construction firm. And they’ll do so because they have no other choice: Long-term unemployment has been creeping up since last year, with one-quarter of job seekers taking six months or longer to find work. At the same time, job openings have shrunk by 25%, to less than nine million from their pandemic peak of 12 million.
Surveys and anecdotal evidence also show that more people are taking part-time roles or positions they are overqualified for. “In a tighter labor market, people go where the opportunities are, and purpose gets deferred,” says Roger Philby, global leader of the People Strategy and Performance practice at Korn Ferry.
Of the 178,000 jobs created in March, for instance, nearly 150,000 were in just three industries: healthcare, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Healthcare, a field where hiring is struggling to keep pace with an aging population, has been the primary driver of hiring for most of the last year. “Sectors like healthcare are pulling in talent because they are hiring at scale,” says Philby, “not necessarily because there’s been a sudden surge in vocational calling.”
The question creating tension, says Philby, is what will happen next. Transactional hiring works as a short-term solution, filling industries’ need for people and providing those people with a paycheck and security in return. But culture and ultimately performance will be corroded if firms continue hiring people who aren’t strongly committed to their industry. “Over time, transactional hiring dilutes engagement and can impact the experience or service organizations are trying to provide,” says Philby.
On the flip side, Greg Button, president of global healthcare services at Korn Ferry, sees an opportunity for healthcare providers and other industries to hire talent they wouldn’t otherwise attract. He says hospitals, insurance providers, device manufacturers, and other firms in the healthcare ecosystem can capitalize on the abundance of “talented floaters” in desperately needed functions like IT, finance, marketing, cybersecurity, and yes, even AI. “There’s a lot of talent available further away from patient care that works in the favor of healthcare,” says Button.
What’s important, Button says, is that hiring for both firms and people at the clinical and administration level—the areas closest to patients—retains a mission-driven component. “At that level, if you don’t have purpose, you burn out quickly,” he says.
To be sure, firms across industries can try to create purpose for people once they are inside, says Flo Falayi, a senior client partner in the Leadership and Executive Development practice at Korn Ferry. He advises human-resources executives and other people leaders to focus on connecting the firm’s culture and mission to employees’ day-to-day work. “Purpose isn’t gone, but it is increasingly masked,” Falayi says. “It’s up to leaders to unmask it and build purpose over time.”
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