The 5 Ingredients Everyone Needs to Do Their Best Work

One of the best parts of a summer get-together is seeing the table fill up.

Someone brings a salad. Someone else shows up with dessert.

Each contribution is different, but everyone has a part in making the meal come together.

That sense of contribution matters at work, too. People want to use their skills, own a meaningful piece of the outcome, make decisions, see the impact, and know whether they are improving.

Organizational psychologists J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham showed that people do their best work when they can stretch, own an outcome, see the impact, make decisions, and know whether they are improving.

This model gives employers a useful question to ask about every role: is this job built like a good barbecue … or like a sad desk lunch?

Give people more than one thing to get good at

Nobody wants to become a human button that just click, click, clicks then clocks out. 

One meta-analysis of 56 studies found that job and task rotation were linked to higher job satisfaction, career success, and lower burnout. 

Keep jobs from getting stale by building in cross-training, stretch projects, and chances to learn adjacent skills as part of every role in your organization. That way, you give people a way to get better at the job they have, while growing toward the one they want next.

Incentivize the learning process by rewarding employees who complete training, classes, workshops, and certificates. Along the way, call it out when employees use a new skill that helps them do their job better.

Let people own something from start to finish

It’s hard to take pride in a dish you only stirred once. Everyone should have something they can carry from the first rough idea to the final result. There’s a special kind of satisfaction in being able to say, “Yeah, I made that happen.”

Researchers call this task identity: the chance to complete a whole, visible piece of work instead of only handling one small part of it. Jobs with stronger task identity tend to feel more meaningful

When someone sees a tough piece of work through, use rewards to mark the finish line. Employees are more likely to connect effort, performance, and rewards when the link between them is obvious.

Show people the impact of their work

Most jobs look small from up close.

But the customer support rep who updates the copy on a help article just saved hundreds of customers from getting confused and frustrated. The analyst who ships the monthly report gives leadership the data they need to make good decisions. In other words, those small tasks add up.

This is not just motivational-poster stuff. In one field experiment, fundraisers who learned how their calls helped fund student scholarships more than doubled their weekly pledges and donation dollars a month later.

Make that connection clear, especially for people doing the behind-the-scenes work. Tell them how their role supports customers, teammates, revenue, quality, growth, or the company’s overall mission.

Rewards can reinforce that message, too. A well-timed gift paired with a specific reminder of the work’s purpose tells someone: this was not busywork. This is part of how we win.

Allow people to use their judgment

Even when there’s a recipe to follow, employees need the space to make their own calls.

Work is like that. Employees need clear goals and guardrails, but they also need room to use their expertise to make the right call. If every decision requires layers of approvals and a barrage of email threads, people are bound to get frustrated.

Research backs that up. Studies of workplace control have linked greater autonomy with stronger job satisfaction, motivation, commitment, and lower turnover. You hired your team for a reason. Trust them, and they’ll reward you with great work.

Give clear, specific feedback

Feedback has an expiration date. If you wait until the quarterly review to tell someone how they did, the details will be fuzzy for both you and your employee.

Instead, tell people in the moment where their performance shined or what they can improve. It’s easier for employees to assimilate that feedback while the work is still fresh in their minds.

The same goes for rewards. In one experiment, participants were 20 percent more likely to continue a task when they received a reward immediately, compared to those who were promised a bonus a month later.

Keep Good Work Cooking

In every job, you should be able to point to how the person can grow, what decisions they own, and why their work matters. Those ingredients contribute to a job employees feel is worthwhile and in which they can take pride.

Rewards are the feedback that reinforces those job traits. When you reward an employee for seeing a difficult project through from beginning to end, or to thank them for making a smart call, you show them that their contributions are noticed and appreciated.

Want to learn how you can pair thoughtful rewards with meaningful work to keep your employees engaged? Let’s talk.