If I think of the worst job in the world, it would be one that has no meaning and I’ve had a few.

It’s toiling on a project you know will never come to reality. Those jobs keep resume writers busy because people leave.

The most hated jobs are not the worst-paid or the most physically demanding but those where workers believe they are going nowhere.

It is not like heading down the salt mines with a pick over your shoulder but US management author Steve Denning says the people who hate these jobs are “imprisoned in hierarchical bureaucracies”.

“They see little point in what they are doing. The organisations they work for don’t know where they are going, and as a result, neither do these people,” he says in a Forbes article.

Meaning is the biggest source of energy at work.

Unfortunately, leaders are often the ones who are robbing work of its meaning. They misunderstand why people get out of bed to work for them.

It’s not only the money and it is not about increasing shareholder value or crushing the competition.

People are looking for human values; to use their brains or muscles to build something.

Leaders often undermine meaning at work by dismissing the importance of subordinates’ work or ideas but those ideas come from the frontline.

Work creates meaning.