Background: The importance of sustaining healthcare workers’ (HCWs) wellbeing is now well-recognized.1 Research highlights meaning in work is a key factor that promotes wellbeing, but its relationship with organizational culture is underexplored,2 limiting efforts to improve HCW experiences. We address this gap by comparing perceptions of workplace culture by HCWs who perceive their work as meaningful to those who do not.
Methods: A survey was distributed to employees of a large, multi-site medical enterprise. Two coders conducted inductive thematic analysis of 1,648 responses to an open-ended question, “How would you describe the culture at work?” Matrix coding compared code frequency and content between HCWs with meaning in work and those without, categorizing participants using an item from the Well-Being Index.3
Results: Codes reflected the five domains of the United States Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing,4 and were inductively grouped following coding. HCWs with meaning more frequently reported positive aspects of culture, including collaboration, collegiality, professional development, common mission, and psychological safety, while those without meaning more frequently reported lack of recognition. Content-based matrix coding revealed nuanced differences in HCWs’ experiences of culture, such as HCWs without meaning identifying all work relationships as negative, while those with meaning identify negative relationships with subgroups of the community. See Table 1 for matrix code comparisons.
Conclusion: This study confirms that meaning in work has a profound relationship with HCWs perceptions of organizational culture and suggests specific areas of emphasis including addressing relationships, recognition and unifying goals to support meaning.
