Beingful Work and Work Life Harmony

What do Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos, Beingful Work and Beingfulness have in Common?

A CNBC article this Dec 24th that draws on several press interviews by Satya Nadella and Jeff Bezos regarding their approach to work is thought provoking. The Microsoft CEO had said to the Australian Financial Review in a November 2019 interview, “What I’m trying to do is harmonize what I deeply care about, my deep interests, with my work.” Nadella was talking about work-life harmony rather than work-life balance because he saw his work at Microsoft as a way to pursue his passions and create deep meaning in his life.

The CNBC article also points out how Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has a similar approach to work. In an interview with Thrive Global in Nov 2016, Bezos had said, “I prefer the word “harmony” to the word “balance” because balance tends to imply a strict tradeoff. In fact, if I’m happy at work, I’m better at home — a better husband and better father. And if I’m happy at home, I come into work more energized — a better employee and a better colleague.”

Given the stress and anxiety that permeate the modern workplace, is work-life harmony meant only for the rich and powerful, like Nadella and Bezos? Or is it something that every employee can reasonably seek to obtain?

In our work with dozens of firms and hundreds of corporate employees, we have discovered that work-life harmony is indeed possible through the idea of beingful work, which is the extent to which our actual experience of work is fulfilling for our being as a whole.

Our whole being could include our health and physical well-being, our energy, career ambition, intellect, personality, emotions and feelings, sense of freedom, collaboration with others, service to customer, desire for societal impact, connection to nature, ability to do the morally right thing, and also our spirituality.

The ideal workplace is one where work fulfills those aspects of our whole being we value the most, a goal that was traditionally reserved for our life outside work. Beingful work breaks down this separation between our work and personal spaces, because it sees both spaces as opportunities to pursue our passions and life purpose. Work-life harmony occurs when both spaces seamlessly enable fulfilment of those aspects of our being we most care about.

Beingful work is an application to the workplace of the more general idea of Beingfulness, which is the quality of experience associated with a way of life that seeks to anchor in a higher self or Being while fully engaging with the transient world of the lower self.

Central to beingful work is the idea that our work is one of the best opportunities in our life to find well-being. This is very much in keeping with modern psychology’s emphasis on meaning, flourishing and other aspects of holistic well-being that go beyond happiness.

For example, research on happiness and meaning shows that the former is more linked to our satisfying our needs, orienting to the present, and being a taker, and less related to expressing our self. By contrast, meaning is more linked to our integrating the past, present and future, being a giver, and with our identity and expressing our self.

To test the idea of beingful work, we have conducted assessments with dozens of organizations and hundreds of employees.

For example, we evaluated how beingful their work was for the senior leadership team at a top eye care hospital in India which was renowned for its affordable access and the quality of its patient care.

In the charts below, the red line describes ideal work conditions for employees, given by the relative importance of fulfilling each of the fourteen aspects of whole being given on the X-axis. The relative importance of an aspect is given by the share of 100 value points given to the fulfilment of it. It measures how much the employee is passionate about this aspect.

The blue line provides the extent to which employee expectations about these aspects were actually being fulfilled by their current work, multiplied by their relative importance. Fulfilment of expectations could range on a scale (0%: Vastly Below Expectations, 100%: Meets Expectations, 200%: Vastly Above Expectations). Where the blue and red lines intersect, expectations regarding the aspect are being met by the current work.

As shown in the red line in the chart, the leadership team at the hospital is on an average most passionate about the fulfillment of the moral aspects of being through work, giving it 9.6 value points from a total of hundred. This is also the aspect most fulfilled by their current work (11.6 value points), i.e., their work considerably exceeds their expectations regarding fulfillment of the moral aspects of their being. Similar exceeding of expectations is present for three other aspects that are most about: Social impact (10.4 actual vs. 8.0 ideal), service to patients (10.9 vs. 8.2), and intellectual stimulation (10.1 vs. 8.3).

Overall, from a perspective where fulfilment of passions through work is important, the hospital has done a good job of enabling employees to find work-life harmony.

To compare with a different industry, we conducted an assessment of beingful work in one of the largest India-based consulting services company that provides consulting and IT services throughout the world. The respondents included senior managers who were directors or assistant directors of the different functions in the organization. The results are shown below.

The red line shows that on an average, for work to be considered ideal by these managers, health (11 value points) and money (11) are the most important aspects that need to be fulfilled, followed by career ambition (9) and intellectual stimulation (9). Social impact (5), moral values (5), personality fit (5), and spirituality (3) are the least important for these managers. Unfortunately, the actual workplace conditions are considerably below the ideal for every aspect of whole being.

On the whole, the workplace at the IT services company seems far from fulfilling for its employees. From the perspective of work as an opportunity for fulfilment of passions, work-life harmony seems really missing in this company. The actual experience of every aspect of whole being in this company falls short of expectations about it.

The main advantage of creating these beingful work charts is that they pinpoint where exactly work can be made more fulfilling. In turn, this fulfilment can enable more meaning, flourishing and other sources of well-being for employees. As a result, it can show how the workplace can be redesigned to enable work-life harmony for every employee.

In summary, work-life harmony is not just for the likes of CEOs such as Nadella and Bezos. The theory and practice of beingful work, and the underlying idea of Beingfulness, can make work-life harmony available for everyone in the modern corporation.