B Lab Forces For Good Podcast — Episode 4: How do you find meaning at work?

What are people looking for in a job? Salary and benefits matter, but for a growing number of workers, they’re not enough. Purpose—the feeling that your work contributes to something bigger—is becoming a key factor in how people choose where to work and whether they stay.

In the latest episode of Forces For Good, host Irving Chan-Gomez sits down with Annemiek Nusmeijer, founder of Greenjobs.nl, and Julie Richards, Director of Sustainability & Operational Transformation at The Guardian. Annemiek has seen firsthand how young professionals are flocking to sustainable careers, while Julie shares how embedding purpose into business helps The Guardian attract and retain mission-driven employees.

From the rise of impact-driven careers to how companies can make purpose more than just a buzzword, this episode explores why meaningful work is no longer optional—and what businesses need to do to keep up.

Listen now to explore:

• Why purpose-driven work is in high demand—and how companies can adapt

• How sustainability and impact influence career choices

• What employees really want from a good job

• How businesses can embed purpose into their DNA

Tune in to Forces For Good and rethink what makes work truly meaningful: https://lnk.to/forces-for-good-meaning-at-work

TRANSCRIPT: Season 3 — Episode 4: How do you find meaning at work? 

This is Forces for Good, a podcast from B Lab, the nonprofit network powering the global B Corp movement. I’m your host Irving Chan-Gomez.

Forces for Good takes a hard look at how businesses are helping to solve the biggest social and environmental challenges of our time. 

We're excited to be back with season 3 to dive deep into what makes a good job. 

Do you remember your school career days? Parents came in and talked about the coolest parts of their jobs. There was probably a lawyer, an engineer, a business owner. Maybe a chef, a fireman, or a construction worker.

Even if they didn't do this at your school, you've probably seen it on tv or in a movie. The point of the day is to ask kids 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'

For me it was a scientist.

Go ahead and guess the top three jobs kids aspire to today...

The answer is doctor, teacher, and athlete.

Not entirely surprising. But let’s think about what these three careers have in common

Doctors save lives. Teachers influence young people. And today's athletes score goals, make touchdowns, and win races. But they also start charities, visit sick kids in hospitals, make donations to natural disasters and influence society. 

Sooo many of us want careers filled with purpose and meaning. So how can we define purpose-driven work? 

Julie Richards:To me, it means a business with a core product or service that benefits society—or a business that prioritizes a specific stakeholder group's well-being over its commercial goals, regardless of what it produces

That's Julie Richards, Guardian News & Media’s Director of Sustainability and Operational transformation. But with an off the cuff definition like that, maybe she should be writing for a dictionary!

People want purpose now more than ever. Our other guest today saw job seekers searching for purpose and came up with her own solution.  

Annemiek Nusmeijer: First and foremost, people want an employer that takes care of them financially and supports their development. But they also want to know: Is my employer giving back? Are they helping create a better society or environment? So that's a positive, real positive trend.

That's Annemiek Nusmeijer, owner of Greenjobs.nl - the largest job board in the Netherlands for sustainable positions. Young people are flocking to Annemiek's site hoping to find meaningful employment. 

Annemiek: There are clear generational differences. For young people, it’s a no-brainer that an employer should do good. They expect volunteer days. They expect to do beach cleanups or community work with their coworkers. If a company doesn’t offer that, they think, I don’t want to work here.

Remember how we talked about Maslow's Hierarchy of needs in our first episode? It's the idea that in order to aspire to greater things and feel fulfilled we need to have our basic needs met. So once we have a good wage and reasonable work hours, we start to seek purpose. 

But don't take it just from me… 

As we started this series, one of our producers, Sherri Jordan and I were at a B Lab conference in the UK. We wanted to see what members of the B Corp community, mainly employees working at B Corps, expected out of a good job. 

Speaker 1: Yeah so what I'm looking for in a job is exactly what I have right now. I've been there 8 and a half years and the reason I'm there is we are impact focused and we're working on a lot of cool projects that matter. That's what I want and that's why I'm staying!

Speaker 2: Actually the things I look for is being paid well, does it have impacts like is it aligned to my value and mission, does it give me flexibility to do the things I want to do because I do believe in family and work integration and it just motivates me and it gets me excited. 

Speaker 3: I think what good work means to me is knowing that the company I work for has a real mission and they are committed to that mission. So they're not committed to just making money. They're not committed to making money in order to make an impact, they are radically and authentically committed to that impact. Yes it is important to make money but they never get to that point where money is the most important where that means becomes the end in itself. The end is always the most important and that's where the impact is. 

So clearly impact is important to the B Lab movement and to society as a whole but there are still a lot of questions to answer here. 

How do companies become impact driven? 

Or how do you infuse impact into the ethos of your company from its inception? 

How do we make sure impactful companies still generate enough profits to provide living wages and work/life balance to employees? 

And finally what is a meaningful mission? This is the point where I feel examples become helpful. Take the Guardian… 

Julie: For listeners who aren't familiar, The Guardian is an independent news organization. We've published a newspaper in the UK for over 200 years and are now a global 24/7 news organization with offices in the UK, US, and Australia, plus a network of correspondents worldwide.

Our core purpose is to provide quality, independent journalism.

What sets us apart is that we’re not owned by a billionaire or shareholders looking to profit. Our sole shareholder is The Scott Trust, which exists to secure The Guardian’s financial and editorial independence.

In practice, this means our editorial team makes decisions based on what’s best for readers—not an owner or shareholders pushing a commercial agenda.

News outlets are often beholden to multiple interests. Julie and her colleagues feel that The Scott Trust keeps The Guardian’s sole purpose in providing good journalism. 

If you're in the United States or you were watching the 2024 US election you might have seen the problem with billionaire owners and a lack of editorial independence play out. 

The Washington Post newspaper decided not to endorse a candidate for president. It later came out that the decision had been made by the post's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos and not the paper's editorial board. 

High profile members of this `board resigned in protest and outraged readers cancelled subscriptions. They expected editorial independence and they didn't get it. This had all played out fairly recently when I spoke with Julie. She's incredibly proud to work at an independent, non profit outlet. 

Julie: I think the second thing that sets us apart is that we occupy a sort of liberal progressive place in the media landscape. Compared to many privately owned news organizations in the UK, US, and Australia—which tend to lean conservative—we take a progressive stance. We’re passionate about issues like climate, social justice, and fairness, and our reporting reflects that and sort of gives a different emphasis and different set of perspectives.

And I think the other thing that sets us apart today from a lot of competitors is that we are free to access. Quality journalism is expensive—especially investigative work, which can take months to produce—so many outlets put their content behind paywalls. But we’ve built a commercial model where readers support us financially because they believe in our mission. That allows us to stay open to all, funded by many, and beholden to no one.

So not controlled by any sort of commercial interests.

The Guardian has a noble purpose of providing quality journalism. At times they have to put that purpose over profits and commercial goals. But purpose doesn't exist in a vacuum and doesn’t instantly make a good job. Companies have to prioritize Sustainability, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and other priorities that create a positive work environment. Julie and The Guardian are on top of that too. She says it starts with transparency. 

Julie: When companies talk about their purpose, they open themselves up to scrutiny. The best way to handle that is to be honest—about where you are and the steps you’re taking to improve.

So I think the best way to tackle that is to be transparent about where you are and also about the steps that you're taking to improve. We conducted our first biodiversity impact audit to educate ourselves and understand what actions we could take. We found useful insights but also many gaps in available data. Instead of hiding that, we shared what we knew. The same goes for climate commitments—aligning with science-based targets and being clear about how we measure up. That level of transparency shows real intent and accountability.

The Guardian has also strived to take action related to diversifying their newsroom and take accountability for mistakes made by their trust in the past. The original founders of The Guardian had connections to the transatlantic slave trade. The ‘Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement’ Report outlined these connections and responded with a pledge to make an effort toward restorative justice. 

Julie: We hold others accountable in our reporting—so we have to do the same for ourselves. Readers and staff have responded positively to our transparency on climate, diversity, and historical accountability.

So I think, you know, staff certainly respond very positively to the fact that we're willing to do that. about our own organization. I think readers do too. We've had sort of really positive responses to the work that we've done, on climate and the transparency that we've had around that. And so being very clear with readers about what our commitments are and also to the Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement projects, it's quite interesting. Some parts of the media try to frame these efforts as “rewriting history,” as if that’s a bad thing. But that’s exactly what historians do: uncover new information, report on it, and take action based on what we learn.

Julie recognizes that The Guardian is in a unique position as a media company. They have the ability and platform to express their purpose. They can publish editorials and opinion columns. They have millions of people visiting their website ready to spend time reading and learning. Other companies, even purpose driven ones don't have as much time and space to communicate with consumers, and potential future employees. 

Julie: For most consumer brands, people might spend just a minute thinking about their product—maybe just glancing at the packaging in a supermarket. There’s very little time or space to tell a nuanced story about impact, and that’s a huge challenge.

Many B Corps put a huge emphasis on purpose but Julie's comments remind me of one in particular that we talked about in season one of our show. Tony's Chocolonely.

From the inception of the brand, its purpose was to bring attention to the use of slave labor in the chocolate industry. That team had to be creative and figure out how to use packaging and marketing to explain the brand's purpose to consumers. 

Bold colors draw your attention to the bar and then a golden seal advertises its mission to make slave-free chocolate. Even the chocolate itself breaks into uneven pieces because the cocoa industry is unfair. 

Definitely go back and listen to that episode - its called How can business promote social justice activism? Annemiek has another example of a company that's sure of its purpose. Reusable water bottle-makers Dopper…

Annemiek: There’s a lot of negativity around climate and the environment, but also a lot of progress. Employers have an opportunity to showcase the good they’re doing.

Dopper took their mission beyond selling products—they went to the European Union in Brussels to push for policy changes on single-use plastics. That’s a perfect example of how companies and governments can work together to drive real impact.

For instance, Dopper, which is a Dutch based company, is fighting against single use water plastic. They went to the European Union in Brussels, really trying to change the legislation around this. And that's where I wanted to go because the government has a big role in this as well. For a company to thrive and for a company to be successful, economically, you know, it also depends on rules from the government.

So that's where I think there is a lot to gain still,but there's a lot going on in the world today. So hopefully it will be become more on the agenda again for many countries.

For job seekers and workers, deciphering whether a company's mission is genuine can be difficult. A company might excel in one thing that an employee expects in a good job but not in others. How can we tell whether a company is on a journey toward positive impact or if they're just talk?

Annemiek: If you have doubts—whether as a job seeker or consumer—just ask. Send an email, inquire about their mission. Even if they’re not fully living up to it yet, knowing people are paying attention can push them to take it seriously. Give them a sense of, okay, somebody's watching us and we need to really start addressing this.

Julie: Building on that, it’s important to ask how a company’s purpose actually plays out in day-to-day decision-making. It’s easy to write a mission statement, but how does that mission guide real business choices?

So for example, if a company says that they've got a mission, which is all around, I don't know, supporting the people in their supply chain, but if they're sort of decisions are actually pretty much always decided on the basis of cost only, well, then, it's quite clear that that mission is really secondary to the commercial performance of the business.

So I think it's good to kind of probe where the mission or the purpose kind of plays out in the day to day. And I think for organizations, it's good to think about whether they can have an impact through their core business model.

Thinking about the core business model of a company is something that we heard a lot from our B Lab colleagues. Purpose goes beyond minimizing negative impact. You have to wholeheartedly pursue a positive impact.

Julie: Many businesses think about sustainability in terms of reducing their own footprint—cutting emissions, flying less, using less paper. But real impact comes from their core business model.

I give an example for the advertising industry. You know, the biggest impact that that industry has, it's about the products and services that it advertises and the sorts of lifestyles or, you know, kind of consumption habits that it promotes to users. And that's actually much more impactful. 

All organizations in the industry sort of thinking about their own impact, their own operational impact, which is important, but I think there's a much bigger picture in terms of the influence that they can have on society and likewise at the Guardian, with our reporting, I always say that the biggest impact we'll have on the environment is through the reporting that we do, because that's reaching tens of billions of people every week and informing them about the climate and about nature. And that's always going to be more impactful than the pure operational things we do, even though we should do those as well. 

Annemiek has an idea for prioritizing sustainability. A simple way to make sure impact always has a seat at the table. 

Annemiek: Another really nice tip that we recently shared in our newsletter. If you want to do more about making a positive impact for your next team meeting, just grab another chair. And leave it empty because the chair is nature and for every business decision that you need to make in that meeting, have a look at that chair and then think, okay, how does this decision that we're making have an impact on nature? It's very, very easy to do, very fun to do, and it will definitely make your team meeting different.

This is such a smart move. Infusing purpose into your workplace makes it better for everyone. You heard it from our interviews at the beginning - people stay longer and work harder when they have a meaningful mission. 

Julie: I’ve worked in several places, but before The Guardian, I’d never experienced such a strong sense of contributing to something bigger than commercial goals. Obviously we've got reporters and editors who are working on that day to day, but even, you know, data analysts, software, our legal team, our commercial teams that are generating revenue, that supports that reporting, all of the operational teams.

I think everybody has that sense of contributing to something bigger. And I do think that, you know, if organizations can find that it's actually very inspiring for their colleagues and it really does motivate people day to day, even if the job they're doing might be the same as they might do in another company, they might be, you know, processing invoices or you might be looking at legal contracts. But I think that feeling of doing it for an organization, which is sort of playing an important role in the world, definitely adds something to your experience.

Julie's point is the one I want you to leave here thinking about. No matter what it is you do, in the right place it can have a huge impact. It's up to you which brands you choose to support with your time, talents and money. And just like today's kids, who dream of jobs that can make a difference, I hope we'll all aspire to find a meaningful mission. 

If you’d like to learn more about B Corps and purpose-driven companies, visit BCorporation.net. Subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Your support helps Forces for Good reach new audiences.

For more ways to engage, follow us on social media.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the interviewees and do not reflect the positions or opinions of the producers or any affiliated organizations.

This podcast was brought to you by B Lab in partnership with The Gates Foundation. Special thanks to Sherri Jordan for coordination. Forces For Good is produced by Hueman Group Media.

I’m your host, Irving Chan-Gomez. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!