Have you ever heard the way some companies refer to their work, describing it in grandiose terms that are almost religious? I felt this way a little bit back in my days at Amex. There was a strong culture related to how people were treated, whether customers or employees, and doing the right thing, not only legally, but also morally. I’m not saying everyone always lived up to those ideals, but the ideals were strong, heart-felt, and attractive to us as employees and leaders. We felt good about the work we were doing. We felt like it was something positive.
In a leadership training that was making the rounds, the story was told of a janitor working for NASA. When asked what his purpose was, he said he was putting a man on the moon. In reality, he was cleaning toilets for engineers, but in theory, NASA’s mission was shared by all who supported it in any way. The mission was always seen as larger than any one individual.
Vocational awe is a term coined by Fobazi Ettarh to describe the belief that a profession is inherently noble, sacred, or morally pure — and therefore beyond critique. She originally applied it to librarianship, but the concept has since been extended to tech, education, nonprofits, medicine, startups, and mission-driven companies.
This concept of purpose in our work has continued to rise in importance. In many Silicon Valley companies, their mission and purpose statements are ratcheted up from the principles we espoused in my career. They will claim things like that they are building the future, or changing the world, or redesigning all human interactions. Combine that with the fact that many employees from Millenials onward demand that their companies be “admirable” or moral actors in the world, a tall order given that they also have to succeed in a cutthroat capitalist environment. Older generations may have felt that doing important work was a plus, but were less invested in the idea that their work was significant. I once joked to a colleague that I kept having the suspicion that the high-stakes project we’d been working on for the past year was something that in 5 years nobody would care about. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Five years? Try five months.” There’s always the next new thing.
Some of you may recall the episode of Lost in which Desmond, living in a bunker in the jungle, has to continually input a series of numbers into a computer because he believes (as his predecessor did) that if he doesn’t input the numbers correctly on time a huge disaster will occur. As viewers we watched and wondered–would there be a huge disaster or was his task as meaningless as it looked? What if he, like his predecessor, just walked away?
Let’s unpack how “vocational awe” functions — and then compare it to how it works in religion.
Companies or organizations often frame work tasks in grandiose terms like:
- Changing the world
- Saving democracy
- Connecting humanity
- Making the planet sustainable
- Reinventing the future
Psychologically, this shifts employment from transactional labor to a moral calling. Employees feel more motivated to perform tasks, including mundane or seemingly meaningless tasks.
If the mission is considered sacrosanct, that means that employees who question it or who criticize the tasks are seen as disloyal. Employees then internalize that criticism:
- “If I’m struggling, it’s because I’m not committed enough.”
- “If leadership makes mistakes, the mission is still pure.”
- “Burnout proves how dedicated I am.”
- “If I leave, I’m leaving the higher purpose.”
Saying no to the company, if the employee buys into the mission, is a selfish act. Companies often exploit this to monopolize employees’ time, identity and social life. Putting in extra time and effort is required if you believe in the mission, even if the specific task is actually quite meaningless.
I used to say that for many people, Amex worked like church. We shared values. Our colleagues were our social circle. We spoke in the Amex dialect and jargon. Our office culture drove how we lived our lives. And let me reiterate, Amex was nowhere near these Silicon Valley companies in terms of vocational awe. Companies operating this way also use crisis framing to increase commitment and to override employee boundary-setting. Speaking of the work in urgent terms makes it harder for people to leave or just phone it in.
Religions operate using this same framework. A church’s mission is stated in moral terms:
- Doing God’s work
- Saving souls
- Earning salvation
- Building the kingdom
- Fighting evil
Unlike a company, the stakes are felt as “eternal.”
Some of these familiar methods that religions have used for millenia are being used more often by “mission-driven” companies.
- Ritualized meetings
- Founder mythology
- Moral storytelling
- Community immersion
- Conversion-style recruitment and onboarding
Sociologists have been increasingly observing that Silicon Valley culture functions quasi-religiously. Political parties are also using these types of framing to increase polarization and commitment through tribalism as well as through meaning-making. When your moral worth is tied to any system (politics, employment, or a church), that system exerts a lot of control over you and makes boundary-setting difficult.
So how do you avoid psychological manipulation through vocational awe? Even if the work is important, pay attention when the noble goals are used as an excuse for:
- low pay
- chronic overwork
- understaffing
- emotional exhaustion
- boundary-crossing by leaders
- excessive self-sacrifice or even harm
When leaders reframe your boundary setting as selfishness, that’s a potential red flag. When leadership doesn’t operate under the same expectations of self-sacrifice, that’s another red flag. Consider these questions:
- Would the mission survive if employees / members had healthy boundaries?
- Are sacrifices voluntary or culturally coerced?
- Do leaders benefit more from the mission narrative than workers do?
I imagine the parallels to religion, particularly a high-demand religion, are pretty obvious. If not, just go back and re-read all of that and compare to your experience as a church member.
- Have you ever realized that something you thought was very important work was actually not all that valuable (or valued)?
- Have you experienced this shift toward vocational awe in your work life or elsewhere?
- Have you seen these tactics used at church? When did it become apparent to you?
- What has happened when you set clear boundaries rather than caving to mission-related pressure?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I particularly enjoyed your description of AMEX corporate religion. It brought a smile because it’s very easy to see the same religiosity in all the corporations I’ve worked for. I’m of two minds about this tendency. The cynical part of me rolls its eyes and says “you’re not changing the world. You’re selling toilet paper.” Nonetheless, there is virtue in providing a good or service that someone else wants or needs. There is also virtue in allowing the employees to provide that meaningful good or service and to support their families by that work. so maybe that pie in the sky mission statement is not only ridiculous, but also a little bit true.
One place where the comparison of corporate mission to religious mission breaks down or gets complicated is considering the incentives. Specifically, I’m thinking of incentives to the corporate leadership. When AMEX meets its annual financial goals, remuneration to the CEO and his inner circle is enormous. Remuneration to the lowest level mail room clerk is probably not meaningfully changed. There is a strong incentive to the executive to squeeze the most out of the employee and getting buy-in for some existential mission is a powerful way to achieve that. I don’t see the same level of rewards in the church. An Area Authority doesn’t get an additional stock option grant if convert baptisms exceeded the analyst forecast. I think religion in general does a better job than the corporate religion in sharing the incentives for advancing the mission.
Thank you for the interesting topic.
‘I think religion in general does a better job than the corporate religion in sharing the incentives for advancing the mission.’
For the sisters?? I fantasize a lot about what would happen if the sisters went on strike for one month. My fantasy used to involve only the sisters on strike at church, but if it also included at home then the important men in church would not be free to be important. They would have to do all the mundane tasks at home currently done by wives so that they are free to be important at church. I think of Nelson’s wife with her ten pregnancies while simultaneously taking care of all those children and running a home while he climbed various ladders.
I’m a librarian who always felt a sense of mission about my career. I genuinely believe the world was better in small ways because I went to work each day. I am grateful I was able to build a career in that kind of job.
But…that definitely did not mean that everything we/I did was right. I could and did disagree vehemently with some management decisions. We/I could and did make mistakes that sometimes harmed people.
I feel that way about my church involvement. It has given me opportunities for both personal growth and for helping to make the world better in small ways. I can and do disagree vehemently with some management decision. I recognize that we can and do make mistakes that harm people. I have less influence in the church than I had in my employment. All I can do is carefully choose where to be involved and to work at making my participation a blessing.
Zikhrona livricha–May her memory be a blessing.
Librarians rock!!
I am thinking about how corporations artificially invent some wonderful mission, then use it for crossing boundaries, low pay, long hours. My husband experienced that
For me in social work, it was kind of the opposite. Our worthwhile mission was kind of underrated. We were literally saving lives at times, but nobody in management cared, let alone used that to hype us up. It was kind of like it was the agency’s job to kill our natural enthusiasm for the idealism that brought us into social work to start with.
Like we came into the field with this lofty mission built in. Then the agency used that against us, rather than building it up. All the bad things of corporate mission building were there in abundance. There was the boundary crossing, the very low pay, the long unpaid hours, and burn out and all were so much worse than for corporate jobs. Our management could have actually used the idealism that brought people into social work to creat a religious type of dedication. They could have even used the good we were doing to fight burnout. But they didn’t bother. It is like nursing or school teaching with women primarily going into the field, high stress, low pay, and taken for granted by the culture. The anttitude is there will anlways be enough (whatever women’s field) and so they are underpaid and under anppreciated. As most “women’s work,” the workers are just not valued. So what if the burnout is terminal. More warm bodies will be graduating soon. Then there is the fact that for jobs requiring a master’s degree, well the pay wasn’t much better than flipping burgers at MickyDees.
I think hyping the “mission” is such fields would actually help. If we could keep feeling like the mission is important, we might not burn out so fast. But, I met social workers…let me rephrase that, I worked with social workers who frankly didn’t care anymore. So what if the kid’s parents beat him to death? So what if the shelter was full and the woman on the run from a homicidal idiot had no where to go? Big who cares. They had cared until they just could not do it any longer. Then they get promoted to management where the not giving a sh*t only hurts the people in the trenches. When you have a supervisor who doesn’t care if the parents abuse the kid, or if CPS abuses the kid, or if the kid gets lost in foster care, or runs away, it just makes it worse.
I had that supervisor. Luckily, I still had a professor friend from my undergrad that I was still close to. I talked to him and he said, get OUT of CPS now! Then about a year later some federal oversight did some investigating and the state of Utah got in big trouble for the number of kids falling through the cracks. But they didn’t fix the main problem of huge caseloads and under supported workers and management that had stopped caring.
Hmm, thanks for the new insight into “what the hell is wrong with the world,” Hawkgrrrl. I can see both how faking an important mission harmed my husband in his military and corporate jobs, and how failing to keep up a positive image of the agency’s mission added to the burnout in my career. Like all things in life, there needs to be balance.
Many companies (including a couple I worked for) would say things like “we don’t sell products, we sell solutions”. The idea is that a company is about more than its products. It’s about making life better for its customers. I always viewed that as an exaggerated view of ourselves but I guess some people like to think of themselves as being part of something bigger than a widget.
There are many parallels between my corporate experience and my Church one. We were supposedly about more than just a religion with its rituals, requirements, and practices. We were offering something bigger (exaltation with your family, etc.). But in the end the product seemed pretty stale (and not true) to me and then you start wondering about the big solution it supposedly offers.
Interesting perspective. It’s something I’ve noticed as well. It could be the boss saying “we’re family here,” or a store calling its employees associates. The reality is there is a huge gap between the one trying to get everyone to buy into the family/associate/religion jargon, and the worker at the other end, hearing it.
The CEO of AMEX or Family Dollar makes multi-millions in salary, while the worker makes minimum wage or close to it. As hard as the worker works and is told he’s part of a bigger mission, the more the CEO gets and the worker sacrifices, even if they get a “bonus.” The bonus for the work is pretty small compared to the CEO’s.
Another issue is that a worker dedicates their life to a company, but does a company really care about its employees? How many times do we hear about successful companies laying off workers? Imagine the meeting where “we are all family, here’s your pink slip.”
Religion might not be so dramatic between the top leaders and the members, but you don’t see custodians called to be general authorities, stake presidents, or even bishops very often. There is also a lot more “now hear this” vs “let me hear what you think” kind of conversations with “we are all God’s children” thrown in to make it seem like we’re equal. Most of us are on the outside looking in just like we are when we’re a worker at a large company.
I think the exception that proves the rule you are talking about is how unions are treated when they exist in a company. When workers unite, there is a large group of workers uniting and talking (standing up) to the boss (management). Of course, they are labeled as disrupters. They aren’t part of the “family.” They will cause the company to raise prices, which will cause it to go bankrupt, and everyone will lose their job. Unions will talk about brotherhood/sisterhood or solidarity. They have meetings where decisions are made democratically. Of course, this will be misrepresented by the company, saying union bosses are driving the workers. Yet, it’s the workers who hire and vote on the union bosses who came from their own ranks.
Granted, there are things people don’t like about unions, but with union membership very low in our country, most of us don’t have any direct experience with them and can only rely on what we are told by others. This is where I find it interesting that a group that pushes back on companies is very quickly labeled an enemy instead of a partner. Would things be better if we shared the wealth more? As for religion, how are people who “push back” labeled? If they stay in the church, are they a part of for example, as a leader? Would the church be better off if, instead of talking about how we are all brothers and sisters, members actually had a say in things not just a “show by the raising of hands” consent to something leaders did behind closed doors?
As ‘pusher back’ I ignored. It resulted in my bishop visiting my home to try to convince me I am wrong but that is the extent of it. Letters to SLC and area authorities are ignored and not acknowledged. They are not even willing to do anything about the stupid stuff (my husband cannot be a temple worker with the beard he has worn since before he joined the church, even though he was an effective YSA bishop for ten years with the beard)
I stay because of the sisters. I will never be asked to speak in church or teach a lesson. It has reached the point of eye rolls and ‘there she goes again’, but I keep at it because so many sisters became so exhausted, they just left. Where is the church that it claims to be?
I am 83, so I am even more invisible than the young ones who can still turn out those babies.
When I read “Vocational Awe” I think about the attitude of being called to a vocation as a nun, or a priest, or a rabbi, etc. I don’t think the LDS church has the same definition or expectation of a “call” from the Bishop. Our calls (jobs) are temporary and not something we should aspire to. I don’t know if the attitude is different for “higher” callings. I don’t buy in to the current leadership worship vibe.
In my professional vocation I’ve experienced many of the false gods, dead ends, and hype that you describe when every company must have a “Mission Statement.” When I interview I often ask “Who’s vision are we trying to achieve?”
I’ve also experienced jobs where the mission was not stated, but thoroughly lived, and most employees at every level felt the calling of doing something important and worthwhile, and also valued by the employer and coworkers. Sacrifices were humbly asked for, not authoritatively expected, and suffered at every level.
I’ve also sung the praises of AMEX as having the best customer service. So at some level that Mission worked.
My ex-wife worked at one of the big 4 accounting firms in a creative role. The higher-ups frequently urged the employees to maintain a healthy work/life balance. Ten minutes later in the same meeting the same higher-ups would be praising specific employees or teams that had worked 90 hour weeks (not exaggerating) to meet a deadline. Employees were frequently criticized for maintaining their posted available work hours and not extending them for whatever reason.
It was a stark difference between how the company professed to function versus how it actually operated on a day-to-day basis.
I see a similar disconnect in the claims of the church to focus on the teachings of Jesus when the talks at the weekly meetings are based on the instructions given at general conference. And while original idea of the messages may have been focused on the teachings of Jesus they end up like a game of telephone with the focus and instruction shifting with each relay.