When Work Feels Meaningful, People Are More Likely to Stay
- Point of Value
- 12 hours ago
- 2 min read
We think of retention as a question of conditions: pay, workload, career path. New research on knowledge workers suggests something else matters just as much — whether the work itself still feels meaningful.
The finding
In a 2025 study, Wandycz-Mejias, Roldán and Lopez-Cabrales examined how meaningfulness at work relates to job satisfaction and turnover intention among knowledge workers, using self-determination theory as their lens. Meaningfulness turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction — and it also reduced people's intention to leave. In other words: when work feels worthwhile and coherent, the effect isn't only how people feel today. It shapes whether they can imagine a future for themselves in that role.
Why it matters
A person can look functional, competent, and stable, while quietly experiencing a loss of meaning that never shows up as disengagement — until it does. And for organisations, this means retention can't be solved through incentives or workload alone. It's also a question of whether people can recognise themselves in what they do, and how they do it.
Our take
At Point of Value, this resonates with something we see constantly: values matter because they are tied to meaning, not because they sound good written down. The real question isn't whether a person's values are documented — it's whether what matters to them can actually be lived, in their role, in their relationships, and in the wider organisation. That's not a satisfaction problem. It's closer to the root of whether someone stays.
Source
Wandycz-Mejias, J., Roldán, J. L., & Lopez-Cabrales, A. (2025). Analyzing the impact of work meaningfulness on turnover intentions and job satisfaction: A self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Management & Organization.