Sources of Meaningful Work for Blue-Collar Workers

Tiina Saari,Katriina Tapanila,Minna Leinonen

doi:10.3390/socsci11010002

Abstract

Research on the meaningfulness of work has increased in recent years, yet there is a limited body of qualitative studies on the topic. This article analyzes how the four basic psychological needs, namely autonomy, competence, relatedness, and beneficence, are articulated as sources of meaningful work by blue-collar workers. The research data consist of responses (N = 679) to one open-ended question in a survey and semi-structured interviews (N = 29) with blue-collar workers from property services and the manufacturing industry in Finland. The data were analyzed by theory-driven content analysis. The main findings are: first, autonomy, competence, relatedness, and beneficence appear as sources of meaningfulness in blue-collar work. Second, blue-collar workers see their work as autonomous and requiring diverse competences. Relatedness in blue-collar work entails having good relations with co-workers and striving to maintain those relationships. Beneficence is multilevel: helping clients, co-workers, organization and even the whole society through work. Organizations should develop organizational practices that may enhance the meaningfulness of work, such as opportunities to use and develop occupational skills. This article participates in the discussion about how satisfying these four basic psychological needs can be a source of meaningful work and offers a sociological-contextual perspective on the discussion about meaningfulness of work.

Highlights

Research on the meaningfulness of work has increased in recent years (e.g., LipsWiersma et al 2016; Martela and Riekki 2018; Nikolova and Cnossen 2020)
Our study extends the research on meaningfulness of work by scrutinizing the influence of the contexts and preconditions of work on the sources of meaningful work for blue-collar workers
We were interested in how the meaningfulness of work—as in autonomy, competence, relatedness, and beneficence—is articulated by people in blue-collar occupations in property services and manufacturing

Summary

Introduction

Research on the meaningfulness of work has increased in recent years (e.g., LipsWiersma et al 2016; Martela and Riekki 2018; Nikolova and Cnossen 2020). This study concentrates on meaningfulness in blue-collar work. Blue-collar work may not be the first to come to mind when thinking about meaningful work, because it is often seen only as dirty, physically demanding, low skilled, and low paid (Torlina 2011). There are already some studies which have revealed that manual work can be meaningful for workers (Lips-Wiersma et al 2016; Wrzesniewski and Dutton 2001; Kreiner et al 2006; Isaksen 2000). It is important to study blue-collar workers and the meaningfulness of their work, because even though knowledge work has become more common, blue-collar workers still make up a large part of the workforce in Europe and Finland (Statistics Finland 2021; Eurofound 2017). Many bluecollar occupations have been named “essential work” during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Milligan et al 2021)

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