Feeling fulfilled: Understanding work-life balance

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What does fulfilment mean to you in your career? For some, it is a good work-life balance; others cite career opportunities or personal growth. Higher pay is the holy grail for many, while some long for better social connections at work. One project, however, is using data from a global survey to identify the main ‘personas’ driving our ideas of work-based fulfilment.

The Female Lead is a charity that seeks to examine the factors that limit women’s choices and fulfilment in society. It has launched the Female Fulfilment Finder, a survey generating data to examine what makes women feel genuinely happy. Edwina Dunn, co-founder of data science firm Dunnhumby and founder of The Female Lead, says the project was born out of the “realisation that women are put together as a single group and we know we’re not all the same, we’re not all born equal or treated equally”. She adds: “That’s where the idea came from – how we can understand not just what women are, but also what they want that makes them different from one another.”

The Female Fulfilment Finder uses implicit research methods to uncover women’s underlying desires and wishes, asking quickfire questions to elicit fast responses. On completing the survey, participants receive a ‘persona’ showing their emotional motivators and how fulfilled they feel in the five dimensions that the project has identified as being important to women’s happiness: self, society, relationships, money and work.

“Many people want to make the world a better place for women and girls, but they don’t get it right,” says Dunn. “Maybe it is because we don’t get to the right questions. One of the mantras we use is, ‘You can’t solve a problem until you understand it’. The best way to understand it is with data, evidence and logic.”

More than 100,000 people have completed the survey so far and the data has helped identify 12 personas that offer a broad picture of the personalities that exist in the workplace, and what they crave to achieve fulfilment in their careers. The personas are: achiever; bon vivant; creator; crisis manager; entertainer; everyone’s friend; influencer; investigator; knowledge seeker; mediator; peacemaker; and reformer.

The personas have allowed the Female Lead to tell a clear story using the data, to influence company policy in areas such as HR or career progression. They can also improve diversity of thought within a firm – for example, many businesses are overstocked with crisis managers, but underrepresented by other personas. The Female Fulfilment Finder is part of a shift in thinking to recognise the important roles all people play within a team, and to reduce bias towards particular personalities.

“I am interested in what people feel fulfilment is – when are they proud of themselves, happy, frustrated,” explains Dunn. “We hear so much about the ‘great resignation’ and people not returning to their jobs or changing their jobs. Trying to understand what someone wants to get out of their job feels like the right question to be answering.”

The data also enables a greater understanding of how people’s needs and desires at work change according to their age and country. With age, the survey found that younger women care more about promotions, opportunities and salary, while this shifts as they get older towards benefits, senior leadership and pensions. There are differences spotted between countries, too – the US has a more results-driven culture, for example, while the UK is more innovation and knowledge-driven.

Dunn says the results of the research could provide a data-led approach to employee satisfaction, as companies realise fulfilment is measurable and strive to improve outcomes. “If you can prove you are raising the bar on employee satisfaction, it is measurable,” she maintains. “It is not just an idea or a theory – it is practical and will help people get key performance indicators on diversity delivered.”