Purpose statements tell the world why you exist, about what you do to advance or improve people’s lives. Yet so many don’t resonate or galvanise team members in the way that’s hoped for. Or worse, they smack of inauthenticity and do more harm than good.

Purpose statements come in all shapes and sizes. They can be three short words that form a company logo, or a 20-word expression that’s found in more expansive communications, or something much longer buried deep within a corporate social responsibility report.

But what they’re all supposed to do is capture an end goal. The bit about an organisation that seeks to explain why it exists, and how it plans to make a positive difference to our lives.

eBay’s purpose is to ‘empower people and create economic opportunity for all’. JLL’s is to ‘shape the future of real estate for a better world’. Mondelez ‘empowers people to snack right’. Microsoft’s purpose is ‘to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more’.

We know the bottom-line counts, of course, but this is about balancing capitalism with profound ambitions. In today’s business world, the creation of wealth and the acceleration of growth are not enough. To succeed, investors, stakeholders, clients and customers want to know about those higher goals.

Making purpose authentic, tangible and evidenced

One of the chief aims of purpose is to unify teams and encourage behaviour towards a certain goal. For that to work, it needs to be authentic, tangible and evidenced.

If you’re not in business to protect the planet, end poverty or save the whale, then don’t pretend that you are. And beware purpose-washing: it’s all too easy for companies to jump on the bandwagon and make claims about their social impact without actually doing the hard work to back it up. It’s OK to want to help people to ‘snack right’.

If we take a closer look at Microsoft’s statement above, we can see it encourages a growth mindset. It empowers and reinforces the idea that everyone’s thoughts and opinions count. It also speaks to the initiative the tech giant launched to give people – 42 million so far – free training in the digital skills needed to work in a post-pandemic economy. One statement that addresses all key stakeholders in an authentic way that’s also rooted in what it creates and sells.

What a strong and true purpose statement also does is attract the right talent. Over the past three years, we’ve witnessed a profound change in the workplace. Long-held assumptions by employers, attributing compensation as the primary motivation for job seekers, have been reshaped.

Gen Z and Millennials especially are focusing on factors beyond mere monetary rewards. Things like flexibility, organisational culture and the intrinsic value derived from daily tasks have gained prominence. According to global marketing and communications agency Allison+Partners:

• 91 percent of employees say a company’s purpose makes them feel they are in the right place as they weather ongoing challenges such as economic risk
• 88 percent believe companies focused on purpose will be more successful compared with those that are not
• 86 percent say having meaning in their work is more important than ever before
• 84 percent will only work at purpose-driven companies

Ensuring purpose is clear and apparent

Ask yourself how visible the purpose of your organisation is to team members. All communication should be consistent, authentic and ongoing. Steady and leadership-backed comms can ensure a business’s purpose statement becomes an integral part of organisational culture and guides employee actions and decisions.

But despite its potential value, many companies with powerful purpose statements aren’t always great at getting them out there.

The average office worker receives around 121 emails every workday, according to marketing forum DMR. In that context, how, when and where should an organisation focus on its purpose?

Rather than shouting from the rooftops or staging purpose-themed events, it’s about embedding purpose in everything an organisation says and does – a gentle, uncontrived drumbeat discovered in email signatures, posters and daily meetings, for example. Forums for feedback are important too – only then can we ensure the sentiment is understood, internalised and lived by all the people working in a business’s service.

Understanding and investing in purpose

Airbnb were called to question when their customer promise to ‘belong anywhere’ was undermined by the less than welcoming behaviour of some of their hosts. The homestay company’s business model rests on the idea that strangers can trust one another. If that premise is undermined, the whole business suffers. Embedding purpose properly is fundamental to the impression that these purpose claims are real and genuine – and that Airbnb can be trusted.

There’s a need here to ‘co-create’ a version of purpose with employees and stakeholders that’s related to their individual roles and responsibilities, or to evolve the purpose statement as business models and outputs change.

What all this underscores is that the foundation of purpose lies in its internal understanding before it extends outwards. It simply won’t work if employees or subscribers don’t fully adopt, convey and exemplify its sentiments in their actions.

For that reason, purpose needs to sit at the top of every organisations’ hierarchy. Everything else should follow it – values, behaviour, culture, reward and recognition. It should be the guiding principle, and the thing that means all other communication is irrefutably correct.

Ben Watson is a director at internal communications consultancy Blue Goose.