If your job didn’t exist, would anybody miss it?

The above is the tagline to David Graeber’s book “Bulls**t Jobs: A Theory” The book isn’t great, but the idea at the heart of it – that most of us are stuck in meaningless jobs that might as well not exist – is interesting, and probably not too far from the truth, which is why I find an experiment by researchers from the London School of Economics and University of Chicago so interesting.

The academics collaborated with a consumer company in the US and recruited almost 3,000 white-collar workers in 14 countries where the company operated. The participants were randomly assigned to a treatment group and a control group to create the standard randomised controlled trial (RCT).

The treatment group was then asked to participate in the ‘Discover Your Purpose’ programme, where they learned about purpose and meaning in life, wrote essays, and discussed in workshops what gives them meaning in life and how their job does or does not provide meaning.

The participants were then followed for the next two years, during which their performance and job exits were recorded and compared to those of the control group. The chart on the left below shows the percentage of people in the RCT treatment group who left the firm within 12 months, compared to the control group (non-RCT). The chart on the right shows the performance scores achieved by the treatment and control groups after 12 months.

Impact of Discover Your Purpose treatment

Source: Ashraf et al. (2025)

If we stick with the left-hand chart for a moment, it shows that people who were asked to reflect on the purpose of their work were more likely to leave the company within 12 months. The exit rate among the people who participated in the programme was 2.5 percentage points higher than for those who did not. At first glance, this is worrying because we know that higher voluntary turnover is costly for businesses. But this is not the whole story.

The chart on the right shows that the people who remained with the firm improved their performance. While top performers with a performance score of 125 or above did not experience a significant change in their performance, individuals with lower performance scores before the treatment saw their scores shift higher after reflecting on how their jobs can provide meaning.

A closer inspection of the interviews with the participants provided clarity about the mechanisms at work. Once the participants had reflected on what gives them meaning and whether their jobs are meaningful, about half of the people with a large gap between their salaries and the meaning they derive from their jobs tended to leave their jobs. At the same time, the other half found ways to structure their work in such a way that it became more meaningful to them. This, in turn, improved their performance.

Ultimately, the bad news for the company was that employees, on average, earned larger bonuses because they had improved their performance. The good news was that the intervention provided the company with a simple way to eliminate people who are overpaid and don’t contribute significantly to the business in the first place. The research indicates that the company's bottom line was positive.

The total cost of the intervention and the replacement of people who leave the company (incl. training the new joiners) was c. $1,119 per person. The discounted net benefit of the treatment from the higher productivity of the remaining employees, minus the increased bonus payments for them, was $1,161 per person. The company's net gain was a return on investment of 3.8%.