Meaningful work

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers talks of meaningful work, ie work that motivates the worker. Such work has three elements:

• There is a clear link between work and rewards.
• The work is challenging.
• The worker has autonomy over how the work is done.

If we apply this to the IT department:

• There is rarely a link between work and rewards. In fact there is often no link between work and its business impact.
• IT work is often challenging and so draws people who are creative and enjoy problem solving. But the following point is diminishing this.
• IT workers may get some autonomy over how they code a module but increasingly IT workers are being shoe horned into service management frameworks that leave no room for creativity.

Thus it is highly likely that many IT staff feel unmotivated. The issues of work/reward/business impact and autonomy need to be addressed.